How do we all like the new site format?
 

For someone who likes to check in a few times a day, there's a lot of clicking to do, but I think it's great. How about you?

I know that many people suggested breaking Hawaii, Florida, & California out into their own subjects because there were supposedly too many posts in the regular U.S. forum devoted to those states. I never quite understood that argument though, because it was easy enough to page down through all the posts, in my opinion. Now we're left with the bizarre circumstance where if someone searches the U.S. forum for posts on "Hawaii," they come up with zero. <BR> <BR>Whatever. I guess it's fine. The former "Forums" became the "Travel Lounge" and are now "Travel Talk." What will it be next month? <BR> <BR>Sorry, I'm a little grumpy today.

I'm with Grumpy...

Love it, although I vote that Nevada should get its own area too. Las Vegas, DisneyWorld and Hawaii are huge vacation destinations and not surprisingly, tend to attract the largest number of travel agents who like to "stack the deck" with all their "helpful" posts. They can all go pitch and promote and post phony questions on their very own threads now, and leave the REAL travelers and REAL travel questions alone.

I'm with Grumpy, too. Except that Hawaii posts can now be in the US forum *or* the Hawaii one (or both, if the poster wants to post twice). There's nothing to make clear that "US" is intended to be "the rest of the US" (other than California, Hawaii, and Florida). Similarly for Europe: if I want to look at posts re Italy I now have to go to the Italy forum and the Europe one. This is not logical.

Is it possible that I'm the only one whose computer is freezing on the new format?

Too many forum choices. And I think "travel talk" is demeaning. I;d rather hang around the lounge.

I am with Grumpy! And what's up with the advertising on the Travel Talk home?

I miss the information on bed and breakfasts and historic places to stay. It would be appreciated if you could set up a section for them like you had two updates ago.

Fodors, listen up: "If it's not broken <BR>don't fix it!" It was fine the way it was and the time before that it was fine too. So, please, once we get used to this one, just leave it alone. OK?

I think the earlier posts nailed it...we now have advertisements...and it takes even longer to log on... <BR> <BR>Oh, well. Nothing's free... <BR> <BR>(Jeez, I just got used to going to the right side, now I've got to go to the left side...my life is complicated...)

I liked the fact everyone was in the same place before. I'm generally interested in the northern california threads, as I spend a lot of time there. Now I have to make a special effort - in fact, until reading this I didn't realize they'd been lopped off this branch. Basically the old site was better. <BR>

Now I will have to check Hawaii under "Hawaii" and "United Staes."

I don't like it at all. Breaking up "topics" into 8 pieces makes it difficult and was just unnecessary. There weren't many posts on that forum anyway. <BR> <BR>The problem was with the Europe forum on which most general topics were posted.

<BR>I've used adsubtract.com for a while now to eliminate most ads from pages. For the most part, it works very well and speeds up home-modem-speed pages. [had some problems with Napster, though, so I just remove it from the proxy settings when I'm there] <BR> <BR>I like the new home page of Fodors, but wish all travel 'talk' in the US was not separated <BR> <BR>A suggestion (publicly) to Fodors. Append a portion of the posters IP address to each post. <BR> <BR>Example: my posts would say Author GOL ([email protected] 123.456) Date 9/19/00, 9:16am (or whatever). The 123.456 will be a portion of my IP address, which will tell others out there that I posted it. It won't tell my name or even my ISP (which may tell my location). But,it will be able to tell others in the community if I (or someone else) post many different items with different aliases, shill or useless posts. Without getting into a technical discussion, if the IP is objectionable, the Fodors system admins would be able to assign a unique code to posting authors that would have the same effect. <BR> <BR>I have seen this scheme applied to a Yellowstone chat site, where, like Fodors, registration, name and e-mail addresses are optional/fictional. It eliminated the "Anyone know of a good hotel" post which was answered by the same person using an alias (suggesting their resort was terrific). <BR> <BR>This isn't a perfect solution, as there are ways to get around this, but I believe it would work of a majority the postings. <BR> <BR>Fodors, what do you think? <BR>

Why Alaska wasn't separated or New York? I live in those two states and now I feel like a second class citizen. Too much clicking and I can't find a post on tipping I read two or three weeks ago.

Personally I was hoping this new format would keep REAL travel topics together and the other NON travel b.s. somewhere else. I posted a topic yesterday and this morning I had to scan past posts about hot dogs, toilets, new format, printing problems, etc. before I found my post. And actually this was an improvement to the usual posts of people bashing other people, the long post about the morality of unmarried people taking trips together, kids, etc. Sure, you could say these are somehow travel related but I don't think that was the intent of this forum. If these useless, trivial, bashing posts could be put in another category ("special interests") it would keep the main parts free for REAL travel information! <BR>

what is the address of the new site to see the new format please? I've gone to fodors.com and it looks the same. Any particular area I should click on?

Well, I'm addicted to this site, but I can't say that I like the new format--you have to check too many places, including ones that the new logic of the site dictated that do not have any posts. And will this be maintained, or will I still have to look everywhere to be sure I see the new posts? I didn't think scrolling through all the posts was so onerous, whereas this new format IS if you want to see everything new.

Hello All! Thanks for chiming in on what you think of our latest fine-tuning of the site. <BR> <BR>To 'lisa,' 'sneezy,' 'bashful,' 'GOL,' and 'terri': We split off the most popular threads from the Europe and US forums so those destinations could be presented in a more organized manner: it was something many Fodorites specifically asked for when we re-designed earlier this year (and if any of you are out there, feel free to jump in and back me up here!). Also, it should make searches less time consuming. <BR> <BR>Currently, we're in the admittedly tedious process of sorting thousands of previous posts into their appropriate categories, but we believe it's worth the effort. I know it'll take some getting used to, but our hope is that visitors will see from how we've presented the new sub-categories that threads about California will be found in the California forum and not the United States forum. <BR> <BR>Same thing with the new Topics forums that appear after the destinations on the Travel Talk home page. The former Smart Travel Tips forum became too general to be of much organizational use, so we analyzed the threads in it and came up with a master list of Topics that most of them could be placed under. As 'terri' pointed out, visitors often talk about things not directly related to travel, so with Topics we gave them an area where they can talk about everything from the price of gas to portable curling irons. Again, we believe that after a short period of adjustment visitors will get the hang of it. <BR> <BR>To 'good' and 'me': We constantly track what Fodorites are talking about and try to design the site to accommodate the content---thanks for your suggestions about spinning other areas off into their own forums. We'll continue to analyze which destinations warrant their own forums and make tweaks here and there as they become necessary. <BR> <BR>We love your feedback and use it as a gauge of how well we are doing. The irony is that if the forums weren't so popular we probably wouldn't have to find new ways to better maintain them. But if you all do your job of sharing your thoughts, ideas, and advice with one another, you force us to do ours. <BR> <BR>So everybody back to work! <BR> <BR>Regards, <BR>Dave Downing <BR>Community Coordinator <BR>fodors.com