Combining forums...?
 

I am not sure whether this has been discussed in the past, but I have a suggestion that will 1. hopefully improve speed and 2. allow the newly "combined" forums to be more active.

I see maybe about 20 forums that people will consider "active", then the others lay dormant for weeks, or even months.

That has caused me to think whether it would be a good idea to combine the less popular forums by region, eg [USA] [Asia] [S.America] and etc.

As a rough suggestion, for example...

USA: Aero California, Air Tran, Aloha Airlines, Frontier, Hawaiian, Midwest Express, National Express, Vanguard Airlines

Americas: Aero Mexico, Air Jamaica, BWIA, Latin Pass, Mexicana, Varig Airlines

Asia: ANA, Asiana, China Airlines, China Southern, EVA Air, JAL, Korean, Malaysia, Phillipine, THAI

Europe: Aer Lingus, Alitalia, Austrian, Finnair, Iberia, LOT Polish, TAROM

Middle-eastern: El Al, Emirates.

I mean no offence to people who regards any of the forums mentioned with particular importance, but IMHO the level of activity in those warrant such an action.

And a way to reduce the confusion between the different airlines "sharing" the forum would be to put the airline in every topic name. That should hopefully clear the confusion.

The same thoughts come to mind for the hotels and rental car forums, although I am pretty clueless as to how one might sort those. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/redface.gif

Anyway, it was just an idea, I don't know whether it would stick or not. Hopefully people don't hate it too much... :-)

stargold

[Edited to include some more airlines that I missed out]

[This message has been edited by stargold (edited 11-03-2001).]

A similar comment with a different request. How about a way to create a personalized Flyertalk similar to a MyYahoo where you customize the FT to show only the forums you only read and to leave a link to show all forums.

Whew! I thought there was going to be another attempted coup on the InnPoints forum!

I'd prefer to leave them the way they are. For instance - the Avis forum doesn't get too much use. I rarely visit it, but once in a while I'll want to see what's been going on, so I'll go and list the topics that have been active over the past 30 days to see if I missed anything.

If we were to combine all of the car rental companies into one forum, then I'd have to sift through lots of topics about National and Hertz that I'm not interested in.

While this may improve speed, I rarely have any speed issues. So, on that basis, I don't think it's warranted.

On your other point of making the new forums more active - I don't see this as a benefit. Packing a bunch of forums into one will make the newly combine forum seem to have more activity - but I doubt it would draw more people. I'm still only going to be interested in what Avis is doing, so having the little yellow bulb be on every time someone posts something about Hertz would annoy me. That would add an extra step of me clicking on the forum, only to find out that the new posts aren't of interest to me.

d

I do not sse why this suggestion would improve speed, and just to give one example from my neck of the woods, what does Varig Airlines have to do with Air Jamaica and BWIA?

On the opposite we need more specialized forums, like one for TAM Brazilian Airlines.

A personalized 'my FT' is a great idea.

I'd prefer them as they are. But I suggest to set the standard view for those inactive forums to a minimum of at least the last 5 topics so there at least seems to be a little bit activity. I'm also interested in older topics and some exotic airlines/hotels... and so I wouldn't have to change the view-settings every time.