Originally Posted by
kokonutz
I think the TB serves a really important role. It gives the CD a user focus group, a sounding board and management advice. What it no longer does is reflect the will of the community. Both because 'the community' no longer exists site-wide; rather FT is now made up of many mini-communities. But also because with <500 people voting it is clearly not a role many posters care to have representation in.
If Carol and those of us who do care deeply about the management of FT are ok with that, the that's fine.
But if we are missing out on a best practice around this then we ought to think hard about it.
This post got me thinking about whether there could be a role for some of the largest fora on FT to have their own advisory boards. In addition to addressing the issue of some FT participants identifying more with the forum associated with their primary program rather than FT as a whole, this would be a nice way to involve more people in FT. Also, within these fora, people who participate a lot are more likely to know each other. For example, the BA board has some DOs as well as lounge meetings, DL has organized a couple big DOs, UA/AA people know each other through the *A/oneworld megados, there's an annual Hyatt DO in London (and some have been tried in more exotic locations), etc.
Any such group would need to work closely and well with the forum's moderators.
I realize that this role is performed currently to some extent by the forum Ambassadors for fora that have Ambassadors on FT, but that role and especially the selection criteria are somewhat different that what would be involved for an advisory board. Forum advisory board members could be elected, but perhaps without the series of election debate questions (or a shorter list of questions). I assume that this could be done pretty easily since FT already has the software set up for TB elections.
I'm not necessarily advocating this but rather I wanted to toss out the idea and see what people think.