I do believe they like to see the following questions answered:

The following are qualitative criteria that the TalkBoard believes are useful to consider when evaluating proposals to create, close, split, or move forums. Whenever a forum change is discussed on the TalkBoard Topics, the TalkBoard encourages posters to fully address these criteria in addition to any other reasons supporting or opposing the change.

1. Will the forum be (or is it now) beneficial to FlyerTalk? Given there are a number of existing threads spread throughout various FT forums, there does seem to be both an interest in this topic and at least some desire to discuss it. Canarsie has stated within this specifc thread that there are at least "490 discussions about parking throughout FlyerTalk, with a minimum of 153 discussions about parking in the TravelBuzz! forum alone and at least 11 more discussions in the S.P.A.M. forum".

2. Will the new forum benefit a relationship with FlyerTalk? E.g., does the forum provide value for FT members, such as a friendly ear highly placed in the company? Given there are quite a few existing threads already within FT, it looks like there is already a perceived benefit.

3. Is FT the best place to discuss this subject? To quote Canarsie again "...because parking at an airport is part of travel — speaking for myself, of course — and there are frequent parking loyalty programs which not only offer points, but some even offer bonus airline frequent flier miles. Miles and points has always been the core discussion and raison d’ętre of FlyerTalk.

Based on this line of reasoning, discussion dedicated to frequent parking loyalty programs deserves its own forum on FlyerTalk — but that is merely my conclusion."

Where would there be a better place to discuss this topic?


4. Is there a passionate following? This is essential in order to provide dedicated expert helpers to get questions answered. I"m not an expert on who is passionate or not, I would say that 490 existing threads shows at least some "base" of interest in this topic. And given travel points/miles is core to FT's mission, this would seem a very good fit.


5. Is a critical mass of posts and readers anticipated or existing? We need adequate traffic to keep everyone visiting frequently. One living forum is more valuable than two mostly dead ones. While the aforementioned 490 threads may be spread over more than a decade of posting, it does show a potential "base" of posting traffic.

6. Is this the best place on FlyerTalk for this subject? This is the classification issue. The answer depends primarily on achieving and maintaining critical mass. It also depends on whether or where the discussion might (or does) occur in the absence of the forum. As stated above, this pertains to travel points/miles and thus should be considered core to FT's mission. It might be worth looking at the dates around those 490 threads to see when they occured, how much discussion went on, and possibly to see if there has been an increase in discussions over the last few years, versus 10 years ago. That might show an increasing desire and posting base for this topic.

7. For proposals to split a forum, is the split expected to improve the signal to noise ratio? Why? While this proposal doesn't really suggest a forum split, it does suggest a topic "consolidation". The fact that there are probably discussions about Freq. Parking programs spread throughout various geographic forums, TravelBuzz!, S.P.A.M., and probably MilesBuzz! as well, can make it very difficult to find all discussions around the various Frequent Parking programs. One would have to search through all those forums to find the information. Having it in one place provides a single location for all that information, thus making searches much easier and more likely to successfully find it.

As I stated earlier, I'm not necessarily for or against this, but I think there is at least some potential merrit to a Freq. Parking forum. And thus it is definitely worth discussing.