I would also like to propose the following forum changes to make navigating the boards a little more clear:

Move Community to Travel
Having forums like this on Miles muddies the message that FT is trying to send about staying on topic. Now, I know it's not travel, either, but it seems more natural to group community forums together over there (see below).

Move Trip Reports to Travel
Along the same lines, trip reports rarely have anything to do with miles and points, but are much more focused on the experience of travel in general. This would also replace and absorb the existing Road Trip reports

Eliminate FlyerTalk Itineraries altogether
There is a tool already in place for posting itineraries under the Events tab above, and I'm not sure why people don't use it. Barring this elimination, it should at least be moved to FT Travel as a community forum (see below).

Eliminate In The News altogether
I'm not sure of the reason for this forum in the first place. News is posted across flyertalk, and someone searching for threads in the future are more likely to search in topical forums versus a generic forum like this. Perhaps this was created to provide a place for the illustrious doc, but even he spent most of his time posting in specific topics.

Eliminate the multiple Suggestions, Techincal Support, and Announcements forums
Now, I long suspected that the original purpose behind the multiple boards was to leverage the FT brand into multiple boards with distinct constituencies, but this doesn't seem to be happening, and I don't think that the forums on travel, dining, and airports are getting read very often. You see lots of 0 reply threads over there.

Reorganize Travel Hierarchy
The top section of travel includes a hodgepodge of forums, not very related to each other. What if there was a section for Traveler Communities (for Children, Women, GLBT, Trip Reports, Community, OMNI), Types of Travel (Bed and Breakfast, Adventure Travel, Cruises, Timeshares, Rails, Luxury Hotels), and Travel (TravelBuzz!, Online Booking, Tourist Traps, Travel Technology, Travel Discounts, Travel Safety/Security)?

Consolidate FT Dining and FT Airports into FT Travel
It is likely that a browser or future searcher will be interested in multiple aspects of a favorite destination, and it would be natural to discuss the airports, the restaurants, along with the sights, loding etc. in a consolidated forum for a given destination.

In general, the request is for fewer forums as they will make for less work for the moderators and an easier to understand system for the posters.

OK, so it's a lot to throw out there, but it seems like people are in a mood to roll up their sleeves and tackle some things, so I wanted to get these out there.

Thanks

ETA: I forgot one!

Move TalkBoard Issues to the Support section
Talkboard issues has nothing to do with miles, and is meta-discussion. Meta-discussion belongs at the bottom with the other forums like it. I'm not sure if this should be on Miles or not, but it probably doesn't matter.

[This message has been edited by robb (edited 01-29-2003).]

To allow us to read "News" possibly?

I like that Forum and visit it a lot.

The correct tile of that Forum is : "In The News: News That Affects Frequent Flyers"

Not sure about others but the current threads about weighing passengers does interest me, as does "USA airlines may stop flying pets" - and where else would such threads go if covered as a News story in dailies? Which airline Forum might one go to to find that info?

If I had a vote as to a Forum that has nothing whatever to do with FT, and is often a real hot bed of issues and flames it would be OMNI. But that has been raised many times before.

The most mesmerising and informative and immediate thread I can ever recall was the WTC one Doc started and that was kept updated every few minutes by FT'ers all over the world during that horrible day.

FT'ers were waaaaay ahead of all network media worldwide on that story as to the airlines and planes and origin points involded and much other detail.

That thread was started (correctly IMO) "In The News."

If we are going to have an "In the News" forum, then the moderators of the Airline forums SHOULD be moving the news theads OUT of those forums.

Your example exactly makes my point. If I wanted to know about travelling with pets, or weighing passengers I would have searched in TravelBuzz, I would not have searched in "In the News."

In fact, TravelBuzz has a thread on the weighing pax topic, so we're seeing post duplication. WTC threads were also "carried" in MilesBuzz!, UA, AA, OMNI, TravelBuzz!, etc. That was such a special case that I can't imagine basing a forum on it.

I guess I don't see the special case for In The News. We have 4 boards overwhelmingly organized on the basis of what a thread is about, and this one forum where the source is the difference. That seems confusing, and if the administrators are serious about enforcing consistency, then confusion like this should be eliminated.

See CameraGuy's post, as well. Do you really want UA news stories moved out of UA, AA news stories moved out of AA, or Miles Earning Opportunity news stories moved out of MilesBuzz! ? Enforcement of that would make FlyerTalk more difficult for everyone.

Good luck.

I think it should stay where it is because, many times those events have to do with mileage runs which are most definitely Miles related. Also, as you pointed out, it doesn't necessarily fit in Travel plus everyone is used to it being where it is.


The FlightConnect tool is nice except for that you can't edit or delete something once you have added it. Having the Itinerary forum also allows you to use search features not available in FlightConnect. I think they both have useful purposes and see no need to eliminate the forum.

I'll agree with what Oz said about this forum. There are many news related topics that might not fall into a particular category or that may crossover many. This is a good place for them.

[This message has been edited by tazi (edited 01-29-2003).]

Regarding In The News, then I wonder if rather than moving new stories into the forum, we should be moving threads out of the forum if the story really focuses on a topic which would have best been added elsewhere had it not been a news story, leaving a home for the generic stories (which still seem like TravelBuzz! to me, but I'm cool with disagreement on that).

Someone was just suggesting a Student Travel forum on FT Travel, and I tried to think about why I thought it would be OK for United's College Plus discussion to go on there, even though it would duplicate discussion that might go in the United Forum, while I don't think it's OK for ITN.

I decided that if I were a college student looking for information about which FF program is for me, I would naturally search the Student Travel Forum and the major airline forums and be sure to find the info I needed if it were on FT. If I weren't a college student, I wouldn't search the Student Travel forum, but that would be OK, as the info there wouldn't really apply to me, as I wouldn't be eligible for College Plus.

On the other hand, I would never think to search In The News in either scenario, as it wouldn't occur to me to look for media reports about college frequent flier programs. Therefore, any news stories there about my topic would be lost to me and I wouldn't have all the info that FlyerTalk had to offer on the topic.

Aside from that one, which seems to be the biggest constructive criticism (aside from the Itineraries thread, which I can buy has advantages over Trip Connect, and originally suggested could be moved if not eliminated), what about the other ideas?

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robb is clearly within the margin of sampling error - Googlism

Bump.

BTW, since I wrote this, I have basically come to understand that the In The News forum is another community kind of forum.

You see debate, perspective, etc. on a variety of issues in there, and it's a little more OMNI-like than I think many would care to admit, but with a decidedly different (and absolutely more mature) tone.

However, also with that understanding came the realization that it's okay to have multiple social kinds of forums. AOL certainly has more than one chat room, and it's only natural that we should have more than one kind ourselves. Different people are just going to settle into different groups where the discussion strikes them as the type where they can really participate.

In fact, if we had multiple OMNI's rather than just the one (Silly OMNI, Political OMNI, News OMNI, etc.), we might not be in the mess we're in today.

So, sorry to ramble, but if I were to make changes to my proposals above, I'd have to say it would be these:

1. Absolutely keep Itineraries, but move it to Travel.

2. Absolutely keep In the News, but move it to the community section of Travel.

I might also add a suggestion I made somewhere else (not sure off the top of my head), and it's still not fleshed out, but I think a phenomenal forum for FlyerTalk would be a Help Me! forum. It would be used for any question on any FlyerTalk topic that you need an urgent answer to.

I think that there are dozens of FlyerTalkers who would love to spend their days answering questions in there, and a TalkTeam volunteer could move the topics (after a suitable time) to the proper forum for future searchers.

Like, I said, we'd really have to think about how it would work (could/should you cross-post? how long until you move it? do you post as you move it, so it bumps to the top of the home forum? do we need one for FTMiles and one for FTTravel? etc.), but I think if we figured it out, it would be one of the most widely read forums and a great way for FlyerTalkers to help other FlyerTalkers.

Oooh! What if posters put their questions in a regular forum and were allowed to post a link in the Help Me! forum (it could be post-only, no replies, like OMNI was for a brief while)? Like I said, just an idea, and I'm sure that we could figure out something.

Bump.

Some sensible suggestions.

Randy has commented in several places recently that we're close to a new version of the FT software.

My own hunch is that we ought to wait until the new platform is in place before doing much rearranging.

Personally, I'm excited to see what Randy and staff have in store.

I'm on board with most of these suggestions and they are very close to what we have in mind. Our change to other technology - we are moving to vBulletin - will allow all this with much more flexibility since you can actually create MyFlyerTalk and simply have your "home" page just show those forums you are most interested in. You can then rely on the TalkMail newsletter to notify you of new forums or changes to forums you may want to add to your "home" page. I think we've wrangled as much from UBB as humanly possible and as we get ready to migrate nearly 2.5 million posts over, we are really going to have some fun with moving threads around. Almost there with the equipment choice so thanks for your patience.

Way to go Randy!

Looking forward to it!

Looking forward to the changes Randy!

Any chance you can share rough details? I.e. rough timeline you're looking at? Will FT be down for a period of time during the migration? What version of vBulletin are you moving to?

I'm cool with having Trip Reports moved to the FT Travel section.

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Patrick A. Inouye, LMT
volunteer trip reports moderator