Whenever a forum change is discussed on The Suggestion Box forum for the Community Director's consideration, we encourage members to fully address the following evaluative criteria in addition to any other reasons supporting or opposing the suggested forum change. (Similar criteria used by the former TalkBoard were useful to consider when discussing proposals to create, close, split, or move forums.)
Supporting data are always appreciated. See
Suggestion: Create MH / Malaysia Airlines forum (forum created) for examples.
1. Will the forum be (or is it now) beneficial to FlyerTalk? How?
2. Is FlyerTalk the best place to discuss this subject?
3. Will the new forum benefit a relationship with FlyerTalk? E.g., does the forum provide value for FT members, such as an avid number of existing member service provider users or a friendly ear highly placed in the company?)
4. Is there a passionate following? This is essential in maintaining active and vigorous discussion, as well as involving knowledgeable members to get questions answered.
5. Is a critical mass of posts and readers anticipated or already in existence? A forum needs adequate traffic to keep everyone visiting frequently. One living forum is more valuable than two mostly inactive ones.
6. Is this the best place on FlyerTalk for this subject? This is the classification issue: the answer depends in part on whether or where the discussion might (or already does) occur in the absence of the suggested forum.
7. For proposals to split a forum: What benefits can be expected? Is the split expected to improve the "signal to noise ratio"? Why?
8. Forum "sunsetting":The administration does not anticipate using automatic sunsetting of forums as a response to weakness in a newly created forum, preferring instead to create forums only when we they are strongly expected to succeed.