Forum Re-Engineering/Streamlining
 

With all the threads about new forums, sub-forums, clutter, etc, I thought that the way the following website forums were structured, was worth a peek by TB and the Tech folks at FT/IB.

http://www.indiamike.com/india/

What I like most is:
* Forums are organized by region and then alphabetically, more intuitive?
* Key/popular topics have their own subforums within major geographic areas.
* Forum info is displayed horizontally, not vertically, so far more birdseye info on the screen before need to scroll.

So, a sample idea for FT.

Forum: Western Europe Frequent Flyer Programs
Subforums: Aer Lingus, British Airways, British Midland, Air France/KLM, Iberia, Lufthansa, SAS, TAP; LCC;Others

Forum: Special Interests
Subforums: Religious, Senior, Solo, Pets, Kids, Disabled, Other

Forum: Travel and Dining
Subforums: North America-East of Mississipi,New York City; West Of Mississippi,Los Angeles, Las Vegas; Central/South America/Caribbean- Mexico; South America- Brazil, Argentina; Western Europe- London, Paris

Thoughts?

Personally, I think that this is an excellent suggestion, Beaubo!

One of the annoying things, IMHO, is having to go through the huge lists of so many forums - this may be a better option. I like that layout a lot! ^

As someone who's referred many folks to FT over the past 6 years only to hear many of them say they were intimidated by the number of forums and hence largely why I oppose creating even more OP's proposal makes for a more user-friendly FT model, at least IMHO.

beaubo ^

This would get a big ^ from me.

Dave

I'm generally in favor of better (and more intuative) organization.

That said, as with so many other things the Devil is in the details, particularly on such a radical overhaul....

That said, I hope enough TB members will be interested enough for us to make a thorough examination of the concept.

Not sure if the software would allow it, but perhaps if sub-forums (sub-fora?) were listed under multiple Forums (fora?) it could be helpful?

As an example:

Forum: Western Europe Frequent Flyer Programs
Subforums: Aer Lingus, British Airways, British Midland (and so on...)

Forum: OneWorld Airlines
Subforums: American Airlines, British Airways, Finnair (and so on....)

with the link to British Airways in BOTH sections directing to the same forum.

This would essentially be listing some programs more than once, but would at least ensure that a subforum would be found, no matter where somebody decided to look for it.

Dave

That sounds like a great idea.

That would make it easier for new FTers to find stuff ^.

^ to this idea. Great suggestion!

Please include consideration of this 'modest proposal' to move or close (or at least render read-only and to archive) the discontinued Phones/Programs forum to a common location for all archive-only discontinued programs. Thanks!

I think that this proposal may render the above one unneccessary, if all totally dead program forums get archived.

I support the restructuring of the 'jump list' into sections if it can be tested and is found to be easier to navigate.

:)

The merits have been applauded strongly but it's not a hot topic issue, based on the number of responses.

But IMO it's a good idea.

IS this on your TB agenda or radar - or does it need more discussion here first?

TB representatives: are you interested enough?

I think that there is interest in this as a suggestion. But there's some other information floating out there in the ether which means that I think it's not going to to be possible to do much with this suggestion at this time. Now that's a very vague answer, but about as specific as I can get!

I thought it was recenty explained to us that among the reasons that Qatar Air got its own forum was that frequent flyers didn't know that Qatar is in the Middle East and that Turkish Air was given its forum is that they had no idea of where Turkey was.

If that is the case, it seems that by putting all airlines into regional forums there is going to be a lot of confusion as people try to determine if, say, Portugal is in Asia or South America (or even, gasp, Western Europe).

Airlines could be easily be given subforum status, because the format is horizontal, not vertical, so more room to include more subforums and still be easy to read.

So, for Mideast as example:

Forum: MIDEAST AIRLINE PROGRAMS Subforums (popular programs)- El Al, Royal Jordanain, Qatar, Emerites, Etihad, Turkish, Other, LCC

Also, could place a link to an airline in multiple categories & it'd redirect you to the same forum...