As a lurker, I suppose I'm ok with people linking to their blogs or including non-travel information, but I think without rules, there are perverse incentives to link as many posts as possible. I hate seeing the same two or three bloggers spam the forum with short and uninteresting outside links.

Agree 100% ^

I concur with the Learned Mod and add the following:

1. If people want to link to their own site or blog, that's fine but if it's not particularly readable, then I won't be reading it!

2. I think that a trip report on here should contain some element of air travel within it.

3. The BA board sticky has a rather brilliant index by class of travel. Though it would be a rather large project, an index by airline and or class of travel would be brilliant given that searching on here (or via Google) isn't brilliant.

This is one of my favorite places to come and get ideas for future trips, and I wouldn't want to do anything to discourage people from sharing.

Although I certainly prefer to read reports hosted here, I am also fine with links to blogs if they are well formatted. Some of the best reports have been links to blogs, and I'd have been very sad to miss them.

People here are great travelers, and some of their best stories may not feature flights - I am fine with that, as long as the title makes it clear for those who prefer flight reports only.

I think that this is a great idea Moomba.

Recently I've found that there are a lot people that have been posting each section of a report in it's own thread. This really is not helpful, because it just fills up the first page, pushing 'combined' reports onto the 2nd page away from people that want to read them. In my opinion, posters should be encouraged to group related posts together into one thread.

With regards to linking to blogs, the content is not in question for me. Some great reports are actually hosted outside of FT. However, I don't really like the disconnect that the approach produces. I also don't like the idea that people won't post directly on FT because they want ad-revenue and to drive traffic to their blogs. That seems a little unfair to those of us that do post directly on FT.
I like the idea of adding '[LINK]' to thread titles where the actual report is hosted outside of FT rather than trying to force people to re-create the report on FT, if this is not seen as practical.

As part of a 'transport' based report, time on the ground should absolutely be encouraged. Part of the fun of reading the reports is not about the travel, but the very reason that people have taken the journey in the first place, to visit cities and attractions. I don't believe that a purely non-travel related report is right for this forum.

I think that this is a great idea. I always limit photos to a maximum width of 800px. Using code, it is very possible to link to a larger image by clicking on the smaller one.

It might be a good idea to post a short guide that explains how to write a trip report (the technicalities, not what to write). I tend to write the report in Word, using FT markup and then I can post it directly into a new thread. I wrote a very short guide for a fellow FTer so that he could write his first report. I'd be happy to submit that as a starting point if desired.

Thanks for bring this up, Moomba! ^

This is a tough one. I'm in general inclined to avoid rules and regulations that would discourage people from posting their TRs. While I agree with those who point out that there's something annoying about having to click through to another site, the alternative is, what, for that person not to share their TR at all? It seems to me that it should be allowed.

However...

I draw a distinction between people who host TRs on their own blogs/sites for the sake of convenience and those who effectively post links to their TRs as a means of drawing traffic to their commercial blogs or sites. If someone is making money from ads on their site, then I don't care for them using FT in general or the TR forum in patrticular to boost their take.

And one other thing: For me, the main reason I dislike TRs hosted outside of FT is that it makes it difficult to discuss using normal FT tools. You can't easily link-quote specific parts, and it's certainly not there for easy reference for others to see. And what happens if, for whatever reason, that person closes down their site? Then the TR is gone forever.

So I guess I don't like it, but I'm not sure I would take the step of banning it.

Honestly, I've managed to live pretty well with the status quo, but, since you've asked ~

How do you feel about threads that simply link to blogs/sites?

I don't care for them and 90% of the time I won't even bother reading them. As a result, I'm probably missing out on some good trip reporting but there are more than enough good reports right here on the Trip Report Forum. As was also pointed out, reports are archived here and that makes them alot easier to find later.

Additionally, I don't do videos, though I could care less if they can be posted somehow on the Trip Reports Forum.

Do you think the report should be hosted on FT?

I would prefer it

Should a trip report contain a transport element or can they simply be a city or attraction report?

Despite this being FLYERTalk, there are plenty of members here who could care less about airplanes, First Class comfort/meals/entertainment, etc. They're more about BEING there than GETTING there. As such, I've always thought we should have two separate sections - one for reports that focus primarily on GETTING THERE (i.e. First Class on LH to HKG) and one for reports that focus primarily on BEING THERE (i.e. Two weeks in Beirut without even a single BBQ Pork Sandwich).

Many longer reports are not purely about one or the other. For example, my reports focus primarily upon getting there, but there is also some information included about being there. So, even though my report might contain a few paragraphs about my time in say, Johannesburg, since the primary focus of the report was about getting to JNB, I would post it in the GETTING THERE section.

Finally, one thing I would love to see the moderators remove/disallow is posts that advertise upcoming trip reports (i.e. I just wanted to let you all know that I'll be going to Indonesia and Israel next month... blah, blagh, blaaah) Posting reports incrementally as you go is just fine but please, I don't want to read about anyone's trip until they're actually on it or done with it.

I agree 100% with what Seat 2A posted.

I'm also not keen on reports hosted elsewhere, particularly when it appears that what's really going on is an attempt to drive ad views on a private blog. Seems in poor taste.

I'd like to see some kind of feature where the thread for a given report offers the option of filtering out replies or chitchat, so you get only the posts specific to the report itself. Perhaps via some kind of tagging function, or by keeping new threads locked to everyone but the OP until they are somehow marked as 'finished'. I understand that Q&A sometimes filters back into subsequent chapters but since not everyone does placeholder empty posts at the start of their new threads, it can sometimes be difficult to keep track.

twj

The TR section is a trove of great information as well as "where to go next?" brainstorming playground for me. In addition, some posts are just downright entertaining (and hilarious). One of my favorite sections. Makes me wish I write better ...

Specifically, prefer the posts be hosted here on FT. Maybe it is formatting, maybe it is me just disliking links.

Transport (rail, plane, car, bus ... ) or just plain old destination only info are both ok. Really depends on where and how the "trip report" was written up. I find both equally useful. Perhaps a specific way to label the title the TR would help. For example "TPT : J class SQ NRT - LAX" vs "DEST : 3 days in LAX".

I'm not sure if that is 100% practical. For me, since it takes such a long time to put together the reports I prefer to post as a go, rather than reserving posts (since that also restricts you to a set number of posts and images). The other issue with 'reserved' posts is that any updates will not be highlighted as a new post and will not move the thread to the top of the forum. This also means that those people who have subscribed to the thread will not get an update notification since updates do not count as new posts.

The interspersed comments provide feedback and encouragement as well as keeping the report 'alive' on the first page of the TR forum. It takes many hours to put together a report and if the writer has to wait until the end to receive feedback then the motivation to finish could wain.

Not a fan personally. If someone is posting a link to somewhere else to read the report I'll generally not click on it and move to the next report.


Yes.

I quite like to hear peoples journeys in their entirety, flights, trains, sights, accommodation, etc.

Should be a rule that all TR's must include a certain percentage of pictures.

How do feel about threads that simply links to blogs/sites?

<JHIN Writes> HATE IT NOT A FAN

Do you think the report should be hosted on FT? <JHIN Writes> YES ^

Should a trip report contain a transport element or can they simply be a city or attraction report?

<JHIN Writes> I think it SHOULD include the cities as that's half my reason of interest, next IMHO FT should provide a way that auto indicates in the thread title if the trip report includes pics. Heck I'd say Make it a mandatory field where the user must indicate if pics are used, cuz if you post a report without pics I'm 99% LESS likely to read it. Lastly each thread should include airline indicators after all FT is about flying the airlines.

Thanks for the survey

I don't like reports that are only links to blogs/sites. I do think they should be mostly hosted on FT.

I do understand when a TR has A LOT of pictures and the OP shows a few and has a link to an online gallery to see more pictures, just so that it cuts down the work for them to have to link so many photos in one post.

Seeing as this is FT, I think there should be some transport element in a report. It's fun to see what's in a city as well, but that isn't the main reason I read these.

I agree entirely. I have seen some phenomenal TR's that are on other websites besides FT, and it would be a shame to miss them. On the other hand, I can see how the FT purists really want to keep the TRs themselves on FT, which is totally understandable.

I will agree with others in that writing a TR takes a lot of work. It can be a tremendous time sink, and to keep re-writing a TR for each separate website can be extremely painful. I can make a lot of sense to just write the TR once, and link it from other forums.

My suggestion is to try to have our cake & eat it too. Create two forums:

1) one specifically for FT-based trip reports with no linking to outside blogs

2) one TR forum dedicated to outside blogs/links, etc

People who don't want to read these outside links never have to click on them; they can only read the FT-specific TRs. People who want to make sure they see what's out there and not miss anything, just go to the subforum that has only links to outside websites. I think this subdivision breaks it up, sort of how OMNI and OMNI/PR have been broken up. If you want to go there, click the link. If you don't, just ignore it.