At the risk of repeating something I already said pages ago upthread, but I finally found the right words to articulate how much this stings:

BA has...an interesting moderation style that I wouldn't wish on my own home forums (I'm sure it's tough to deal with all the volume and I greatly appreciate how visible the mods often are), but this leniency produces some of the most enthralling stories contained in a thread that's active for a day or so...until the next one pops up. The Trending page facilitated that.

@birdiedouble you said it quite nicely, "read [trending threads] to learn about the challenges and triumphs that other travellers went through"

Based in Canada but always curious about the US-based carriers and their loyalty devaluations, the Trending page was how I figured out that major news broke on a FFP change and peoples' (million milers, VIP status folk, FOTSG flyers, etc.) immediate reactions to them. The sheer volume of these forums do produce the spammy Trending threads like: "UA devalued their program, how does this impact DL?" "UA announces widebody order, how does this impact AA?". but these issues are resolved after a day anyway...

With Trending's demise, I haven't kept up with much news recently because I much preferred hearing it from FT than subscribing to some sellout blogger or reading high-level details which regurgitate the official press release on NYT or Bloomberg.