Originally Posted by
IAN-UK
If you get cpm in the heading - why bother with separate threads for "good deals"?? Ditch the current set up and simply have one forum for low fares: with cpm and class of travel in the header, readers can click on to any thread that attracts them - for whatever reason (MR or cheap trip).
The current set-up isn't at all helpful for quick scanning, and what is proosed would be even more cumbersome.
Good idea. However, I was under the impression that some FT'ers get frustrated when deals are posted in the MR forum that are not "true MR's" (whatever that means
). I also like the idea of having a single forum for good deals and MR deals, though I'm concerned that others may become upset because "
their" MR forum (again....
) is cluttered with non-MR deals. Also, the Good Deals - Premium Fares forum may need to be separate anyway, as that really is in a category of its own most of the time.
However, perhaps if it was easier to sort through the good fare deals, people wouldn't complain as much about seeing deals that don't meet their personal requirements for a MR.
If you look at a "hot deals" forum like
http://slickdeals.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=9 , you will see that their format is quite easy to use, and the quick/convenient access to the 1-thumb to 5-thumb rating scale and tagging of threads makes it very easy to locate the best deals. Slickdeals also supports deal alerts, which users can use to send an e-mail alert when certain parameters are met (specific text in thread title, categories, certain number of "thumbs up", etc.)
Adding all that functionality is likely outside the scope of this Talkboard thread (though it does deserve consideration IMO). However it would at least be helpful to have a field in the title for CPM (or fields for "cost" and "miles", and the software could auto-calculate the CPM). Allow that field to be sortable somehow, and as suggested above, allow fields for airport codes which can be sorted as well. Again, not sure how difficult that would be to set up, but it would be a HUGE help.
I personally believe the Mileage Run Deals forum has HUGE potential to gain additional FT users. Though for it to get to the next level of success, it really needs to have easy-to-use features/functionality specifically designed for the general purpose of finding good deals.