Why keep discontinued airline threads?
 

As they are locked, no new discussion can be added. As some of them are aging up to five years now, what educational purpose do they serve anymore?

Please enlighten me if I've overlooked a critical reason for keeping them on display. Thanks!

There's a 3-month-old discussion thread over TB Forum on this very topic:

Another modest proposal: Delete this 'discontinued' forum, unposted in 2+yrs

Maybe there are some new ideas cooking in the background with the yet-to-come new interface/streamline of FT.

Why would any vBulletin board owner running ads on his board delete anything?

They're indexed in Google and will generate hits which will generate revenue.

Here's a couple thoughts:
- it's the internet, there is little or no cost to keeping the archives of any history, including that of the history of miles and points. Both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times keep all their archives open to the public for perusing. They too must realize that history will always be interesting for some.
- It's more likely that I'm the reason. I'm the ultimate packrat for these programs and i kind of like having that stuff around 'cause I never know when i may need it for research.
- No new discussions. We can't change history in real life (or, more aptly, it's a challenge to change) so we're trying not to change any of those programs history as well. Besides, what kind of retro-Moderators do you think i could find that could remember where things were!
- Does it matter? It's really only a single line of text on the front page and frankly, given the history of the industry, that area has had a lot of new nominations lately. We'll soon be moving the old America West there, the old US Airways there and soon, after a grace period, the old Northwest forum there (assuming no problems in that merger with Delta and SkyMiles. And who knows what else will happen. As it was, we lost Aloha, MaxJet, soon ExpressJet, ATA and other airlines with frequent flyer programs in the past year or so. While these airlines did not yet have their own forum, it certainly would have been an easy place to move them and remember them in the history of both FlyerTalk and of the industry. After all, if we don't preserve that history, who else will?

Anyway, i just don't see the inconvenience of that extra single line of text on the front page and for us history buffs, it does give us a place to retreat to when the modern world of miles and points looks as gloomy as it does from time to time. I like the old TWA stuff and could only kick myself in the rear over and over that i didn't get FlyerTalk going sooner so that we could have a great history of the Pan Am WorldPass program available to smile at.

Anyway, that's my story and i'm likely to stick to it!

Thanks.