Internet Brands now owns the Fodors website and forums

[Pauline]

Internet Brands (IB) bought the SlowTrav/SlowTalk website and forums 10 years ago. Many of us on this forum were on the SlowTalk forums. At that time they purchased a lot of small travel sites, including the larger sites FlyerTalk and WikiTravel. Then they purchased vBulletin, popular forums software. They owned a lot of websites with forums - not just in travel but in several other areas - and moved the sites that weren't already on it to vBulletin. SlowTalk moved a few years ago.

This year IB purchased Fodors! The travel books, website and popular forums. Here is the press release from June. I missed this and only found out about it today from one of the SlowTalk moderators.

This thread on the Fodors forums talks about the amount of spam they are getting. Their forums software is old and not set up to easily stop spam (like our software does). The 8th reply is from someone at IB saying the Fodors forums will be transferred to vBulletin software early next year.

Interesting! It probably won't have an effect on SlowTrav/SlowTalk.

Now, I have to figure out a way to get people from SlowTalk and Fodors to come HERE!!

 

[Shannon]

Sadly I think message boards are on their way out. A lot of people ask for travel advice on facebook! Which is not very effective, because stuff gets buried pretty fast there.

Fodors travel board is still more active than SlowTalk. But people over there can be.. harsh is a nice way to put it. I post there and there are certain country forums where folks are nice and helpful with no snark. They have a very active "lounge" with a lot of political postings but other stuff too. Many people that post in the lounge never post in the travel forum. I can't imagine Internet Brands is going to want to keep that going - they will get nothing out of it.

When they change to the new system, many people will freak out and threaten to leave. Some will. Those that stay on will probably slowly go away just like with SlowTalk. I wish there was a way to get people here too Pauline.

 

[ellen]

I hope you're wrong about the future of message boards Shannon, but I fear you're right.

I haven't been active on the SlowTalk boards for years and the few times I've checked over there since then (for a specific question, or to find information I remembered from an old post) there didn't seem to be much going on.

I've never spent any time on Fodors, these days I'm generally on Trip Advisor because that seems to be where the action is. Moderation there is a function of crowd control, which I don't really appreciate, and there's lots of room for improvement.

There must be things we can do to get more people to SlowEurope. I know that I need to consciously change my habits to check in on a regular basis. On TA there is a way to send a private message to another member, one thing I can do is reach out to posters who contribute thoughtfully on TA and invite them over here.

 

[Cameron]

IMHO

I miss the high-traffic activity of the travel forums, for one reason -- I felt I came to "know" many like-minded travelers and am always interested in where they're going/what they're doing and seeing the photos.

On SlowTalk, I often felt like the same questions/answers were being repeated for the popular cities/areas when newer members posted for advice.

I'm not diligent about writing reviews for apartments (for selfish reasons--my late husband told me to stop writing about rentals we'd return to, because we found them booked up when we wanted to go back). If apartment recommendations were restricted to SlowEurope members-only, I'd be more likely to post reviews. I'm not as generous toward the general public!

Restaurants can change, even in a short amount of time, and I'm now more cautious about voicing my opinion after some of my friends found the places to be disappointing. For my local North Carolina area, where I can frequently revisit the same restaurants, I try to post helpful reviews on Yelp and TA.

I'd love to see more activity on SlowEurope.

 

[Pauline]

... If apartment recommendations were restricted to SlowEurope members-only, I'd be more likely to post reviews. I'm not as generous toward the general public! ...

I could set the reviews forums to be visible to members only, like the Meetups and Walk1000Miles forums. They would not be indexed by the search engines. BUT it is easy to become a member of the forums. You just register and verify your email. So a lot of people would still see the reviews.

I could possibly set the forum to be visible only to Verified Members, people who have posted once. I review each first post and only "real" people get through.

 

[Cameron]

I may be the minority on this idea. What do others think?

 

[Pauline]

I'll start a new thread about this.