My goal, Missy is not to return to the old FlyerTalk, but to find ways for the new FlyerTalk to work more smoothly and (if you will reread my posts) actually encourage growth.

The current design, combined with its apparent goal of keeping FTMiles restricted purely to mileage discussions, is illogical, causes confusion and IMHO that discourages both growth and continued participation.

For example:

If the purpose of FT Miles is strictly and exclusively to discuss miles and only miles, why are the Community, Intineraries, Trip Reports, News, Coupon Connection and Talkboard Issues located there?

Why are the Airline and Hotel disscussions located there? Surely the grand majority of discussions in those forums have nothing to do with miles.

The current design is cumbersome and illogical and it is that design which encourages mispostings.

Clearly if the top forum on FTMies were a General Forum, general questions placed there would not be "misposted" but would in fact be properly posted.

Clearly the existing plan of having a very restricted MilesBuzz at the top of the page isn't working. If it worked, the high percentage of "misposts" would not consistently occur.

As I have stated in a previous post, I too believe that many of the new special interest forms have added great value to to Flyer Talk. That is not at issue.

The real issue is that as long as FTMiles is called FTMiles and is the first choice on www.flyertalk.com it will always be the first forum people seek out and it will always be the most popular. That is a great thing because it adds to the overall growth of FlyerTalk--ours is a world filled with mileage junkies.

It is also inevitable that people who go to FTMiles will innocently ask general questions and that they will frequently post them in MilesBuzz or Community exactly because there is no other more appropriate forum provided within FTMiles. (Why isn't there?) Missy has suggested that they could search for a more appropriate forum in FTTravel and that is true, but I imagine that many of these folks simply don't realize that FTTravel or "search" exist.

Think about the way things are right now. If someone posts a question about "travel with children" into the Community forum, they are likely to receive a welcome to FlyerTalk, and a polite response along with the information that there is a special forum for travel with children and directions on how to find it--very friendly, personal and welcoming (that is part of what I envision happening in a General FTMiles forum). If, however, that same question is posted in MilesBuzz it is likely to receive a very terse and not very friendly comment from a self-appointed post Nazi to the effect that "This question is misposted" and then it will be moved by the moderator, causing less than friendly feelings all the way around.

What do we gain by this approach?

What would we lose by adding a General forum to FTMiles?




[This message has been edited by Punki (edited 09-14-2002).]