Are there any forums that are underperforming and need to be - ahem - cleaned up?
 

Based on the suggestion of a poster (ok, it was Jenbel!) I am wondering if there are any forums that posters feel are under-performing and whose posts might be better addressed in a broader-category forum.

In other words, are there forums that need to go?

Any and all input welcome! :)

You could start with any or all in the Discontinued Programs/Partners section, with virtually no posts since 2005.

And which is the most redundant? Step forward Westin Premier - nothing since 1999. :p

Would any of us miss these?

Cuba should be merged into the Caribbean. I've never understood why it's the only Caribbean island with its own forum.

I'm not sure they are necessarily 'under-performing' but the two Korean airlines are pretty slow forums. I can't help but wonder if they'd get a better result if merged into an 'Airlines of Korea' forum?

Or to other asian australian south pacific frequent flyer programs

+1

Might I make a further suggestion which may fall into TB's clean-up process?

Several airline and hotel forums are inconsistent or incomplete in the way they are presently titled. Most include the requisite Airlines/Airways suffix, others don't. Also, BD and VS programme titles are listed in entirely in lower case. With IC Hotels, there is confusion in the forum title whether a hyphen exists between Inter and Continental.

For example (and by no means an exhaustive list)...

Airline Programs
American AAdvantage = American Airlines AAdvantage
bmi diamond club = bmi Diamond Club
Continental OnePass = Continental Airlines OnePass
Delta SkyMiles = Delta Air Lines SkyMiles
JetBlue TrueBlue = JetBlue Airways TrueBlue
Southwest Rapid Rewards = Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards
United Mileage Plus = United Airlines Mileage Plus
Virgin flying club = Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

Hotel Programs
InterContinental Hotels: Priority Club & Inter-Continental Ambassador = InterContinental Hotels: Priority Club & InterContinental Ambassador

Please, no
 

I submit that they would not.

These small forums are nicely organized as they are. If you want information about one airline/program or the other, you go there. And you don't have to wade through information about another program that you have no interest in. I believe very few people go in search of knowledge about 'airlines based in Korea.'

Additionally, combining these two forums into a single forum now would ruin the information currently contained in each. You wouldn't know which airline the thread pertained to.

Fundamentally, so what if these aren't busy forums? They're extremely helpful to the people who use them. When you find yourself flying a relatively obscure airline (to you) that you know nothing about, it's a godsend to be able to go to a forum devoted to that airline.

I truly hope this doesn't turn into a frenzy of consolidation of existing program forums (especially if it's just in the interest of the TB 'doing something.') I feel strongly the members would not be served by doing so. The forums work. They're small, but they work. TalkBoard members, please don't ruin that.

Totally agree with AZ ^ Great assessment. Thanks.

From what I read in the last week or so, some would suggest this forum. :p

Agree. The number of recent threads at a glance seems small.

But by that argument, we should have forums for all airlines, no matter how small. And I do think that would be madness - for example, I have flown 15-20 airlines in my life time, some major and some very obscure. I would not follow all of the airlines I have flown, and yet I could answer questions on them. While it makes sense to have separate forums where there are sufficient flyers to breath life into a forum, it doesn't if there are only a handful of people who would regulalry use that forum, but where the pool of people who could answer questions on that airline is larger - hence the rationale for regional based 'other' boards. Someone based in Europe is likely to have flown a number of different airlines, and be able to answer questions which come up for several of them.

And so, my thought of merging the two Korean airline forums. There is likely to be a degree of crossover in users of the two forums - add them together and you may get a synergistic effect, since there will be some common discussion points for two airlines which operate out of the same hub. Merging them together may actually be beneficial for both programmes, since attention is not divided between two forums, and those who favoured one or other forum may be able to answer questions on the other airline. The Airlines of India forum is working well, and the Hawaiian airlines forum has been in existence for years, and I haven't seen too many complaints about them being shared forums. In fact, a member was remarking to me the other day how well Airlines of India was working.

This isn't about doing something because TB has to do something. Reviewing has been discussed at several points over the last few years (and indeed, in my time on TB I did a reasonable amount of analysis of forum statistics to see what was going on within the forums), but nothing ever really gets done about it... precisely because as soon as you start to discuss it, it gets very emotional. There's a real status thing about airlines having their own forums, which we've really got to get over. If a slightly different system (such as the Airlines of India type paradigmn) seems to have some advantages over one airline=one forum, then why should it be ignored simply because some occasional users want to be able to have a forum devoted to that airline on the odd occasion they want to use it? I mean, we make mega threads in other forums and expect occasional users to be able to wade through them ('just read backwards') looking for the information... it seems a bit contradictory!

If this suggestion is taken seriously, then the first thing to do is actually consult the forum users and see what they want to do. They might like the idea, they might not like the idea. But really, until that happens, all the other conjecture is just that.

Anybody want some popcorn? ;)

I think it's a loooong journey between "leave the two Korean forums as they have always been" and "every airline needs its own forum".

Whatever you do, if you start combining airline fora, MAKE SURE IT'S DONE CONSISTENTLY.

I have already noted like 3 times the fact that "Airlines of India" and "Hawaii-based Airlines" don't help with navigation. Nobody seems to have taken any notice.

Maybe when combining OZ and KE, you'll title the forum "Hub ICN: Airlines with a base in Seoul" or something similarly distinct, just for kicks!

Moreover, again we've said before that FB contains UX and KQ. Same with Onepass and CM. Not only aren't they included in the forum titles, but, unless I'm having a serious memory lapse, I'm sure I've seen moderators moving threads about them to the "Other" threads. If the structure is too complex for moderators to understand, imagine what it does to a newbie.

I actually requested the previous talkboard to create a new subforum for the non-AF/KL FB flotsam and jetsam but that was slapped down. You'd think when both long-time moderators of a forum ask for a simple procedural housekeeping matter like that to be seen to, it would be without having to go through a political cage match. You'd be wrong.