suze

heck i've only been posting here pretty much daily for eight years... what do i know?
;-)

there's nothing more depressing than opening a forum that hasn't had a new post for days.

if you want it to GROW (which i do support) why do you think there would be more postings made by creating smaller forums? sorry but i don't get the logic.

Kavey

Suze, I don't post in this forum enough to have a hugely vested interest BUT personally, when I am interested in advice, threads, info about one place, I don't like going in to find that the only new posts are about a completely different place that I don't have an interest in. I'd rather find that all the posts are about places I'm interested in so that anytime there _is_ anything new, it's what I'm looking for.

If you have an interest in both regions, of course it makes sense to keep the regions united.

But it may be that a lot of people are interested in only one or the other, and may be attracted by the idea of a forum dedicated to the region they are interested in. That in turn may make it a honeypot for more people looking for a place to discuss that region alone, rather than a broader forum ...

As I said, I'm just expressing an opinion...

I do remember when alt.rec.travel split into regional groups and there was a lot of worry then too, but eventually each individual board became busier and the total traffic across all boards was higher than it had been when it had been one big board.

Anyway, personally, my main request is to separate out the poles, regardless of whether or not Latin America is divided or not.

shillmac

What about the fact that the South American threads greatly increase at certain times of the year? Perhaps that should have some bearing. For example, right now there are a lot of posts for South America, but half the year those numbers are significantly down.

It honestly doesn't seem to present much of a problem having it all together, with the exception that people really should mention the country in the thread title.

hopefulist

My points exactly - we're not that big so splitting off doesn't matter to me, but knowing the country would be GREAT.

Jeff_Costa_Rica

It makes no difference to me. I'll go with what seems best to everyone. I have an interest in several countries that appear in the combined forum we have, so I never feel like I have to wade through a lost of posts that don't interest me.

Suze, honest, this seems an active forum to me. I've never noticed that this is "a forum that hasn't had a new post for days."

No matter what gets done, could I put in a request that posters give some hint in their subject lines of the place they're talking about? I'm never sure if I should click on titles like "Need itinerary help" or "How to I get to the airport?"

Kavey

"could I put in a request that posters give some hint in their subject lines of the place they're talking about? I'm never sure if I should click on titles like "Need itinerary help" or "How to I get to the airport?""

The trouble is, IMHO, that users do select a country when creating a new thread so forget/ don't realise that it doesn't show when the threads are listed in the forum.

I think most long-time users are more specific with thread titles already.

I agree completely, btw, unless I'm desperately procrastinating some work chore, I don't read threads with really vague titles... or at least, not first off.

suze

Sorry Jeff, my reference wasn't clear. You're right there are always new posts here.

I meant previously when Fodor's has rearranged forums (Smart Travel Tips, most recently as an example) they created a forum where nothing much happens.

Jed

I agree with suze. I vote 'NO'. I think splitting LA would be a negative factor.

I open all the forums daily. There aren't that many posts on the LA, usually just a little more than 'Caribbean'. Not a problem.

Katie_H

Thanks for the feedback.

One other thought...Currently, our forums are not being searched by Google and other search engines due to our use of frames; but after the redesign the forums will be able to be searched by search engines again. I think being more specific and clearly defining the two forums might increase traffic.

suze

well i don't think so... but it's your forum

just now someone is looking for suggestions for South America, but also would to consider Mexico and I was able to make a suggestion for that. i would have never read that post if the forums were split.

Fra_Diavolo

Another "no" vote, largely for the reasons suze gave.

MichelleY

What are frames?? Will changing out of "frames" make this board very different. The set up now is great. I find TA's set up irritating, going back & forth to the question postings.

Thanks,

MY

MichelleY

Also: I like how here I was able to just click on Arizona, Utah & Nevada and post our trip report once with links to those states. TA I would have to repost the whole report on each state. Wouldn't I??

MY

suze

Michelle~ Yes you would at Trip Advisor (have to copy and paste your trip report into new posts for each forum) because each state is a separate forum over there. Here ALL the posts end up under the United States for general reading, even though they are tagged by individual states.

Kavey

Katie, I totally agree about the frames, I think yours is now the only site I visit that is still frame-based and it's hugely frustrating.

Michelle, you asked what frames are? Without getting too techie, if you break a webpage such as this one down into elements, you have the horizontal bar area across the top, usually where the website banner and some general links are located. In this case we also have the threads list element down the left. And the main area is given over to the individual thread being viewed. Years ago, the most common way of splitting a webpage down to show all of those elements together was to use frames, which allowed you to actually show three completely different web pages in the three defined frames or areas. Nowadays, you don't need to use frames to achieve the same result and the advantage of using the newer (though hardly actually new) methods is that bookmarking and website searching is far easier, to name just two things.

Patty

I agree that I don't particularly like the way that the Tripadvisor forums are organized into separate forums for each country as there's a lot of crossover information within each region. However, that's not what I understood the proposed change to mean.

avrooster

MY logic (for others it could work differently) is the following:

I post only in the Argentina forum.

A this precise time, I would have to waste my time opening the following threads, which COULD be about Argentina, but are not:

Villa Mot-Mot
question about Bosque del Cabo
Tauck Tours
honeymoon destination
Need help dealing with bug bites
itinerary help AGAIN

And that's just in the top 20 threads.

Splitting the forum would help me not to waste my time.

Besides, I hope the "upgrade" will work, because this website is technically awful, the way I see it.

1) When you open it, you have to hit "refresh", to get the latest threads.

2) The search feature does not work well, as many posters have observed.

3) I have a few friends who are very frequent posters in the TA Argentina forum. When I have asked them to post here, the answer has been: No way, it is technically awful!

4) So, I feel one of the ways to grow would be to improve technically, which could attract knowledgeable posters who, at this time, prefer to post elsewhere.

Katie_H

We are pulling the forums entirely out of frames on our backend---but the "new" forums will still have a very similar layout. Threads will appear on the left, etc. We will still be using the "big bucket" approach with the large groupings.

However, we will make it easier/more intuitive to filter the forum results by country/category; but it won't be a separate forum. Basically, the country "tags" will actually start behaving like tags. Right now they are buried in our search function above---which as you know doesn't work incredibly well.

Each forum will also have a "base" page of sorts; so you won't just be looking at some message that says, "click on a topic to the left" when you come to the site. Instead it will feature popular topics for that forum and recently posted trip reports.

We will also be adding full member profiles and a bookmarking function.

We want to retain what makes our forums unique; this commitment is partly to blame for the length of this process. Thanks for being so patient---and for sticking with us and for recommending us to your friends.

If you have a request or think of anything that you'd like us to consider let me know. We're open-minded! You can email me at [email protected].

Kavey

Katie, what about the Poles, do you think you'll be separating those out?

avrooster

Another technical improvement which is required here is to make it easy to report a mistake or an objectionable post. Having to e-mail the editors about it is preposterous.