I remember the previous discussion. A quick and admittedly unscientific look at the number of threads (not posts) started since December 1--excluding the FT Award Nomination threads and moved threads--reveals the following....
--47 threads about airlines based in the PRC (mainland China), spread over a variety of airlines but mostly the 4 majors.
--51 threads about Taiwan-based airlines, about 95% are EVA-related
--1 loner about Hong Kong airlines
--67 threads about all the other airlines, stretching from Mongolia to Azerbaijan to Fiji but majority on Southeast Asia-based carriers.
Whether this 2 month slice of FT history is representative of an entire typical year, I'll leave to others to debate.
But overall, I also don't think anything has changed all that much. If there is an overwhelming itch to create a new forum, it would seem that an airline-specific forum for EVA would be of the most benefit, as 40% of the last 2 month's threads are about that one airline. My brief forays in and out of this forum over the last few years also seem to recall the impression of lots of EVA inquiries. Questions about mainland carriers (28%) still don't seem to be at enough of a critical mass/volume to warrant its own forum. And I am also very much against lumping PRC and Taiwan carriers in some sort of "Greater China" forum that has been proposed in the past--not because of politics, but because they are under such completely different regulatory, operational, and customer service structures and perspectives. Lumping them is likely to provide more confusion, not clarity.