Hi Everyone,

Wanted to touch base with all of you to let you know our progress in getting things moving forward with the Travel Deals forum.

The main thing right now we're focusing on is categories. Below is what all of us have come up with.

Requests
Hotel
Air Fare
Car Rental
Cruises
Train Travel (should this even be a category? If so do you think it would go better under something like "Transportation"?)
Travel Discussion (Talk about your travel experiences or give good advise/tips about places you have visited.)
Travel Packages

What other ones do you think we should have or are these good?

As soon as we figure out these details we'll start implementing them along with the few added suggestions from the previous "Idea" thread.

Cheers!

The Muffin Mod

isles1 said:When you say categories, do you mean you will be implementing sub-forums in the Travel Deals forum? I do not follow your plan.

If that is the route you plan to go, then I would replace "Train Travel" with "Other Transportation."

I am not sure we need categories to address the issues here. As others have said here and in the original suggestion thread, we need to make people jump through hoops to post a REQUEST or more aggressive moderation to delete or lock threads that are neither a Travel Deal or a proper REQUEST. IMO, categories (sub-forums?) are just going to lead people to post improper requests in the applicable category.

Thank you for your efforts.

The categories would be something similar to the Hot Deals forum. EX: Every new topic created in Travel Deals would be looked at by a Moderator, then put in the proper category. So say someone was posting a deal about cruises, then we would first put it under "Deal", then also put it under "Cruises". So then if a member wanted only to find deals on cruises, they could set their preferences to that. Does that make sense?

As far as someone jumping through hoops before they can post a request, I would have to look more into that with our programming team to see how that would work exactly. In the meantime, if we're categorizing every new topic that comes in, then we can coach those members who are posting requests that are lacking the required information.

Thoughts? Anyone....Bueller, Bueller...

isles1 said:MuffinFW said:isles1 said:When you say categories, do you mean you will be implementing sub-forums in the Travel Deals forum? I do not follow your plan.

If that is the route you plan to go, then I would replace "Train Travel" with "Other Transportation."

I am not sure we need categories to address the issues here. As others have said here and in the original suggestion thread, we need to make people jump through hoops to post a REQUEST or more aggressive moderation to delete or lock threads that are neither a Travel Deal or a proper REQUEST. IMO, categories (sub-forums?) are just going to lead people to post improper requests in the applicable category.

Thank you for your efforts.

The categories would be something similar to the Hot Deals forum. EX: Every new topic created in Travel Deals would be looked at by a Moderator, then put in the proper category. So say someone was posting a deal about cruises, then we would first put it under "Deal", then also put it under "Cruises". So then if a member wanted only to find deals on cruises, they could set their preferences to that. Does that make sense?
Perhaps I am not up to speed with the functions of the forums, but I did not notice anything in Hot Deals that appears to use categories or anything under Preferences in My Account that lets me limit the posts I would see.

I am not sure if most people know about or use this function. I am not attempting to TC, I am just not sure how this would address the issues in this forum. Perhaps it should just be rolled out and see how it goes?

Hey isles1, no big deal about not seeing the category function in HD's. If your using the Classic View, you won't. You can only see and use categories in Modern View.

I don't think categories will solve the "Requests" posting issues, but it may start to alleviate headaches, since we (the mods) will be able to step in and say, "hey, thanks for posting. Can you include all the research you have done thus far in your post...etc, etc." I do want to give a big THANKS to those who have taken the time and helped those (lack of info) "Requests" with positive reinforcement, if you will. It is greatly appreciated and helps the moral of the forum.

I understand how frustrating this repeated issue must be, so I'm doing all I can to find the best solution. I won't be around this weekend, but when I get in next week I'll review this thread and keep on going and going and going and going....

Thanks for all your patience and contributions to help make Travel Deals a crisp new forum!

The Muffin Mod