It was noted a couple of years ago that the Guidelines had been changed. This was done because the TB got together, discussed, and approved a proposal.

The problem is that users today have no way of knowing why the guidelines were changed. What was the evolution?

My proposal is that older TB conversations should become available for public review. It'd be nice to have all of the private TB conversations declassified, but I can understand why that might not happen.

But how about the limited set of guideline discussions? If curious how this came up, here is another related thread: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...90522&posted=1

What do you think?

Having read some of them, including those going back 4-5 years, it was clear that things were being discussed in the expectation that they would remain private with what could best be described as a full and frank discussion of views at times!

Therefore I think it would be unfair to members who are still on FT but no longer on TB to push those into the public domain, without them being able to review what is coming out before it goes public and make amendments if required. It's like publishing your private correspondence without your permission.

I'd actually be more in favour of spending our time going through the archives trying to update the procedures to include all other changes we've made since the 05 update which is currently online. For example - you asked in a now deleted thread where the 14 day vote period came from. I did, through quite a lot of back-reading (hence comments above!), find when and why that came into being, where it had been discussed subsequently on a couple of occasions to see if change was required etc... I think that would be much more useful for the members.

Yes, it would be nice if the guidelines actually reflected the operating procedure of TB.

Agree with Jenbel, I don't think it would be right to go back and "expose" what people have said, thinking it would be private.

I am totally confused by this discussion though and would love to be enlightened. Having read the 100+ post (now deleted) thread about the election of a President as well as the procedural questions, I fail to see what the issue is. I am sure I am missing something, so please clue me in!

There are a lot of "procedures" that were noted in that thread (now deleted). The trouble is, they're not in the guidelines anywhere. Jenbel is talking about actually updating the guidelines to include the procedures. Probably not a bad idea.

you can rephrase this any way you wish, but it is my personal directive that the TalkBoard forum will continue - past, present and into the future as a private forum. Thank you.

And given that no additional discussion is necessary on this issue, I'll close this thread to save us some bandwidth.