Forum activity statistics
 

The following google spreadsheet

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...VEMHc&hl=en_US

computes posts per day for all non-discontinued FT forums over the past 45-day period. I have compiled this data for the TalkBoard to use in its annual evaluation of forums for possible closure. Internet Brands was unable to compile any customized statistics, but this data derived from the public Forums list views should be sufficient.

In my opinion, speaking only for myself, the only marginal forums are Thrifty and Toronto. In those cases the content has a reasonable alternative place (Other Car Rental and Canada, respectively). For some other light forums, like Antarctica and Cuba, the content is sufficiently specialized that a separate forum makes sense to me.

I'd like to hear what our members think about the utilization of the current forums. When I look at it, I see a structure that is well adapted to menbers' needs.

I've mentioned this before, and I still think Cuba should be merged into the Caribbean. I don't understand why it has a separate forum.

Do any FT historians know approximately when the Cuba forum was opened? I tried to search back in the TB Topics forum and the earliest mention of Cuba is 2004, and back then it was already formed and it was (again) brought up whether to keep it open or close it. I know there are posts in the Cuba forum since 2001, but I don't know if those were started inside that forum or moved from another one. But I agree that it looks like it's underperforming and should get merged into the Caribbean.

I'm okay keeping Antarctica since it is such a different character than the others. And I think the debate would take forever to determine where to put those posts if it did close.

Other ones that jump out to me as needing possible closure:

Scandinavia - But I think putting them in the Europe forum would make Europe awfully bloated, so I'm not sure what to do about it.

Toronto - Ditto Scandinavia - yes, we could put them in Canada, but I think that would bloat the Canada forum

Religious Travelers and Travelers with Pets - 6 and 8 new threads, respectively, in the last month and a half?

Central America - I'm really not sure where the posts here would go if it were closed, but it certainly seems to be underperforming.

iDine - I'll admit I know next-to-nothing about this program, so I don't know how loyal a following it has or where the posts would go if it were to disappear.

In fact, I think my own personal rubric for closure might be to consider any forum with less than 2 posts/day or less than 10 new threads in a month and a half.

This is a crucial question when considering forum closure. No obvious answer = no forum closure, at least in my opinion.

Westjet seems a fair way behind most of the other airline forums, particularly for an airline from an english speaking country. Is there a justification for keeping it as a separate forum?

Also, it strikes me there are probably more posts per day in the Tesco thread in BA than there are in the iDine forum. My impression is that the iDine programme has reduced in size - does it really still warrant its own forum?

I oddly agree with you....(should have a look at my coffee to see if someone hasn't switched it to decaf ;) ).

No real reason why Westjet forum exists other than an old history, the threads should be happy in other North American airlines forum. Toronto also has no business being a separate forum either....back to the Canada forum those threads should go (and I don't think it would bloat the Canada forum at all).

FWIW since we're on the topic I've never thought Antarctica required it's own forum and the traffic statistics bear out how little it is used.

The justification for the WS forum may lie in the increasing number of interline agreements the carrier has signed and are in use with the likes of CX & AA to name a few. There are, I believe, enough WS & WS Vacations topics to warrant it's own forum but YMMV. If we're going to shutter lightly used forums to me the list should begin elsewhere than the WS forum.

Sure, an Antarctica forum is going to get a low level of activity.

But, who cares? Closing the forum makes things better for whom, and why?

The concept of "underperforming" (not sure who said that) is a bit odd.

I said that and it is my own terminology, not a term that I've seen used by any TB members. It is simply my own way to characterize the (apparent) little activity on the Cuba forum vis-a-vis most of the other destination forums.

The only time the concept of closing a forum for "underperforming" makes any modicum of sense to me is when folding that discussion into another forum will vastly increase the likelihood that discussion will be stimulated and questions will get answered.

For example, if people were posting questions about Cuba in the Cuba forum but no one was bothering to come around and answer them, then closing the Cuba forum and merging it into the Caribbean forum might make sense, as there's much more activity in the Caribbean forum and questions about Cuba would then more likely to get seen and answered.

That doesn't appear to be the case with the Cuba forum, though, and given the special nature of travel to Cuba, I am entirely unopposed to leaving the Cuba forum right as it is.

In the case of the Antarctica forum, closing that forum fails the second part of the test above: where would discussion be moved to that would increase the quality of that discussion? As discussion about Antarctica has no logical other home, it would be spread out into various other forums, from TravelBuzz to Cruises (um, yeah, that seems logical) or even perhaps the South America forum (since Argentina is where most of the Antarctic cruises depart from). In that case, discussion would be fragmented and less likely to be answered well by knowledgeable experts on the subject.

When closing forums, we need both evidence that the current forum structure does not best serve the quality and quantity of discussion as well as a clear definition of where that discussion is going to head to.

While I understand what you are saying a quick glance finds a sticky and two threads have activity in almost a year so would having so few posts & threads displaced elsewhere be that much of an inconvenience?

You've already mentioned one possible location for cruise based Antartica topics, the Cruises forum, so as you rightly have noted there are IMHO clear choices for future discussions already in place.

There are some potential places, but there is not a single clear one.

It's not like the Cuba case, where the clear destination would be the Caribbean forum.

That's all my point is.

Yes I believe it is as clear as another quick check finds all of the activity in the last year is related to cruising to Antarctica.

At some point, I am interested in visiting Antarctica, most likely on a cruise since that seems to be the only way to get there without working there or chartering a plane yourself.

My first inclination would not be to visit the Cruises forum. To me, the Cruises forum conjures up images of palm trees and buffets and swimming pools on the top of a Princess megaship.

I'd probably post in TravelBuzz, and my question would probably either go unanswered or get a cursory "Huh, interesting, but no idea" post from one or two other people.

Is that the best FlyerTalk can do?

But at this point, no one has seriously suggested closing the Antarctica forum, so we're sort of arguing semantics here. I was simply using it as an example.

I agree with both of you to a certain extent. Yes, it seems like the most popular (only?) way to get there for the average tourist looking for a unique vacation is by cruise, but I don't think the Cruises forum would be my first hunch either, as the Cruises forum would seem to be talking more about the journey and less about the destination (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, I'll admit that I've never so much as step foot in the Cruises forum). Whereas the Antarctica forum is what to do/see/eat when you're actually there, not on the boat ride.

I have the same thoughts concerning the Cruises forum (but have never actually viewed it). I would not go there to find information about Antarctica.

While naturally the topics in the cruise forum focus on the ships themselves there are often others about the ports of call and destinations.

For that matter the Europe rail forum doesn't just focus on trains and nothing else but also takes in the wider scope of travelling by train and destinations, sights, etc and in the same way I think the cruise forum would be the most appropriate alternate forum for Antartica topis since that's the mode of transportation almost everyone uses to visit that continent.

Maybe it would be your second hunch were such a consolidation to be made. ;)

Great spreadsheet.

Thanks!

There is one fortunate consequence of the fact that Internet Brands cannot compile customized statistics: Any FT member can compile the only available forum statistics at any time. It only takes about an hour on each of two dates.

Nobody needs to wait for a TalkBoard member to do this. If you want to run the numbers, there's nothing stopping you doing so and posting your opinions in TalkBoard Topics.

<sarcasm>

Whoa - looks like the newly-created Sixt forum might be under-performing? Just 25 posts in the last 6 months?

What does everyone think??

</sarcasm>

:p

Really great spreadsheet and interesting stats!

I would somewhat agree with the religious forum, almost every post there in the last 3 months has been purely about kosher food. Perhaps a sticky in travel and dining?

Here's a snapshot of thread and post counts as of today:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...ExqTlozN2xYUUE

I will need to make another snapshot in a few weeks to check recent activity. The Texas forum looks very quiet. :(

Otherwise everything looks pretty much as I would expect.

Thanks for compiling this. Is there a data entry error for the Hyatt Gold Passport forum? It's listed as having 8,655.8 posts/day. I've never gone to that forum myself, but I'm guessing there's not quite that many Hyatt customers posting that frequently. :D

I had an extra zero. Here's the new link:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...ExqTlozN2xYUUE

Swiss' numbers look off too...

There doesn't seem to be data from October for Swiss, so the figures are based on there previously being 0 threads/posts (which obviously is not true). So nsx will have to go in and change the formulas for Swiss to reflect the change from the August numbers - if my math is right, there were 175 days between 2/11/12 and 8/20/11, new threads in that time 213, posts/day 16.6. Not at the top of posts/day for specific airline-related forums and not at the bottom either.

Perhaps a suggestion of anything below 5 posts a day, and that has had at least 12-18 months as a forum to be considered for removal?

Any chance we can get some updated statistics? I'd like to see a year-on-year comparison...

Ask and you shall receive!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...kE&output=html

If someone can look up and post the creation dates of all the new forums, I'll account for that and compute the posts per day and threads per day for the partial year for all the new forums.

Where counts are negative it means that threads were removed from a forum to create a new forum (e.g. Korea threads were extracted from the Asia forum).

i can't see it - I get referred to a google log-in page.

That seems right. It's a read-only google document.

We don't have permission to view...

So only people with google accounts can see it? I can see the previous one you posted without logging in.

However, it's not a public document, so only those to whom you give access to view it (by email) can see it.

Thanks. Please check that it is now public. The new link is

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...kE&output=html

I have corrected one transposition error and added creation dates for the new forums. However one cannot run statistics on a new forum because a large number of threads were moved there on Day 1 from other forums. The current counts therefore span several years.

Just tried it and received:

If I try it when I'm not signed in, it takes me to a log-in screen.

Thanks for your patience, kipper. It seems that my flyertalk email address is incompatible with publishing a Google doc to the web. So I did an end run. Try this link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...kE&output=html

:) This link works! Thanks for the effort in getting the stats in a format we can all access. :)

Your impression is correct, and the steadily diminishing activity as delineated in nsx' most helpful statistics show. iDine, now actually a specific discount programme of Rewards Network as well as its miles programmes is becoming significantly less attractive for members:
As there are numbers of other dining schemes, TalkBoard may want to look at renaming the Forum and broadening its scope, e.g. "Dining programs earning points and miles" (including OpenTable, which offers its own booking incentives as point redeemable for money in North America including US, Canada, Mexico, as well as the UK, and could enlarge scope to include frequent diner schemes such as McCormick & Schmicks, etc.)

That's my opinion as that Forum's moderator since the old, active days, and is merely expressed as fodder for TalkBoard's considerations of this discussion.

IIRC The Palm has a frequent diner program too, in addition to M&S (which IMO isn't very attractive as a program since it takes a lot of eating there to get more than a free dessert). I suspect that there must be programs for some of the other upscale chains such as RuthChris, Oceanaire, etc. although M&S seems to prominently display the brochures for their program in restaurants.

I'm not sure how much there is to discuss about the M&S program as it seems pretty straightforward with AFAIK no promos other than for birthdays. iDine could easily still overwhelm a more general forum.

Even with the current iDine forum being expanded in scope, IMO discussion of the eating programs associated with hotel chains (such as SPG), should stay in the respective hotel fora.