NOW LAUNCHED: Join 2,500 readers in the new HfP forums

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• Barraclough says:

  17 Dec17 December 16:33

  I’ve been commenting in the daily chat threads in the forums and didn’t realize this old style chat thread was still being used. I prefer the new structure but I’ll put (or rather repeat) my two pennyworth here.

  Looking at comments made so far as regards the forums and chat thread, the majority seem to be constructive, whether for or against. A few posters have been sniping and making negative comments without offering ways forward and to these I would say look at what we get from HfP: almost 16/7 support, definitive insights into travel, rewards and points, and tireless effort, keeping HfP as the leading UK player. Yes, HfP is a business and provides livelihoods but we readers do not get charged and we should recognise just how good a service we do get. Rob and Rhys welcome constructive comments but just sniping gets us nowhere.

  Some posters think there is a loss of posts with the new structure. Any reduction may be due to less duplication and less drivel! It is ‘swings and roundabouts’ I guess, or ‘you win some, you lose some’. The forums may well bring in new readers and posters. The new chat thread and forums can focus more fully on travel, miles and points rather than be a cosy social space for a few regulars some of whom would impose restrictions on topics covered. There were many posters on the old chat line with a wealth of experience and wisdom, and I’ve personally benefited from their advice and I do hope they will come to see the benefits of the forums approach. Give the new structure a chance and I’m guessing in a few weeks the refinements being done will be sorted and most of us will have adjusted to the new HfP normal!

  One poster said that “implementation on this website has always been underwhelming”; Really? I guess unlike BA’s implementation whose IT upgrades and changes are faultless? !!!

  • Rob says:

    17 Dec17 December 17:18

    Thanks, sounds about right to me.

    Implementation is about as good as it can be, and the changes will be modest, albeit cumulatively they add up. People forget that it is virtually impossible to design something which works on a huge desktop monitor, a big phone and a small phone. Unlike, say, Facebook which is now 90% mobile traffic, our traffic is still 50/50 desktop & tablet vs mobile. It gives us challenges which other ‘mobile first’ platforms don’t face.

• Harrier25 says:

  17 Dec17 December 17:41

  I must say, I do like the link to the daily chat from the news page.

• Jonathan says:

  17 Dec17 December 19:01

  I’ve tried, really tried to be positive but come back to the two main issues with the new forum vs the old daily chat thread and Bits before that.

  1) I don’t always know what I want to read about. The best information came from snippets buried in the comments that I didn’t set out for but stumbled across. The new forum doesn’t lend itself to this without drilling into every post which I’m not going to do.

  If posts go off on a tangent and the title has nothing to do with it the information I’m interested it, I overlook it and good information may get missed by the masses.

  For example Ghengis was one of the most regular and reliable commenters and I haven’t seen him once post in the forum. Or in the forum I would have missed Anna’s nightmare in Singapore.

  2) I worry I’m missing the good juicy stuff and following comments and that previously had nested replies chronologically was logical and easy to follow. Now all posts and replies are treated equally – chronologically, and mixed up it doesn’t flow right. If I wanted technical detail I’d go to FT and as really relevant stuff made it to this site anyway was happy with that.

  Forums are for specific types of people, not the masses. Maybe Rob wants this site to change from its heritage and be a copy of FT as it feels like it’s losing its identity. I regularly sent my parent in laws to this sites highlighting articles and comments but certainly wouldn’t bother now as I’d spend more time explaining how to navigate the site.

  I was a 7 year avid daily reader of HfP, religiously checking and reading comments 5+ times a day. In the space of 2 weeks sadly I’ve now stopped reading HfP on a daily basis and relegated the main site abd articles to an every few days basis. I’ve visited the forum daily and even using recent topics there’s so much information with 5,000 clicks and many hours of my life needed to read it all. As replies also include the original posts and subsequent replied it’s repetitive duplicated words.

  I just can’t get onboard with it. Maybe if I understood the problem with using comments and what you were trying to achieve going forwards I could get onboard but as it stands and I’m searching other sites for my daily points fix. Sorry Rob.

  • Rob says:

    17 Dec17 December 20:59

    The bottom line is that the chat thread was heavily used by about 200 people.

    (10,000 page views per day does not need many readers given how long chat was each day and the need to start from scratch each time due to nesting.)

    The content offered no value to literally 99.9% of the 300,000 people each month who visit the site, and absolutely zero value for anyone long term, even amongst the 200, as you couldn’t find anything.

    What we can build now is a massive database of Q&A information which can help everyone who visits the site and, via Google search results, many others who have never visited before.

    That’s why we did it.

  • Andrew J says:

    17 Dec17 December 21:20

    We should probably give up with our moaning as Rob is set on this new format and it’s his site, so who are we to argue and for every comment we post raising our frustration, he responds with the rationale which I’m sure isn’t a good use of his or our time. I’m drawing a line, not complaining anymore and saying goodbye to HFP. It’s been a pleasure and certainly made the last 18 months more tolerable and enjoyable but this new format is not for me and I can’t spend any more time trying to make sense of how to use it. As I said earlier, the chat page was a lot more scrollable but this new way of having to go into every topic on the recent page on off chance there’s something inside of note just doesn’t work for me. But anyway I’ll 🤐

    • Geoff 1977 says:

      17 Dec17 December 22:10

      Good to see that you’re being so level headed about something so insignificant

    • yorkieflyer says:

      17 Dec17 December 23:12

      I have to agree, I’ll dip in occasionally but HFP has lost its way in my view. No longer a first visit every morning. Accidentally through covid the site developed a community feel which requires a critical mass to work in the way it has. I recall the saying that 90% of advertising is wasted, but which 90%, yes I’m paraphrasing. Meddle with success at your peril. Where is the USP now? Just seems to be a clunky UK centric Flyertalk

    • yorkieflyer says:

      17 Dec17 December 23:43

      Aye let’s move on and just occasionally dip in

  • Genghis says:

    18 Dec18 December 08:14

    The forum in its current state is not for me. It’s much harder to just dip in and out with all of the required clicks back and forth and is clunky on a phone. The daily chat in forum format doesn’t work IMO. Yes – I’ll check it occasionally and I have registered but doubt I’ll comment much. I understand why it’s been created, but to be a bank of knowledge used for Google searches etc it needs some good content. Will that come?…

    • Lyn says:

      18 Dec18 December 12:30

      Well expressed, Genghis. Thank you. My thoughts too.

      • Andrew J says:

        18 Dec18 December 12:51

        And mine.

        • Freddy says:

          18 Dec18 December 16:01

          Spot on!

        • Froggee says:

          18 Dec18 December 16:27

          Me too. And I’ve tried. Not that I’ve added value. I think nesting of comments is the big issue on the chat thread. But it’s Rob’s site, not ours.

        • Rob says:

          18 Dec18 December 21:38

          We could allow comment nesting purely in the chat thread. It would take a few weeks to sort though because the only options we have out of the box are globally on or globally off.

          Note that we did have nesting last Monday and we had SO many complaints about it that it was turned off by the afternoon.

        • Froggee says:

          19 Dec19 December 08:12

          Or you could just keep the daily chat thread in the old place…

    • Farid says:

      21 Dec21 December 05:58

      I take this as a great marketing experiment. Changing the format ( the offer!) will have consequences on the change of users ..perhaps HfP is clearly targeting a specific population that may very much like the new approach. I would love , in a few weeks time, for the comparison of demographic to be shared. Perhaps a Harvard Business Review paper could be written?

      • Rob says:

        21 Dec21 December 09:15

        Let me do it for you:

        * forum page views exceeded chat thread page views from Day 1
        * forum will attract new HfP readers from Google who are the most profitable sort of reader
        * unlike the chat thread, the value of the forum will grow exponentially over time because more content will drive more Google visitors and will drive more repeat visits to search the ever growing database of content

        • Farid says:

          24 Dec24 December 05:49

          Thanks!!

• RogerC says:

  17 Dec17 December 21:34

  It’s so sad. HfP has been my wake-up material every day for years. I’ve learned so much – and most of that by stumbling on stuff which I had no idea existed. I can’t open up two or three pages of ‘recent topic’ lists on the offchance – and then read every question umpteen times. It feels as though all the interesting stuff must be happening in some thread that I haven’t found and that removes all the pleasure that the site gave me. I was always sceptical of the forum idea, but bowed to the greater knowledge of those requesting one. But it really doesn’t work for me.

  • Harrier25 says:

    17 Dec17 December 23:17

    My God, has someone died? When’s the funeral? Cheer up everyone. It’s only a bloody forum!!

    • Geoff 1977 says:

      18 Dec18 December 15:21

      Well said Harrier25. Cheer up, it’s Christmas.

  • Crafty says:

    17 Dec17 December 23:31

    I do think that Rob and Rhys would be wise to take heed of these comments.

    Many years ago, I closed down an (ironically forum based) community that I had started, on the selfish presumption it was my own decision to make. In fact, the community that had built up was a significant part of the lives of a small number of people – 50-100 perhaps – and my decision hadn’t taken sufficient heed of their own wishes, nor those of the living breathing community our collective efforts had unwittingly created.

    I regret the decision, which was in hindsight a simple act of value destruction, based on a total misunderstanding of what had been built and whom had built it.

    • Harrier25 says:

      17 Dec17 December 23:40

      Yes but its already been said….it’s the 99.9% they’re interested in, not the little 200 active posters. Ho-hum

      • yorkieflyer says:

        17 Dec17 December 23:44

        Google…….

      • To dare is to do says:

        19 Dec19 December 09:20

        Those 200 odd active posters who give their time freely to repeat themselves constantly on people’s problems that have been asked and answered hundreds of times before, you mean those posters? You dismiss them very easily.

  • Mike says:

    18 Dec18 December 21:11

    Roger C – I am with you. I used to read HFP first thing in the morning always heading for chat then check back at lunch time, mid afternoon and then in the evening- always found loads of useful info – since the forum was introduced I haven’t been on more than twice – I have kind of lost interest as all the fun seems to have disappeared….

    • To dare is to do says:

      19 Dec19 December 09:21

      I agree Mike I’ve gone back to reading FT.

• David A says:

  18 Dec18 December 03:40

  I get it: people naturally don’t like change. But for me, having a separate forum means I can choose the subject matter quickly without having to wade through endless streams of unconnected ideas. An excellent idea.

  • Bagoly says:

    18 Dec18 December 11:17

    Yes, the advantage of forums over chats for finding information has always been obvious to me – in fact wikis are even better (although require more commonality of approach).
    What is educational for me here is to see how many people value something else.
    Not for the first time, I have learnt from HfP about something completely separate from travel.

• Lady London says:

  18 Dec18 December 11:08

  TBH a number of people whose comments I remembered and enjoyed and used to look out for – people who could change my mind on something – have disappeared over the past 2 years or so.

  I think the site got big and well known and findable so it attracted then sort of people you find on forums – including some trolls – whether those here liked it or not. At least 2 people I know have said they stopped posting because of the general nastiness that was taking over with these parvenus. I nearly stopped myself.

  The site had also reached a critical mass where the daily chat.with its linear format simply took too much time to keep up with on any detail if you wanted to track that particular detail.

  Searches using site: headforpoints.com google search string worked but did not catch all the posts with the words being searched for.

  So I think the critical mass had got to the point where it was going to expand anyway but the existing structure wasn’t coping with the level of interest. There are advantages to making things findable on user as well as on revenue side and it had got to that point anyway.

  I’m touched it has kept so many feeling there was a place to connect in Covid. It’s also been fantastic having one place to look as travel requirements changed everywhere and official sources were unclear.

  I hope regular commentators keep an eye on the Daily Comments thread on the Recent Topics page, at least.

  Though only being able to reply by pressing a button that requotes everthing in the post you’re replying to is probably particularly frustrating reading on a narrow mobile screen.

  • Barraclough says:

    18 Dec18 December 16:33

    Well said Lady London. I became an avid follower of HfP four years ago and have seen how the general nastiness, as you put it, has evolved. I’m sure some potential posters were put off because of the negative reaction which might follow – if it was a repeat request, something a bit naive, or was just something a regular disliked. I found the headforpoints.com google search string on HfP a year or so ago and use it a lot but it’s not perfect. It will be a pity if wise and experienced regulars drop out but if we can persuade them to stick it out I am guessing in a few weeks most will eventually see the benefits of a forum structure.

• Mart says:

  18 Dec18 December 18:02

  What frustrates me is the insistence that a forum is the new norm. A daily chat thread in the usual manner plus a forum would enable the hfp we love plus a forum for ‘google searches’ per robs comments.

  It does not need to be in the forum. The chat can and should stay in the old manner. I’m 25 myself and can tell you I have no interest in a forum. A chat thread full of random **** – much more exiting. Why do you think tiktok took off.

  R/R – please bring back the chat thread. It works, and forum might work for specific queries alongside. Don’t immediately beat down anyone who suggests chat comes back. Please listen.

  • Dave says:

    18 Dec18 December 18:23

    Get a grip.
    The chat thread was here for what, 18 months, and due to Covid. It was always a temporary arrangement, forum or not.
    It was mainly to same people day after day saying the same things to each other in an echo chamber of egos, and you had to go through that drivel to find anything of real use (I’ve no interest in reading how triggered people are by the existence of The Guardian, the Labour Party, mask wearing, lockdowns, or hearing from armchair virologists etc etc). It had also become far too much of a clique. A forum will address this and mean helpful information and discussion is more readily available IMHO.

    • Andrew J says:

      18 Dec18 December 18:58

      What seems odd is that those who are in favour of the forum seem to think they are the only ones with an opinion that matters – and people who don’t like the forum are just wrong, apparently.

    • Lady London says:

      18 Dec18 December 20:22

      …you forgot to mention my rants about Heathrow moneygrabbing…..

    • Barraclough says:

      19 Dec19 December 16:52

      Those wedded to the old chat thread might remember it only started 18 months ago in response to the pandemic and before that comments were spread about under the bits articles. I think Dave summed it up well yesterday. The old thread was at times an echo chamber of egos (although many regulars were not like that) but there was a lot of drivel to wade through to find the nuggets, and the forums under the new system make it easy to hone in on topics of interest and to search.

  • Rob says:

    18 Dec18 December 21:35

    We have a chat thread, in the forum. It is linked from the news home page, as it always was.

    The ONLY difference apart from some formatting changes is that you can’t nest comments.

    What you’re saying is that you think a chat thread, with airline and hotel specific questions in it, can exist alongside a forum, which it clearly can’t. We could allow a chat thread but on the condition that we deleted any questions about airlines, hotels or credit cards that were posted there. Is there really a point to that? What would actually be covered if no questions were allowed?

    In terms of numbers, yesterday the forum did 15,600 page views vs 10,688 page view for the chat thread for the previous Friday. With over 2,300 registrations we are clearly engaging people.

    • Metty says:

      18 Dec18 December 23:39

      I’ve waited a few days to comment while trying out the new setup.

      I think it’s absolutely fine. Daily routine for me is: scan the headline HfP articles then > Forums and > Recent Topics if just browsing. If actually looking for something, I now know where to go, the appropriate sub-forum.

      The old chat forum was the only place I found out about the Sheraton Park Lane ‘intern’ deal, but that was because I had time to read all the posts that day and stumbled across it. With the new forum it should be easier to find as it should pop up in Recent Topics, assuming someone posts in the appropriate Hotel Loyalty forum.

      So the new setup suits me just fine. I’m sorry some don’t like it.

    • Andrew J says:

      19 Dec19 December 06:58

      The other ONLY difference is that daily chat isn’t really being used and everything is hidden away in sub categories requiring many clicks to see what going on. The old way was far more modern, like the continual scrolling of Facebook or instagram – imagine if on Instagram you scrolled through a list of cryptic titles, needed to click on them to see what it was about, the oldest at the top of the page, scroll down through people quoting back what the OP was to finally get to the new info – can’t see Instagram having quite the market share that it does if that was the case!

      • Sam says:

        19 Dec19 December 07:33

        I am one of the many who used to visit multiple times a day for the comments.

        I have tried to use the recent threads but it does require a lot more clicking which has resulted in me using HFP less.

• Roger C says:

  19 Dec19 December 08:09

  How are page views calculated? (A genuine question – I don’t know) Yesterday I probably checked a dozen of the tiny sub threads of the ‘recent topics’ page. Does that generate 24 page views since I need go back and forth each time? Except on a crazy day I would probably not have opened up that many pages before – but would have scanned and read many more posts.

  • Rob says:

    19 Dec19 December 09:59

    Clicking ‘back’ does not count. If you go back by clicking a link then it counts (ie the Google Ads refresh).

  • Mike says:

    19 Dec19 December 12:51

    Daily chat was helping me get through all the covid nonsense and general depression in the media – now that it is gone – I am gone from HFP – which is bummer

    • Freddy says:

      19 Dec19 December 13:23

      Rob is happy, page views are up! Have they increased though due to the number of click through’s you have to do within the forum. The number of posts appear to have diminished significantly across the board. Those nuggets of information (which often fed through to an HFP article) have disappeared.

      • Andrew J says:

        19 Dec19 December 20:41

        Agree, all very quiet now, I still check every few hours on the off chance but nothing of note anymore.

        • Rob says:

          19 Dec19 December 22:54

          11,700 page views to 10.50pm vs 10,033 for last Sunday’s chat thread.

        • Genghis says:

          20 Dec20 December 08:49

          @Rob now is that more engagement or because people are having to click more to actually read something?

        • Rob says:

          20 Dec20 December 09:46

          The old chat thread counted as a page view every time you clicked to a new page of replies, remember.

          It was actually worse for inflating page views, because the ads were at the top of the page so were not seen each time you clicked to a new page of chat thread replies.

          With the forum, you will actually see the ads on each page refresh so the advertisers get what they pay for.

    • Andrew J says:

      19 Dec19 December 13:28

      +1

    • Geoff 1977 says:

      19 Dec19 December 18:25

      Wasn’t people whining like babies about restrictions a big part of that thread ?

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