moondog

I completely agree with you on this point (as I've mentioned upthread), but I feel that the "other" forum would all but die if China (and/or Taiwan) was stripped away from it. Then, you'd be creating two ghost towns!

travelkid

Stripping China and/or Taiwan would obviously dilute the other forum. But it would still be the biggest "other" forum, and also the stripped out forum (China) would be bigger than plenty of the current forums.

I have seen ghost town arguments, but I have not seen any other examples than Korea forum mentioned to back this up.

What forums are ghost towns? And should they be closed? What is the level of being sustainable with critical mass? If we are not using other forums as reference, what should we use?

moondog

Texas?

lin821

I say existing ghost town fora should be discussed in another new TB thread. Not to mention TB does have a guidelines to conduct annual review of forum performance every Feb.

All of that has nothing to do with FFPs & airlines in China. Should China use a different official country name is not up for vote either. That is OMNI/PR material. Such line of political muddy water shouldn't be at heart of discussion about airlines fora.

Good thought, "potential" being the key word. Until it happens, TB can then consider a CI or BR Forum. I am not holding my breath though. Even though I fly much more US-based airlines than Taiwanese carriers, I am not certain either CI or BR has that much traffic or appeal to attract FTers for a standalone forum any time soon on FT.

Are you reading the same discussion and motion threads as I did?

There are indeed pragmatic suggestions. They are just not what you want or lobby for:

FWIW, I don't think this motion fails due to semantics and politics.

I am a firm believer in individual airline forums with strong demand and products for FTers. Both a sticky thread and airline-specific approach are the best and practical ways to go.

I just hope TBers will really listen and solicit feedback before another formal motion is made.

travelkid

Absolutely, as there are others in same league, like Cuba, Alaska etc.

IMO however the bar for creating a forum should be lower when being about miles or points. Destinations forums are after all secondary to FTs main focus.

Also thats where we are almost unique and by far the biggest, contrary to geographical forums in general.

I think its plain wrong not creating forums where there is substantial traffic on the subject.

Stickies are good, whether a separate forum or not. This is up to mods and members, and no moves are made. Seperate forums for carriers are of course better, but as a start when we dont know if traffic is sufficient, carriers grouped together is a good solution. Works well with other regions.

FLLDL

Korea is a good reference - it was calved off of a larger broader forum (Asia) amid much hyperbole from its promoters yet as we sit here on Jan 21 there have been a total of 5 active topics during the entire month of January. How has FT benefited from this vs having Korea as part the broader forum?

travelkid

I have not used said forum, or promoted it, only seen a few stats. Possibly a redundant forum, but still only a fraction of the traffic of my proposed forum.

kokonutz

I just voted against this motion. And I don't vote against establishing new forums very often at all.

At the end of the day, I just don't see the benefit of splitting out this region this way...and it seems to be causing hard feelings on the matter from several perspectives.

All cost, no benefit. No go. IMHO.

goalie

And I have also voted no for my above reasons

HansGolden

After reading through all the pro and con arguments again, I've reached the same conclusion as goalie and nsx. While I think the idea of splitting and organizing some things in the Airlines of SE/E Asia category is necessary, I don't think this is the right proposal. It doesn't really seem to solve the root problem, which is mashing unrelated things in one pile. The mods have done a good job of making order out of that, but that doesn't change the structural problem. Participation will be lower when things are hard to find. Finding something when you can drill down five levels of increasing specificity will always be easier than one pile with every thread.

Back to the drawing board. Something should be done, but not this.

jimbo99

^^^^

SkiAdcock

On January 23, 2013, Talkboard failed to pass 0-9:

"Create an Airlines of Mainland China forum"

Voting No: Cholula, goalie, HansGolden jackal, kokonutz, MSPEconomist, nsx, RichMSN, SkiAdcock

travelkid

Thanks for listening.

Hopefully all this hard work is not wasted, and TB will continue to improve work to benefit all those travellers to/from/in China+.

There seems to be a lot of support for variations of the proposal, even within TB, so I hope TB can work together to try to find some consensus for improvement.

GergoryWilson

This is dumb. wasted space to have a vote of 9 people.. Ya'll could have just asked each other how you felt in a private message.. Just say'n.

moondog

I disagree because it appears that our input helped inform those 9 people of the community's opinion on this matter. Furthermore, I felt that our conversation was interesting.