MSPeconomist

One very minor change that I would like to see--if this would be technologically feasible in vBulletin--is to delete closed subfora from the "forum jump" drop down menu at the bottom left of FT pages. Currently the old premerger Delta and Northwest closed subfora continue to appear almost five years after the merger. Similarly, the premerger Unitied and Continental closed subfora are listed. Soon we will also have closed subfora for premerger American Airlines and USAir. This makes the list longer than necessary and is especially annoying when one is accessing FT on a device. One suspects that while the closed subfora are important reference resources (and should not be archived yet or ever deleted), their use declines rapidly after they are closed to further posts as mergers proceed. Note that I am not suggesting that closed subfora be removed from the forum's main page but only that their inclusion in longer lists of FT fora be changed after then have been closed for some time.

I've also been thinking about whether it would be desirable , as an experiment, to re-organize one or more of the major hotel fora so that the main page listing thread titles isn't so cluttered by review master threads for particular hotels. This could be done by placing all of the threads that concern specific properties or that compare hotels in some particular location into a subforum of the hotel chain forum.

This potential change would make it easier to quickly skim and follow threads about changes in policy for the hotel chain and its frequent guest program. I suspect that people tend to consult the hotel master review threads and similar material only when they are considering making reservations for those particular hotels.

The downside of reorganizing some of the hotel fora in this way would probably be fewer posts being added to the specific hotel threads. Currently some folks click the threads of hotels they know and in doing so they might be able to answer questions quickly and easily.

On balance, I've thought about this but I'm not sure whether it would work well or not. This potential change could be worth considering, but I would first want to get a lot of feedback from FT members and hotel forum moderators.