It could be argued that simply eliminating two of the budget forums, the Budget Middle East and African Airlines and the Budget Asian, Australian, and South Pacific Airlines , would barely cause a ripple as the former saw only 39 posts in the 14 months after its creation while the latter recorded only 1400 posts over the same period. To put that into some context those two budget forums attracted fewer posts than every destination forum save two: Cuba and the perennial frozen wasteland that is the Antarctica forum.

While it may look a little out of kilter to have four "other" and only two "budget" forums if TB wanted balance then I'd favor simply merging all eight forums together as a combined forum should be able to accommodate both topics.

Here are some of my initial reactions:

There's an argument that budget Asian airlines are burgeoning. In the near future, separate fora could be needed even if the statistics don't look so good now.

In the case of Africa, I suspect that the continent's major full service carriers are generally already located in the Other African Airlines (or whatever it's called) forum. OTOH I can't recall ever seeing the name of a budget African airline (aren't plane tickets in Africa very expensive?) but I'm not sure how genuinely "full service" their major or legacy carriers are either.

Latin America might have the same issues if it weren't lumped in with USA, where there are some budget airlines (although most USA full service airlines have their own dedicated fora, all 3.5 of them).

Seems regardless of future promise the reality is the "Budget" forums have not drawn as much traffic as expected and should come up for consideration for closure. Has the annual TB forum traffic review been conducted?

Not yet.

Part of the issue seems to be that with few exceptions, budget carriers don't have (any) (useful) (interesting) FF programs. Hence the only thing to discuss is travel on those airlines, including interiors, seat space and comfort, home airports (but does this belong in the relevant destination forum?), fares, ticketing, IROPs rather than all this and also how to book award tickets, elite status requirements, status benefits, etc. These aspects of LCCs aren't IMO likely to change soon. In fact, the few LCC FF programs, such as WN's, seem to be changing to become less generous.

Not many days left in Feb. which is when I understood the mandated review is supposed to take place.

The lack of a FFP was not seen by many including a current TB member as an issue or an obstacle to creating these four fora so it shouldn't be used as an excuse for low traffic numbers now.

Let's talk numbers...
 

Borrowed from another thread:
(emphasis mine)

Even though numbers are not the only factor on forum reviews, let's focus on numbers for the time being.

Three new destination fora were created since August 2012: Spain/Portugal/Gibraltar Forum, Korea Forum, & USA Forum.

USA Forum has about 84 new threads since it went live 8.5 months ago, roughly 10 new threads monthly (84/8.5=9.88).

Korea Forum generated 221 new threads since created 30.5 months ago, about 7 threads per month (221/30.5=7.25).

Spain/Portugal/Gibraltar Forum was established about the same time as Korea Forum and has about 281 new threads since, roughly 9 threads per month (281/30.5=9.21).

These numbers show USA Forum fares the best among the 3 newly created destination fora, and Korea Forum is the lightest trafficked. If one TBer, or more, considers USA Forum doesn't gain enough traffic, probably TB should start the annual review from say Korea Forum, the bottom performer among the 3.

(I didn't go further into post/threads ratio. If taken into account how many posts per thread generates, the low performer might be even lighter trafficked.)

In general, count me among those who'd prefer to see little-utilized fora eliminated.

Since it's being actively discussed, all of the budget airline threads should be moved to their respective "other airlines" fora, and the four budget fora should be eliminated. They seem to have been added somewhat arbitrarily, and their value, in terms of adding clarity, facilitating site navigation and/or effectively managing content, has been negligible at best. (They seem to actually cause confusion and complicate navigation and content management.)

In addition, slightly off-topic but actually a related point, the three Somewhere-Based Airlines fora (see http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/talkb...nes-forum.html) are nothing more than "Other Airlines" fora with a bit more specificity and a different naming convention. IMO, for the sake of consistency, it would be much more logical for them to be renamed and listed among the other "other airlines" fora.

The reformatted index would look something like this:
In my experience, systems with more uniformity and less fragmentation lead to a better user experience.

Just because a forum isn't heavily used doesn't mean it isn't useful - especially the destination forums. But I think aBroadAbroad's proposal for the airline forums is a good one.

Omni/Games, like Mr. Blutarsky - zero... point... zero.

(Thought that's topped by MilesBuzz which appears to have a negative rate of new thread creation. Fascinating)

OMNI/Games... Isn't that forum where posts don't count, that was created so that all forums could be equal, and posts would count, except for that one?

You're correct. Posts do not count in the Omni/Games forum.

Cheers.

:D I know they don't count. I'm just pointing out the silliness of creating a forum where posts don't count, so that posts in all forums could count, and all forums could be equal.

Exactly.....

All are equal, some are just more equal than others.

Any update on the TB forum traffic review?

Guess not TB so busy arguing about the friendly amendment matter. Meanwhile the Budget Middle East and Africa Airlines hasn't seen a post for over a month as of a moment ago.