Comments on another travel board.
 

Occasionally, I visit and contribute to another travel board whose name starts with Fro and who publishes a series of travel guides. OK, frommers.com and I post with "turnerstate". I see a number of the same names on both boards so I'm not alone in visiting.

The Frommer's board seems to have less activity than here and I've noticed a number of differences.

There are significantly fewer trip reports and requests for them. Here, at times, it seems there are more postings of trip reports than questions.

They seem to have have many fewer mutual admiration postings, many less vanity postings, troll postings and hardly any silliness.

While there are controversies they seem generally less vitriolic.

There seem to be less postings of "I'm going to --, what do I do, what are the must sees, etc." type.

I do prefer the Frommer's method of display. You can see many more titles at one time but I miss that they don't show the time/date of the last posting. It has a new post notation but that can be many days previous and you can find yourself looking at a post which has nothing new to you.

I wonder if Frommer's has stricter editing rules which has led to reduced postings. The quality of the answers is fine.

Hi js,

I think that it's just that the Frommer's board is less frequented.

I don't know, it feels clumsy and not user-friendly to me...
I think the questions are quite repetitive and of a more 'simple' nature, whereas posters on this board often have interesting questions or problems (not that there isn't repetitiveness here).
The quality of the answers is good b/c half of <i>this</i> board also goes over there!
I've been following the TA board, also, but they will wear a person out in no time.

The other board has MANY fewer postings - and posters- and a huge number of them seem to be first time- or practically non-travellers. Few postings get more than a couple of answers.

Fodors may be more &quot;eccentric&quot; but about 25 times more useful - if you have a real question.

frommers is near dead from my experiences there. i used it posting about Mexico (not Europe) a while ago but soon realized almost no one came back to check answers for their questions. and certainly no one had the answers to mine. Threads that actually accumulated a dozen replies might take a couple years to do so! it is not user friendly and the posters generally speaking are much less experienced than Fodors.

i also like lonely planet's Thorn Tree very much but it has a bit different slant, liberal, younger minded, budget, backpackerish but with a huge number of extremely well versed and generous participants generally speaking.

I read the Frommers board now and again, and post on it. I think it has some things that are nicer than fodors in the setup, and some not as good. Pros and cons. There are many different travel boards and they have different uses and personalities, that's all. It depends on which country you use on Frommers as to how frequented it is.

I think one reason you get a different tone (Frommers is more businesslike, really related to travel) is because it is separated into countries, so general threads with people posting about politics, personal things, etc., tend not to occur. From what I've seen on there, it has a lot of good people posting and a lot of good information, and the general questions are very similar to those on here. I've used it for some years and as far as I know, it has no particular editing rules whatsoever that limit the posts, if that's what you are asking. Not sure what you mean by that exactly, I think it is actually less &quot;patrolled&quot; and arbitrary than this board where some Fodors staffers delete posts for sometimes random reasons which are not consistent across posts.

If you don't like Frommers, just don't post there, I'm not sure if you are complaining or what.

Frommers is a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10 -snooze-city.

I've found there are far fewer self-appointed &quot;editors&quot; on the Frommers board. That, along with the lack of &quot;mutual admiration postings&quot; is probably why some people prefer this board to that one. I think it is a bit more difficult for some folks to get their &quot;recognition&quot; there tham here.

But why you simply didn't put the full name of the board in your heading is beyond me. The coyness really isn't necessary.

&gt;...Thorn Tree ... liberal, younger minded, budget, backpackerish ...&lt;

As compared to us reactionary, old fogies with lots of money and too much luggage? :)

((I))

I'm a fan of several boards, all very different. Fodors differs because many here have met one another or email eachother frequently so it appears clicky and also we post often more than once on a thread, and the thread becomes too long. I don't have time to read everything, so it's nice if it's an informative stream. But there are days when the light-hearted and fun topics can brighten a dreary day.

I admire the many smart, witty posters on Fodors. They richly deserve much recognition for keeping the forum interesting, informative and alive. The cranky complainers, airheads and pompous twits also make contributions in a small way.

Frommers is too slow and stale - a gal could grow old before getting a reply.

I think ira has hit it right on the head..hurray for us &quot;old fogies&quot; although age tends to be a state of mind, not a number.

So true, NorthShore, most other boards do not get the traffic as here and some never check back.

hey now ira, never fear there are plenty of debates about the size and weight of backpacks. Plus Thorn Tree has an &quot;older travelers&quot; branch too.

Thorntree has questions about good 3* hotels in Florence, splurges in Paris, etc. that are beyond the scope of basic budget travel. And Fodors often has basic budget questions. So the audiences of the two boards are different, but there is overlap.

I find the Thorntree format to be quite laborious to work through compared to Fodors. That's the main reason I don't read there more.

And Frommers simply has a much smaller volume. But it has had very typical controversies also - like if Paris is really all it's cracked up to be (perennial topic).

NorthShore,

Why don't we hear more from you?

Thank you for your replies.

ira, your first post is very insightful, falls in the category of &quot;it's brighter when the sun is out&quot;.

intrepid1, the first time I've ever been accused of being coy. I didn't use the Frommer's name in the title so as to elicit comments on other boards. It did.

Christina, I wasn't complaining about Frommer's, just commenting. Your analyses are very close to my own.

Interesting that no one took serious offense to the fourth paragraph. I think it is precisely these type of postings that keep the volume high here.

&lt;They seem to have have many fewer mutual admiration postings, many less vanity postings, troll postings and hardly any silliness.&gt;

No one took offence because it's a true statement!

&lt;They seem to have have many fewer mutual admiration postings, many less vanity postings, troll postings and hardly any silliness.&gt;

I wonder if it's the Europe board that has so much of all this (NOT that there's anything wrong with that)?

I don't really frequent the other boards, except Africa/Middle East, and there's very little of what you describe on that board, although certainly people are friendly and try to help each other.

I actually found Fodors through Frommers when planning a trip to Tanzania. No one on Frommers ever answered my questions.

Love the ThornTree, but don't like the way things just sink and aren't topped. But I'm a young-at-heart lefty, even though I burned my backpack long ago.

Leely, TT works exactly the same as Fodors as far as sinking or topping.

I'll have to check the settings on ThornTree. For me, nothing gets topped (but I haven't looked for a few weeks). If I add a post to a thread from January 2005 (for example), I can't find it again unless I scroll through all the subsequent threads, which could be pages and pages (or I could do a search - but the point is the thread doens't come to the top). You can get email notification of responses to threads, which is somewhat useful.

suze, it does? Am I crazy? I thought the format just showed (on the left) the date of the last reply, but that it didn't necessarily bring it literally to the top of the page, thus forcing me to dig deep to find questions related to X or Y or Z.

I know, I could search, but sometimes, esp. re: East Africa, I'm not sure what I'm looking for.

Thanks for the info.

And sorry, jsmith, that this is off topic.

Leely,
You are not crazy! I don't see posts topping on TT either which is the real drawback to that board format IMO. Just now I was having a difficult time finding a thread I replied to yesterday. I can't even get the email notification thing to work. Questions there seem to get much fewer replies as a result.

Hmmm... well as of last weekend any posts I replied to then showed up back at the top of the branch (not the VERY top but the next one under the FAQ that top each branch permanently. I'm not sure why it wouldn't work this way for everyone.

I also like the send private email feature TT offers and have several penpals and long time correspondent friends made from this site.

suze,
That is truly bizarre. I just posted a reply on TT today and the thread didn't get toppped. I've only posted on the Africa and Asia branches but I would think that they all use the same format.

I'm going to check when I get home. I know there are lots of various personal preference settings available on TT, so I'm wondering if possibly the 'topping my post' function is something you have to activate within in your own settings.

Thanks, suze. I would love to be able to do that!

They never go to the top unless I'm missing something?

Oh my gosh!!! You're right, suze. Once logged in, there's an option under the Preferences menu tab that says -

Would you like to see the most recent Replied To thread at the top?

Then you answer yes or no. I wonder how many TT posters don't even know this option exists. Quite a few of us judging from the replies on this thread! :D

Thanks, Patty and Suze.

And do I ever feel like a dimwit. I can't even remember my password there anymore. I just got so frustrated with the way posts would sink sink sink into oblivion.

Leely, Hey don't feel bad... that's why I couldn't help earlier because I am writing from the office &amp; don't know my password!!!

I just remembered there were LOTS of different options on TT under personal settings for how many messages you see per page, font sizes, colors, etc. etc. So about 5 years ago I must have checked that box about recent thread to the top. Wow I'm a genius ;-)

suze, so diod I, I rechecked my choice a minute ago to be sure but today's post did not go to the top.

well heck, i don't know. i'm sure they have glitches just like any other website. i'll try this weekend and see if mine still works the same as before.

Leely, I have no difficulty with your post. It fits nicely under the heading. Now if you talk about your cats at great length with another poster that would bother me or whether you should take a foreign inamorato that would be extraneous.

I used Frommer's years ago, before I knew about this one. I did get some great information, but like others have stated, it was much slower. Another board that has a new forum section is tripadvisor. Their boards are pretty active, and there are quite a few posters there that post here as well.

slowtrav.com , IMHO, is next best.

As a comparison I asked the same question on both Fodor's and Frommer's. The question asked the location of a Battle of Britain Memorial.

On Fodor's the question was asked at 9:19 AM and answered at 9:33 with the inclusion of a website.

The question was asked on Frommer's at 9:51, at 11:04 Robespierre answered WITH A PHOTOGRAPH of the Memorial but no location. At 3:54 another poster provided the location, driving instructions and 2 websites.

One more question about TT, sorry. Since the topping only works when you're logged in, is there a way to stay logged in to TT like on the fodors forum? I'm having to re-log in every time. Thanks.

Patty, back before I gave up on TT I had the same problem. I thought maybe it had to do something with my computer here at work (paranoid). But actually I doubt it. I think it just logs you off for some reason.

jsmith, also, I wonder can one set one's preferences on Frommers? I still don't find their set-up very user friendly after deciding to browse it again this a.m. Maybe I'm just so accustomed to this format that I've become terribly lazy.

On the other hand, when I'm *really* looking for something, I'll put up with any ol' format (like chowhound's, which I don't like at all).