Suggestion: Create China-based Airlines forum
OK, I think we should give it a crack on this. So I will try to answer the questions below, as per Suggestion Guidelines:
1. Will the forum be (or is it now) beneficial to FlyerTalk? How?
- China is second largest economy in the world. Hence there are more and more people (and FTers) travel to China on regular basis.
- Major China Based airlines (CZ, MU, CA, HU, etc) are expanding aggressively to many parts of the world, and they offer super low fares on their routes attracting many people who normally don't travel on China based airlines.
- There are already many discussions on China based airlines in "Other Asian, Australian, and South Pacific Airlines ..." around 50% of the threads. By moving them to China based airlines forum, it would assist FTers to find more relevant information.
2. Is FlyerTalk the best place to discuss this subject?
- Yes, for English based forums. Whilst there are a lot of other forums talking about them, they are mostly written in Chinese.
- Given the aggressive expansion of China based airlines to around the world. More and more people outside China would need to know more about those airlines, and they do not know how to read Chinese.
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?)
- Yes. Major China based airlines are members of alliances (CZ/MU/CI - Skyteam, CA/BR - Star Alliance) which most FTers are a member of one way or another. In their redemption they will encounter more and more China based airlines.
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.
- Whilst I am not a passionate follower, I am aware there are a few knowledgeable members who can assist .....
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.
Yes. There are already many discussions on China based airlines in "Other Asian, Australian, and South Pacific Airlines ..." around 50% of the threads by my count. By moving them to China based airlines forum, it would assist FTers to find more relevant information.
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.
- Whilst each individual China based airline does not warrant enough threads for its own forum, combined threads for all China based airlines would have far enough discussion to sustain a 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?
- There are already many discussions on China based airlines in "Other Asian, Australian, and South Pacific Airlines ..." around 50% of the threads by my count. By moving them to China based airlines forum, it would assist FTers to find more relevant information, and also declutter the "Other Asian ..." forum.
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.
I personally don't think sunsetting is required. Once created I am quite confident that it will get filled with threads.