At the moment it's unclear whether the motion can be changed via "friendly" amendments.

As to your second and third sentences, I agree. I didn't make the motion or second it, but I have pointed out some things that need to be changed in various versions of the formal motion.

Due to the waiting period we haven't started voting yet, therefore the typos can be fixed before the vote starts sometime tomorrow.

Also, member input will be greatly appreciated over the next two weeks, it WILL help people decide how to vote.

Innocuous technical corrections will be accepted at any time. Not a problem.

Bruce

Reposting my comment from the Topic thread, as no one has responded in there directly.

Forgive me as it's hard for me to figure out exactly what is going to be deleted/moved around given all of the noise in here. I am fine with the amendment as stated in the first post, but now I am confused.

As an initial matter, while I realize there is limited traffic in many of these forums, I wonder what exactly is prompting this sudden deletion of these sub forums. Is FT tight on server space or something? As my fellow moderator tcook052 aptly noted, just because a forum does not have a ton of posting activity does not mean it is not viewed, searched, or otherwise accessed by FT users and guests, and this could be handled by other, less drastic means.

Notwithstanding that, and, to the extent this discussion involves a move towards rental companies being grouped by "parent" company, my $.02 as moderator of the National forum is please don't.

The whole point of parents having different brands is to cater to different demands and customer bases. Our main traffic in National is business travelers, which makes sense given that National primarily markets itself to that group. Alamo is geared more towards leisure travelers and Enterprise the replacements market/neighborhood presence. Avis is the upmarket equivalent of Budget. Etc. (Gross generalizations I realize, but bear with me.)

Simply put, I believe it would be profoundly distracting for all of us active posters/moderators to start having to field questions from renters on other brands just because they happen to be owned by the same parent company. Given what is often a wide disparity in loyalty program mechanics and other policy differences, frankly many of the answers which would be sought would not even be well known, so in essence information would be harder to get. For instance, most of the posters in my forum are not Alamo or Enterprise experts. I think that runs counter to the stated goal here.

tl;dr, this seems like an answer to a question no one asked, but I am open to being convinced otherwise.

I don't believe the proposal is to remove any existing forums for the major programs (Hertz, Avis, National). The proposal is rather to consolidate all the others into a general forum since there:

a) Isn't much discussion going on outside the 3 major programs

b) Frankly isn't all that much value to the other programs anyway

c) A lot of non-program specific general car rental questions end up in one of the other forums because there's isn't a general forum today and/or people are just confused about where to ask them.

The idea is to preserve the value that's there today and make it more clear where things go regardless of the type of question/comment. At least that's my 2 cents.

And Sixt will remain separate because of its activity and representative participation.

Bruce

As the OP who initiated the request for a General car rental forum, I'm a bit perplexed at how complicated this once simple suggestion has become.

On other forums (not travel related) that I frequent, a warrantable suggestion found to be meritorious by a moderator would be implemented in less than a minute. Done. But here, the simple suggestion somehow has morphed into an entire revamping of the rental car forum, involving motions and counter motions and months of discussion. Really?

I just wanted an appropriate place to ask general rental car questions that were not specific to any particular rental car company. Like many frequent travelers, I am enrolled in several frequent rental car programs, and unlike airline frequent flyer programs, there are fewer incentives to remaining loyal to one particular car rental program, as well as much more variability in price, discounts, and car availability from week to week and airport to airport.

There is no need to dismantle the current company based car rental forum to simply add a "General" rental car forum at the top of the list. There is still a very valid reason to have a separate forum for the majors like Hertz, Avis, Alamo, National, Budget, Dollar, and Thrifty... companies who have some sort of presence (either onsite or by shuttle) at most US airports. And there is a case for having an "alternate" or "other" rental car forum for the other brands who do not maintain as ubiquitous of presence at all airports, like Fox, Payless, Sixt, EZ-Rent, etc.

But where do questions go that do not fall within a specific brand? I generally rent from the majors, so putting my general question in the "other" forum for the minors would not be appropriately found, categorized, or archived. Hence I perceived a need for a general rental car forum, because there are some rental car strategies that are applicable to the act of renting a car, regardless of brand, and those strategies are not limited to the renting of "other" or "alternative" minor rental car companies, but also include the majors, perhaps moreso.

I voted no based largely on this argument. While I would be in favor of a general rental car forum, I'm not convinced that four of the current rental car agency fora should be merged into it. Maybe the four fora should be combined, maybe not. Regardless, having some of the rental car agency specific discussion mixed in with more general material about renting a car seems to me to be somewhat counterproductive.

No good deed goes unpunished ;)

Cheers.

This is indeed a difficult call. I hope to have some quiet time this weekend to consider the issues in depth. I'm still concerned about the irreversibility of merging content from existing forums, even though I support dropping those forums.

I very much felt the same way.

However, we could do this in baby steps: first create a general rental car forum, and then after some time examine the individual rental car agency fora and determine whether some of them should be closed or merged. The problem is that merging the four targeted fora is basically irreversible, although labeling threads with the specific rental car agency name would help to alleviate that problem and also help with the concern about having the four rental car agencies together in a single forum.

If the current motion fails, I plan to draft a new one to create just the general rental car forum. Though I do wonder without the traffic from the forums that are lightly trafficked if there would be enough traffic to support it.

I'm especially hesitant to suggest it without the merging after seeing how little goes on in the USA Forum.

...as did I.As a moderator, I know how easy it is to merge content on FlyerTalk; but it is far more difficult to extract it back out if it does not work.

My primary role as a moderator is to serve FlyerTalk members. Moderators are equipped with a set of administrative tools to help ensure that information is as easy to find as possible on FlyerTalk.

The language in this motion pertaining to closing four forums and merging them into a general forum just did not convince me that this was the right thing to do.

This is why I voted no.

This legend thread for discount codes should be a great example of a general rental car forum, wouldn't it?

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...unt-codes.html

A someone who has gotten confused with what is I guess the new car rental forum...

Can either the name of the general forum be renamed to all other rental car questions, or at least the description clarified to General Topics and Any Other Car Rental Companies? There is more than just those 5 left.