seanthepilot

I have never found OMNI to be welcoming.... I'd list it as confrontational, at best. (this isn't meant to be bad, just to show that my view is just the opposite of yours).

Whereas I find the lounge threads to be pretty relaxed.

I would not participate in a lounge thread in OMNI.

I guess it just depends on your view. Different strokes for different folks.

SkiAdcock

Are you referring to Omni-lite or Omni PR? I'd be surprised if Omni-lite was considered confrontational. If you look at threads in both, you'll see the topics are quite different

Cheers.

Mary2e

I was about to say the same thing Sharon

I suspect Omni P/R is what has given both Omnis (and the single Omni before it was split) the reputation it has.

Omni-lite is just as friendly and helpful as the lounge threads, and perhaps it even has a broader range of experience since people from all over FT participate, not just those in a specific forum.

lin821

If you are serious about renaming something that really doesn't appeal to you, would you please start another new thread so this thread can stay focused? With both "OMNI" and "Lounge" in the thread title, this suggestion thread has been crowded enough.

In case you didn't know, renaming a forum name takes a formal TB motion to make it happen on FT. Not to mention there is no lounge forum yet, subforum or not. FWIW, there is The TalkBoard Guidelines: How to suggest new forum and/or subforum. @:-)

I really don't think it's a good practice to address or attack all OMNI issues in every possible different TB thread, when each TB thread clearly has its own focus and topic at hand.

emma69

I mostly agree. I've seen a couple of the lounges, and never felt that they were aimed to be inclusive, not by design, but by the fact the same few posters seem to dominate, and thus, never really appealed. OMNI on the other hand seemed much more welcoming, ever the PR, where yes, we argue, we disagree, but we get to know what makes one another tick (or maybe just who is really bored that day and will argue black is white, just for the craic).

I've learnt tons from these boards, both the practical (travel and otherwise) and the theoretical (I have studied American politics in a long time, so it is interesting seeing quite how much it seems to matter whether someone is Rep or Dem, a tea partier (still working on that definition!) a liberal, a con, or a loonie (oh wait, that's Canadian )

OMNI is no different to e.g. dining buzz, no different to lounges, etc. Just like when people go to a pub, they may sit at the bar (banter with strangers, politics and religion fair game), sit at a table with friends (and talk about common interests which may or may not wander off topic), or join the meeting in the snug where the local parish council are discussing the parking by-laws (with the table rapped by the chair if people mention hedge cutting issues!) the forum caters to different personalities. It's all still a part of the place.

In fact, why don't we rename the boards into 'rooms'? The airlines become e.g. "The Maple Leaf Lounge", "The Kris Lounge" etc, the hotel boards become "The Starwood Lobby" etc. The dining buzz becomes "The Restaurant", travel with children becomes "The Creche", women travellers becomes "The Ladies Room", etc etc etc.

(for those with a sense of deja vu, I am reposting to avoid confusion as per mod suggestion).

OK, I give up! I was trying to Quote Post 39 and it didn't work. I quit, my post can stand alone (although to make sense, you should know it was Mary that I was agreeing with!)

emma69

People seem somewhat confused about what a lounge is for versus what an OMNI is for (and seriously, did anyone know what an OMNI was off the top of their head?) Renaming boards into 'rooms' is simply a different way of seeing the same conversation as is being discussed, that is, that the whole forum is a series of rooms, where popping into the 'Delta' lounge is like going into a room with likeminded people, and it doesn't matter, in so far as I can see, whether that lounge is accessed to the right of the 'nursery' or the left, as long as people know where it is (which a link would do).

lin821

Oh, trust me. I not only know what OMNI is for but also know it much longer than you do. I happen to "witness" some changes in OMNI while you were not there. Not trying to pull rank on your "Join Date", just stating a simple fact.

If you read my earlier posts, you'd know I also know what the Community Lounge Thread is for, on top of that, it's why and how.

This suggestion thread is about relocating all lounge threads to OMNI and creating a subforum for them. That is also a no-go, IMHO, knowing both OMNI and the lounge thread I take part in.

stimpy

OK, this suggestion is just ridiculous when you take Flyertalk as a whole. I don't know about US airline forum lounge threads. Maybe they have gotten out of control and should be moderated better. But our Euro lounge threads cause no problems. And note that we don't use English in the AF Lounge thread. Most all the posts are in French. Are you going to now accept French in Omni? No, let's let the French people have their little (and I do mean little) lounge thread in the AF forum. And there is an LH M&M thread where you can see Deutsche posts.

Lastly, if the management of Flyertalk chooses to allow moderators to allow full on Omni in certain few lounge threads, then what can we do about it? This suggestion doesn't do anything really. Won't the moderators and participants just create another thread and call it, maybe, the UA Community thread, in the UA forum and just keep on doing the same thing?

Some people just don't like Omni. I've been on Flyertalk since the beginning and of my many thousands of posts, only about 10% are in Omni, and those were mostly from a simpler time. To me, it's 99% nonsense nowadays, IMHO of course.

emma69

Super, you know what everything is for. That's great. I never suggested that you didn't, I said that 'people' (as in multiple) don't find it so clear - especially those who haven't been around for very long. If you are a new user (we'll grant 180 days / 180 posts for argument's sake) and you see "Miles and Points", "Travel and Dining" and "Community" at the top of the page, it is fairly clear what those forums are. You see OMNI - who knows what that is / means (as a Canadian resident for example, it is a TV station).

If you were to rename OMNI with something that makes sense to people not already familiar with the forum, like "lounge" (a commonly used term on several forums I know) it is clear it is the 'off topic' section, and within that section you could have a "Politics and Religion lounge", a "General Lounge" and all the specific lounges that exist, the "Delta Lounge", the "AF Lounge" etc. I don't see what the issue is with grouping them under one heading - I don't think anyone is suggesting that all the lounges get merged into one so you have Delta-ites and Air France people talking on the same posts, there would still be the individual "lounges".

kipper

My thoughts on this, after reading the discussion and such, are, if the motion to count OMNI posts does not count:

1. Create an OMNI-Lounge forum. Keep it as a separate forum from OMNI-lite and OMNI P/R. Do not create it as a sub-forum of OMNI.
2. Have this OMNI Lounge forum open to all members.
3. Move all lounge threads (Community Buzz, airline forums, etc) to this new forum, leaving a redirect sticky at the top of each forum, to that applicable lounge thread.

Those who regularly use the lounge threads don't have any changes in how they reach the lounge threads, and don't see much, if any difference, in their viewing pleasure or their sense of community.

stimpy

I don't know if you read my post above, but will you be accepting multiple languages in your super lounge forum? What happens if you create this, and no one comes? And they start new community threads in their airline forum? And the moderators let them? Think it through.

kipper

There's nothing saying that the AF Lounge couldn't continue in French. It wouldn't be an OMNI subforum, it would be a separate forum that was treated like OMNI.

Why would people create new lounge threads in their forums, when the existing lounge thread was there, albeit as a sticky with a redirect? You're familiar with how a moved thread can show up in its old forum, but that clicking on that link redirects you to the new forum? That's what this would be, but with a sticky, so that the lounge thread was ALWAYS one of the first threads on the first page of its old forum.

stimpy

Probably for the exact same reason they did it in the first place.

kipper

Explain to me though, how, having a link in the forum, just like a normal thread link, but with a redirect would be different than it being in the same forum?

stimpy

First explain to me what difference it makes if you have the link in the forum, or a thread in the forum? Both show up in the airline forum so to most people it would be exactly the same thing.

Enough, it's well past happy hour and I haven't had my cocktail yet.