SkiAdcock

My vote would be to let it ride out the 6mths & do a check again then.

Oz, the opportunist comment directed towards Jenbel was out of line IMO, and only avoided a TOS because of the by me anyway portion of the comment.

And truthfully, in this thread & in the other re: the guidelines, I've found that Jenbel does provide thought-out info, & avoids hyperbole - and does it w/o having to use big fonts, dif colors, exclamation points, all caps, etc

If at the 6mth mark, the traffic/threads/posts haven't increased, then my vote would be to close the seniors forum.

Cheers.

Spiff

Correct.

I'm sorry but that's rubbish. Each forum may have different reasons for its success/failure/demand. We saw that when we considered closing the Religious Travelers forum. Those who want to keep/close the Senior Travel forum may have different reasons for such than Dollar Rental Car or Disability Travel.

I'm sorry, but that's also rubbish. Post/thread/view count alone is not the only metric for forum creation/closure.

Incorrect. Please feel free to start another thread if you'd like us to consider closing Disability Travel or any other forum besides the current forum under consideration for closure.

You'll probably want to make a stronger argument for closure than wild, unfounded, and unprovable political allegations, BTW.

ozstamps

Well lets see what motion TB makes - if it makes one.

If Disability and Dollar are NOT in there my post will have been fully valid commentary - ipso facto - and all members can see that.

Dead forums do no good for FT. Remove several in one motion if anyone on TB is actually concerend about dead forums.

DEAD is dead, no matter how you do the analysis. And Dollar and Disability have a FAR longer and far easier to measure history than Seniors. @:-)

Glen

Spiff

Your post regarding the linking of two unrelated forums will not be validated in any way, injection of Latin and use of bolding/font size notwithstanding.

wharvey

Gang,

This is getting out of hand. Moderator2 and I have to come in and clean up every thread that gets started these days. And believe it or not, we occasionally DO step away from our computers... so it does not automatically happen immediately.

I would suggest that those of you who believe someone has violated the TOS use that small triangle to the left of posts and REPORT IT! Believe it or not, we look at each report and take what we consider appropriate decisions.

There are a few of you that believe this forum is for your own personal conversations and debate. That has to stop. Take it to private messages. Otherwise, we will need to consider whether you should continue to have posting privileges in this particular forum.

Posts need to be ON topic to the request of the OP... and nothing more.

William

Kiwi Flyer

Another major difference with disability travel is that anyone can suddenly become disabled and require information and support in dealing with it in respect of travel. Generally one doesn't suddenly become old, or become a woman, for example.

Cholula

Hey, speak for yourself.

Yesterday I was a young stud. Today I'm an old fart.

That's sudden to me. And it happens exactly that fast, trust me.

It's all a matter of perspective.

magiciansampras

I love how TB is forum creating loving but then will never admit when they make a mistake.

Why can't we just close the forums that were obviously mistakes?

ldsant

How long does this go on before a vote is taken? Doesn't seem like anything new has been proposed/mentioned except for some active folks saying close it. What's the hold up?

Jenbel

I wonder that too, but apparently we need more time

We are currently involved in a little bit of background research about this forum as well. It's not often we have a forum which is an outright failure from the start.

BiziBB

This proposal is five days old; why the haste?
If it's a dead forum I doubt it will spring to life anytime soon. (1 post since Sept 18 until this edit!)
[Another thread proposing TB action, started by a TBT moderator ~22 weeks ago, is yet to be actioned, so five days without a vote isn't excruciatingly slow, IMHO]

It's possible (perhaps improbable?) some FTers who value the forum might not have seen this TB Topic yet.

As some seen keen to remove it ASAP, perhaps a timeframe could be set for discussion, before it is seconded to a vote. This would make the issue slightly more transparent and less of a 'let's do it right now' race.

I am not an expert nor a historian on FT practices of advertising forum closure proposals, so I can only ask:

• Is a link to this closure proposal posted as a sticky at the top of the Seniors special interest forum?
• Is there an emerging (or existing) consensus on how much time (and advertising) to give this forum before voting on its closure?
• Is there an elephant in the room? (I know I shouldn't ask, just trying to clear the air)

(I suppose the Seniors forum has been discussed for a while by TB and this thread is just the final, public comment test before you put it out to a TB vote? Just wondering if you are allowed to disclose this or not)

SkiAdcock

Weren't there a couple posts suggesting giving it a full 6 mths (it's at 4 now) & then voting to keep it open/close it at that time?

Cheers.

Rudi

This forum hopefully will become a good Vademecum to look up senior benefits later.

While there are not many posts on the Senior forum, one of the reasons seems to be, that senior discounts and senior travel rules, once posted, seem to be pretty stable.

I still hope, that after more time, the senior forum might have more information and then serve me as a good and easy to find base to look up for world-wide senior benefits.

My example: Consolidated "senior airline-programs and/or discounts" thread with 'only now 20 posts, but nevertheless 1'622 hits (and hopefully some of those hits did help).

Rudi

My tennis-friend - you are often pretty fast in your judgement (here: obviously mistake). If it is a mistake, does it hurt you in any way (in which way?).

If 'we' oldies (and Randy in the first place) would have adopted your guide for opening/closing fora, during the first 2 years of existance, FlyerTalk would either not have survived, or have continued, may be, with 5-10 fora.

While for younger generations some weeks/months seem to be a very long time, believe me, later in life, you learn to take it easier, with less rush, and grant senior people some rest before pushing them (out?).

By definition, most posters in the Senior forum are not young posters anymore, and that way are pretty experienced travellers too. But if you look at the 'few' posters in the Senior forum so far, most of them are FT-oldies too, and did contribute a lot in the early days of FT. Some time, even if you don't like it, some (more) respect vis-a-vis oldies is not a bad thing - and it is part of a generation-deal (as I understand it).

NickB

I am not sure that I find it easy to reconcile that image of calm, sedate, slow-moving individuals with all the regular contributors to the seniors forum but, be that as it may, I'd agree that there is no rush. And if there is post padding taking place in the next couple of months, then I am sure that TB members will be savvy enough to notice it and discount it in their evaluations.

Rudi raises another interesting point, though, one which to some extent also applies, albeit in a less dramatic fashion given the higher traffic there, to the disability forum, which is that, regardless of the amount of posting traffic, both fora act as a kind of repository/reference point for key information. It would be worthwhile to give some thought as to how to deal with that issue. In a sense, a forum is not the best vehicle for that. Fora are alive thanks to reasonably frequent traffic. But if we close a forum for lack of traffic, would there be a way for useful core information accumulated in a few threads on that forum to be made sufficiently visible elsewhere?