Talktourism Moderation & Forum Development

Talktourism.ie has been a functioning discussion forum website for just over two years now and I do beleive that it is achiving the aims & objectives that it set out to achieve.  As I may have mentioned before the success of the site is down to those who regularly contribute to the site and of course those who regularly review the site for latest news & updates about what is going on in the industry.

Through our own efforts and that of bodies including Fáilte Ireland, Green Box and others there is a significantly higher level of online presence among Tourism SME’s over the last couple of years.  Its encouraging to see regularly updated websites and blogs which are providing useful information for tourists and locals alike.  Although significant gaps remain with Tourism SME’s whom are not willing to engage with the opportunities that are available on the internet. 

As the reccession bites even harder, the home holiday market is becoming more and more important! Potential domestic tourists will be seeking regularly updated information about special deals and things to do and this can be easily accessed via the internet.  The power lies in the hands (literally) of each and every Tourism SME to attract increasing numbers of tourists.

As Talktourism has developed and grown, we have attracted ever increasing numbers of spammers seeking opportunities to promote their pharmaceutical products and various other services that most of us don’t need.  Most of the time our moderators are quick to remove unwanted predators and ban them from the site (but, not always as were only human 🙂 ).

In addition to the spammers, are those whom are sometimes difficult to decifer whether they are genuine or not.  Usually they are promoting international tourism services which is not a crime, but are not genuinely interested in engaging with the forum and other forum users.  They are purely increasing their web presence through our forum. Depending on the content, we generally delete /ban them, but often give some an opportunity to engage with the forum and tell us what they are about.  Rarely have we seen anyone actually contribute to meangingful discussion on the forum from an international perspective. Although that does make me think of two notable exceptions being ‘NZBR’ from New Zealand and ‘MargaretinBavaria’ who have genuinely shared their experiences with Irish based members.  Everyone is a winner when meaningful discussions are ongoing, as everyone is gaining knowledge and the contributors are gaining increased web-prescence.

On Talktourism we have categoriesed these style of spammers simply as ‘Nonsense‘.  We do have a system for members to report other members for inappropriate use which can be accessed by clicking on the red triangle symbol with ‘!’ appearing in the top right of each topic posted on Talktourism. If you think someone is misappropriately using our site, please follow the links and inform us.

Overall the challenge remains to encourage further engagement from tourism enterprises.  We would be happy to address this challenge, but the only way that we can do this is with your feedback and ideas…

Its good to talk and hope to hear more from you soon!