Randy,

I've had an odd experience a couple of times here in the way that the moderation rules play out. You have a large number of regional sub-forums but it doesn't appear that they are nearly as visible to the bulk of FTers as the primary forums related to miles and points, travel and dining etc.

It seems that whenever a thread poses a question or makes note of a particular region, the moderators move the thread to that regions forum. This happened to me most recently a couple of days ago when I posted a question about Dolphin Encounters in the Florida Keys in the TravelBuzz forum. The moderators saw the post and moved it to the Florida forum.

Technically, it seems like a good decision, however, it really doesn't look like people visit that forum much. The chance of me getting an answer to a question are substantially lower in that forum than they would be in TravelBuzz and this isn't speculation. A day later, out of frustration, I posted the same question again in TravelBuzz but I left out my interest in the Florida Keys. I had substantially more page views and quite a few more responses that were helpful to me. I suspect I would have had more if I felt comfortable answering the people who asked (in the thread) whether I was interested in a particular geographic region. My suspicion (uncomfirmed from the moderators at this point) is that the thread might have been moved again.

I had a similar incident a while ago in the AAdvantage forum. I found news about a capsule hotel at LHR that looked like it would be perfect for other people who (like me) often spend a night near/at LHR between connecting flights to the states. I posted it in the AAdvantage forum and it was swiftly moved to the London forum. The entire intent of the post was to offer information to AA flyers.

As it stands, I don't know who actually looks at the regional forums. I'm sure that it is substantially fewer people that would've been able to answer my Dolphin question or would've been interested in my Capsule Hotel post.

It seems that there is a 'forum gap.' The presence of regional forums seems to pull posts from more appropriate/useful places. I don't know whether there is a way to address this in the moderation rules but I wanted to bring it to your attention.

Thank you.