Discontinued Programs
 

I agree with getting rid of the discontinued programs/forums. As somebody who oftentimes accesses FT through my Blackberry less is definitely more and saves all of the scrolling time. May sound like a "little" thing to the powers that be; but to those of us who use mobile so often it really would be nice to cut all of those discontinued programs out of the forums. They could be archived to the backup server if they need to be kept for auditing purposes.

In my research about certain Mid-East airlines during the time that a forum was advocated forr QR, it appeared that tthe numbers for ssupport and traffic / questions in the forum were an effect of membership of an alliance (or in QRs case, being able to credit QR miles to *A carriers).

On this logic, I can see a lot of people who supported QR'ss secession to its own forum, appeal for OZ to keep its own-forum status, because it's a piece of the *A redemption puzzle. FTers come and stay here for status, miles and points and that's the crux of the forum organisation, IME.

As another *A person, still with miles to burn, I'd urge you to consider forums along alliance lines.

If an individual airline is not dealing with the alliance, then off with the gloves.
If it's dealing with the three alliances in terms of useful benefits for FTers, hands off! :p

(Otherwise, BA/BD would need to be merged into a LHR-based airlines forum. Just kidding.)

This comes up again and again. Getting rid of the forums would be bad in that you'd lose all of the posts.

Getting rid of the list of the discontinued forums in the drop-down box at the bottom of every page would be reasonable.

I'm a little confused as to how discontinued forums could effect use on your mobile. I too access FT from my iPhone and can't duplicate how discontinued forums makes any difference. Here's the link for the mobile access:
http://mobile.flyertalk.com/

You click the 'Browse the Forum,' then 'Miles&Points' then whatever you are looking for but you never have to go through any list that is effected by the discontinued programs list.

Now, i did see a comment and suggestion about eliminating these programs from the drop-down list and i think that may be a possibility with vB and I'll go attempt that right now as i too agree it does not need to be there, but the mobile version, i just don't see how it could interfere?

Update: I have removed 'discontinued programs' from the drop-down menus. As well, I have removed the archives of past years TalkBoard election debates from the same drop-down menus. Those remain in the general navigation, but not the jump menus. Hope this helps as well. Thanks for the wonderful suggestion and it does make sense. Who the heck needs the TalkBoard debate transcripts from 2005 in their current jump navigation. Thanks for making us smarter today!

Thanks, Randy!

Perhaps the iPhone acts differently than my BB; but I know that when I try to access FT via the BB it entails quite a bit of scrolling. I have had others also try this via the BB and they have the same "complaint". Have not tried the download for the mobile FT.

....Talkboard!! ;)

Excellent move. Thanks.

IMHO, the real value of the TBT forum is to get people thinking about how to do things better. Once in a while a great idea, seemingly obvious in retrospect, appears. Kudos to Randy for jumping on this one.

The TalkBoard is supposed to handle those cases where some people prefer things one way and some prefer them another way. In those cases I greatly prefer to find a consensus solution if there is one to be found. If there is not solid support for a proposal, I don't believe in spending the TalkBoard's collegiality on a formal vote. It's better to wait for the new idea that will have unanimous or at least very strong support. If this gives the impression that the TalkBoard is dodging contentious issues, so be it. We really are trying to find solutions, but we don't always succeed.

Note: it is not a download. The system for mobile is on the end of the server. You simply have to direct your FT experience to the mobile.flyertalk.com URL.

Try accessing via this URL and let me know. Thanks.

The discontinued US/HP forums no longer seem to serve any purpose. Perhaps its time to move them to the discontinued forum or re-merge with the new US forum?