[mkcol74]

Yeah good April Fool there Tom, just in the nick of time before noon ?

[SimonS1]

[quote quote=798679]Decline of the Forum

Am I alone in thinking that the level and quality of contributions to the BT Forum are at an all-time low? I don’t want to blame it on the new format (that is old hat now) but it is commonplace to visit the site these days to find the most recent contributions are 12, 20 hours old. That never used to happen. Certainly, we have lost some active and valuable posters but the Forum does not appear to have attracted new blood in their stead.

Here I am being deliberately controversial but I think part of the turn-off for some people is the obsession with all things BA and trivial BA knocking that is rather like a worn record. We have an example of it at the moment, posted last night, under the heading ‘How Disappointing….’. Sure it is ‘funny’ but is it of any value/ import to business travellers? It would be great if we could move to a more balanced, less UK-centric, less-BA bashing level of discussion.
[/quote]

Funny – I was thinking that the other day. I would have described myself as a regular user (ie daily) but these days I probably only look in once in a few days or even a week.

I put it down to a few things:

1. The format is hideous and hard to navigate (on a mobile its awful). It takes some doing to come up with something worse than before but somehow BT has achieved that…

2. The site is painfully slow.

3. With a few exceptions like the poignant MrM ‘goodbye’ the threads are pretty boring with the same old faces having an answer on everything.

Funnily enough I don’t thing the BA threads are really an issue – the airline has brought it on itself really. But at least in the VK days there was some debate.

[first_class_please]

I still read most days, but the new platform url now includes ‘forum’ so cannot access from the office. Adding responses from iPad / laptop is sometimes too much hassle.

Hoping to comment on Wednesday on the new BA First check in at Heathrow.

[peter19]

I find myself reading still each day and BT is still part of my daily site checks if you like but I do echo the above and feel the same old is posting each time. I also feel by the time I do read some threads I can’t add much which maybe says something about me but sometimes the opportunity I feel isn’t there or I have nothing to add. I would be interested to see if the traffic was unique new visitors as we need to encourage new people to post and engage – maybe the April fools might help or some category changes.

[Tom Otley]

Well the changes we are hoping for next week are:

1. better format – especially on iPads
2. ability to post a new topic (fairly core)
3. easier log in.

and then we’ll see…

[NTarrant]

I’ve found the layout a bit of a hinderance so looking forward to the better format.

Can’t say some of the threads have been that interesting of late, so haven’t visited as often recently.

[MartynSinclair]

What I find surprising is the lack of threads about Virgin, after all they are also an airline offering flights to USA/Far East. Perhaps the reason why the forum is so critical about BA is due to most of us flying with them.

[LuganoPirate]

I hope the new format will apply equally to Samsung tabs as it does to iPads Tom?
I would still like to see links opening in new tabs as used to happen.
Other than that the site works just fine for me. Thanks.

[stevescoots]

I still visit at least once a day but do not post as much as before. Most questions have already been answered or advice given. I do very few flight reviews as although still flying as much as before it is almost always the same route, group of carriers or nothing to add other than what’s been posted before. I suspect its similar for most members here therefore the thread turnover is slower than before.
New blood is what is needed as new members have new experiences or as in my case when I joined many a moon ago are relatively new to all this travel malarkey and need advice from the old hands. One thing that might help is if we did more reviews ourselves of non-flying but business related items, such as phones, IT, other services we generally take for granted. I made a couple of very useful contacts on here before by people explaining a little about what they do, even just a one liner. I use 3 members services regularly and a few others who pointed me in the right direction. Maybe we do another forum members introduction thread?
It would be curious to see how many people signed up to the new forum, what the statistic is for usage if that’s available and then email them. Additionally, maybe do a piece in the Mag rather than just the “in the forum” section

As for the forum its self, its ok with me and works on all my devices (windows and android) Did we ever get Avatars sorted?

[JohnHarper]

TominScotland makes a good point, I look here a lot less than I used to. Part of that is I no longer live in the UK so much of the content is of limited interest but then there are more reasons which I’ve tried to explain below.

I find the whole site slow to load no matter where I am or the quality of the connection. I also miss the trip reports which were one of the things that interested me most and I rather enjoyed writing them too when I had time. I have a few I could write on airlines that hardly feature – Aegean, Germanwings/Eurowings, Finnair, LOT and Iran Air but they take quite a while to write and disappear so quickly it doesn’t seem worth the effort. Posts in general do not stay visible for long and searching seems to be weak.

The topics are a bit same old and very BA centric, something that doesn’t interest me at all although I have long predicted the downwards spiral they are on, ever faster it seems but it’s now several years since I was on one of their aircraft and I have no intention of boarding one any time soon. As my life is lived in Cyprus and Germany fortunately I have no need.

It’s good to see posts from familiar people but I feel the whole place is a bit tired and needs a better, more useable and faster format – the old forum was far better on all fronts from a point of view of functionality.

[Tom Otley]

Create topic is now live…

[EU_Flyer]

[quote quote=798727]Could be. But traffic is higher than ever so i think part of it is how hard the forum is to use.

[/quote]

Great that traffic is higher than ever!

Personally I find the new forum slightly more awkward to use than the old one and it’s slower, but it doesn’t deter me from logging on.

As for contributions, I rarely get offended by even the most controversial posts. The key for me as a participant are the following:

1. All participants are made to feel welcome;
2. Further to (1), nobody is made to feel unwelcome through overly snide remarks or unnecessary directed observations that are off-topic;
3. Opinions, that are reasonable and not personally directed, are respected.

I really appreciate the input of regulars like rferguson and others who give us a great insight into the workings of the industry.

The forum is a significant reason I check BT daily. Hope it remains active.

Best wishes to everyone.

[WillieWelsh]

I find less use here since we moved from North Queensferry to Würzburg but stop by sometimes to see if anything interesting is going on.

It’s all very slow to load would be my chief criticism and posts seem a lot less visible than they used to and there’s no way of loading the next 20 or whatever as there used to be.

A lot of posters seem to have dropped off too or maybe I just don’t see their posts as they’ve dropped out of sight.

Most of my travel is now with Lufthansa so as there’s little mention of them – apart from strikes there isn’t so much I want to read.

[Tom Otley]

OK, well those three things are done now – you should see the text scrolling across the screen because we have removed the ads (and the revenue that goes with them – please subscribe).
There’s a New Topic button, which a spammer immediately used to promote goodness knows what.
And… it’s easier to log in.

Next we will look at the speed of the site – that’s tougher, but we’ll work on it.

[NTarrant]

That looks great Tom, thanks

[Author]

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