Non-member forum access

[KhakiBrands]

I'd love to participate more in the forums and see the Open Travel standard thrive. As a non-member and looking at the standard for a new business, having as much information as possible is vital.

Having said that, I would suggest that non-members are allowed read-only access to the current members only forum topics. I'm sure there is much to learn, even if relegated to being a spectator.

Appreciate the consideration.

Christian

[ValynPerini]

Hi Christian,

And thanks for your comment. We put a lot of thought into the concept and creation of the members-only forums (I put some of those thoughts here on the Forum), and I'm happy to share our thinking with you.

As an organization that gives away its only product (our schema) but still has to support itself, we have to provide some type of tangible benefit for companies who join. So we try to be as open as possible but still provide concrete benefits to be attractive to companies in the travel industry. It's a fine line to walk, and we don't always make everyone happy.

As a benefit of membership, we have always provided access to our specification managers and other members via private listservs. Members had the right to contact the managers directly and use our listservs to reach out to each other, and those communications were only available to members. The members-only forums we see as an extension of that benefit, of direct access to our technical staff and other members. Providing access to those forums, even on a read-only basis, would dilute that benefit of member-to-member and member-to-support communication.

We are new to forum management but we are a flexible organization, and will revisit our Forum structure on a regular basis.

Kind regards,
Valyn