Sykes

For what it's worth, I used to check the old Good Deal Premium Fares thread multiple times daily and received instant notifications for all new posts because the signal-to-noise ratio was so high ... and I posted when I had something meaningful to contribute.

Now I don't even bother checking the premium fares forum. New discussion posts in old threads bumps them to the top of the forum making it difficult to parse through truly new opportunities vs. new discussion on existing opportunities. There's also no good way to get instant notification of new threads (as the RSS solution is often delayed several hours). The forum is pretty useless to me now so I share the deals that I find outside of FlyerTalk.

JDiver

Though we encourage even vigorous differences of opinion, and are loath to delete posts or otherwise intervene, we must insist the Rules be followed and differences of opinion made respectfully and devoid of ad hominem.

TalkBoard studies the issues, reads members' posts and votes in good faith. Calling a vote a farce or calling out other members is never acceptable, though stating disagreement in a context of debate and mutual respect is.

Thanks.

JDiver
Senior Moderator

SkiAdcock

CokeandTaco I appreciate you posting your thoughts here per the mod's request vs. continuing in the happy/sad thread & outlining your rationale for why you think the forum should be closed immediately, as this is the proper forum to do so.

Having said that I think it highly unlikely that the current TB or even the incoming TB after elections are over will vote to close a forum that has been open only a few weeks.

Normally forums are given a period of time (6 mths to a year) to perform/not perform before they're even considered for closing. I can't speak for all current or the incoming TB members but my guess is TB will do the same with this one in terms of time frame, short of some major problem.

Also, while you don't view the forum as an improvement others do, so any TB is going to consider both sides before making a decision to let a forum continue or to shutter it.

I'm a bit confused by what you mean about posting a link to this thread in the relevant threads/forums. You've already posted it in the happy/sad thread. Which other threads or forums would you post it in? I don't think you mean to post a link in every single fare thread, do you? I'm not sure your fellow FTers or mods would be ok with that. Sorry for my confusion, but I'm not sure what you mean.

Agree.

Thanks for the input and mentioning that your opinion changed after the forum went live. I know you were skeptical previously.

Agree.

The fares posted aren't mistake fares. No need to keep them hidden.

There is no farce & no patting each other on the back. And your comment is rather offensive. Discussions & disagreements can be done civilly and are better for doing so.

In 2012, 2013, & 2014 TB was asked by FTers to consider creating a premium fares forum. Pros/cons were listed & some logistical questions. TB decided this year to create the forum after discussion in the private/public forum & reviewing the prior requests & comments (where the yeahs outweighed the nos). And yes, in the happy/sad thread that now exists in the new forum the happys still outnumber the sads.

Agree.

And as I posted in the happy/sad forum.

The forum has been created, and while I understand some are not happy about it, others are glad it was created. Rather than us going back/forth I'd say let's wait and see how the guidelines get fleshed out by the mods & the CommunityDirector and move forward. I have faith in them & FTers that this will be a productive forum now & in the coming years.


Agree.

Re: your first. Read the discussion threads from 2012, 2013, 2014. I read them at the time & reread them before voting. While a motion wasn't made previously, it was this time. That's also occurred with other forums (ie, discussions went on over multiple years before a motion was finally made). If koko (or any TB member) wanted to do a motion (on any topic) they can do so at any time.

Yes, motions can pass unanimously. Not all do (and koko's been on the losing end a few times where something he wanted didn't get passed). But if they do it's because there has been discussion in both the private TB forum as well as the public thread, and any issues discussed and a consensus reached.

The motion did pass, the forum created, and the guidelines are being worked on by the mods & CommunityDirector. In fact jpdx asked for input from FTers re: some questions they had so they can make the forum work the best. Perhaps you have some input re: what jpdx mentioned in this post:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/23843629-post271.html


Agree.

And a FTer makes a very good point about contributing in this thread.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/23842895-post265.html

Cheers.

SFO777

Can't agree more. Not all change is good change.

steveholt

Signal-to-noise ratio is the right concept here. The new forum has created far more noise than signal. Various posts for the same fare or same fare concept are now common. This could be alleviated with more stringent rule enforcement and awareness of said rules, but there weren't those rules with the premium fare thread, and we didn't run into that problem then.

LIH Prem

I guess I wasn't aware of the discussion of replacing the thread with a forum until it was already done. I would have commented had I been aware of it.


For people not following the thread regularly, it wasn't a great format, but it was intended to be used by people that followed the thread with instant notification, and it generally worked very well in that way. Like any large thread with lots of info (there's tons of them in different forums around here) new people need to catch up. The thread had a wiki that was helpful for new people, so really the unwieldy complaints are a bit out of line IMHO. Also unlike other large threads some of the deals were temporary in nature, so you really only needed to go back in the thread to understand discussions about some of the longer term deals like the BA/AARP discount deals which were probably also discussed elsewhere.

When something came up and it didn't last very long, we'd get notified about the activity in the thread instantly and if you were around, you wouldn't miss out. The subscribe option was open to anybody.

Active moderation removed any off-topic discussion and also removed larger fare discussions to their own thread with a link left behind in the old thread.

It worked very well, but we'd get notifications every time somebody posted to the thread as well, and also when moderators took action on the thread. In that respect it wasn't that great and we'd get too many "false positives". That was the only downside to it, but the positives tended to outweigh it.

I don't think there's any way to do the equivalent with the forum, You can subscribe to the forum and get either daily or weekly notification.

I know there's a lot of people who prefer not to have the single thread, but I don't think they were using it as intended and it worked well as intended and there's really no way to replace that as far as I can tell.

Anyway, I hope TB members can have an open mind about it and not immediately dismiss it either way. That seems counter intuitive to what TB members signed up for (and to be clear, that's not directed to you rwoman.)

and Sharon, IMHO, decisions should be re-visitable any time IMO, especially in cases like this where we've lost the ability to have instant notification for new deals, which is a huge negative.

-David

seacarl

From everything I've been able to tell there was neither a lot of thought and research nor a lot of support. In particular, there was little discussion or solicitation of input from the users of the former thread, and it went from proposal to vote to implementation rapidly with little input and little preparation.

The noise to signal ratio in the new forum is high and while there is lots of activity there is not really as much useful information and a lot of redundancy.
Seems like a lot of TB made up their minds without much thought, information or experience. So you have your mind made up before there is even a motion.

LIH Prem

Also, those that think there was a desire to "hide" the deals, just don't get it. There's none of that going on. All you had to do was follow the thread with instant notification and you would get the same notifications that everybody else got. That's how it was supposed to work and it did work. If you were interested in the topic you followed it. If not, you didn't. It wasn't a casual topic and wasn't intended to be.

The moderators there did a great job with it as well.

The forum just doesn't cut it.

-David

zebranz

I used the old and now use the new. I have nothing against going back to the old but prefer the new for ease in reviewing comments and new posts. Since we have it, I think we should try to improve the benefits to those who feel it is a negative. At a certain point (mod choice), decide if it is better or a lost cause.

ben63

I found much more good premium deal since the new topic is here. As many of us is interested only in premium deals, it's good to have this new structure. Please don't close it.

kokonutz

Thanks for starting this thread, C&T, and for all of the posters participating in it.

I love the passion on all sides.

The advantage that the thread had over the forum was the subscription option for immediate notification. But it had many more downsides, including the inability to discuss details regarding the airlines the fares were offered on, the inability to check fares at a glance and lack of organization.

To me, the thing that made the thread work at all and not be a giant mess was strict rules and strict moderation to those rules. That's how we achieved high signal to noise ratio. Can you imagine what a mess that thread would have been without strict rules and moderation!?

What's missing so far in the new forum is strict rules and strict moderation to those rules.

But the CD and mods are working on those rules and their implementation. And, to their credit, are even seeking and accepting advice from posters as to what that moderation and enforcement ought to look like in the Happy/Sad thread.

Until there is some experience with a well moderated forum, I personally think it's premature to burn it down.

Calchas

As I recall, more than one fourth of the contributions in that thread were (ironically) complaints about the low signal to noise ratio.

LIH Prem

Thanks for replying kokonutz ...

details were always discussable in the thread or in a separate thread. When a separate thread was created for the discussion, mods or the thread creator left a link behind in GDPF.

Yes, moderation made it work, and it wasn't perfect, but it's much better than what we have now.

There's no equivalent model for instant notification. I don't see TB being able to solve that.

As far as TB itself is concerned, the proposed action should have been posted in the thread before TB took action. That's why we're here now, but this discussion should have happened before the vote and it should have included the participants/users of the affected thread. (And, I have no doubt that opinion there would have been split also. It's just one of those things I guess. But regardless of the outcome, current participants would have had been able to express their opinion before the vote.)

Now you have TB members getting defensive about what they did and even one refusing to consider a motion that hasn't even been made yet.

That's a bigger problem for TB, isn't it? There isn't much TB has control over on FT, besides creating forums, and in this case the discussion didn't include the primary audience.

I'm certainly willing to see how it goes, except for the fact that there's no way to get instant notification of new deals now within the existing framework. And I don't necessarily want a notification of new posts to any thread either. That would just be too much noise.

-David

EmailKid

I also support closing this sub forum.

kokonutz

One of the biggest complaints about the thread was that people were subscribed to it, and anytime anyone posted ANYTHING that was not a new fare, the subscribers complained that they were getting needless notifications (I got yelled at for this myself on several occasions by subscribers).

Frankly, other than the notification issue, I don't see much wrong with the new forum. It could use a fare post format requirement and perhaps (just perhaps) some more aggressive merging.

Here's a thought: posters could agree to a convention where when they post a new fare thread they also voluntarily post the thread title (in a format proscribed by the mods) in the a sticky thread titled 'Notification thread' so that subscribers to that thread could get notification and then pop over to FlyerTalk and see what the fare is all about. There is more than one way to skin a cat. We could have our cake and eat it too. Insert more hoary cliches here.

ETA: I cross-posted this idea to the happy/sad thread for consideration by the forum mods there.