SimAirline.net - Viewpoint

I've added a new feature to Viewpoint: tags. Take a look at the (currently) fourth sidebar and you'll understand. You can click on the tags to see all articles on a particular subject, for example: 'British Airways,' 'Mergers,' or 'Accidents.' This will make it much easier to find past articles, or just for general browsing. I hope you enjoy this addition!

The most common tags so far?
-25: Other Airlines (perhaps I should rethink what gets posted...)
-18: British Airways
-17: Virgin, Airports
-15: Website Enhancements
-13: Delta
-12: Aircraft Orders, Bankruptcies/Shutdowns, Retired Aircraft

As requested in a recent Viewpoint poll, you can now subscribe to receive new entries via email. Simply enter your email address in the 'Subscribe to Viewpoint' sidebar to the right, and you'll receive the text (but not pictures) of the latest Viewpoint entries in your inbox.

I've made a few small additions to Viewpoint over the last few weeks. On the right side, I've added a "Links" section that includes links to our airlines' news pages, as well as various airline industry blogs. I hope you'll take the time to check these out, as some are quite good. Also new is an "Authors" section, similar to the existing "Categories" section. Both of these allow you to easily find Viewpoint entries by a certain person (since we'll eventually have several contributing authors) and by the type of post.

If you find that you'd be interested in becoming a writer for Viewpoint, I encourage you to contact me. By now you've seen most of the kind of entries we'll have, but new ideas are always welcome.

Many of you have asked for a different venue to be able to discuss what's written in Viewpoint, since the 'commenting' feature isn't as useful to use. Therefore, I've renamed the Latitude Discussion section of the Message Boards to Viewpoint Discussion. I hope you enjoy this new(/old?) venue to discuss what's posted here. I do have one request though: when posting a new topic, please include a link to the Viewpoint post in question. Finally, the ability to post comments directly in Viewpoint will remain.

Also, some of you have asked if Viewpoint will be added to the menu on the main SimAirline.net site. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear before: the menus will be updated soon to include Viewpoint and will also have a few other changes. Around the same time, we will be changing the tails banner to one similar to the Viewpoint one.

Results for our Annual survey are now online for you to see. The management team is currently discussing the results of the Annual Survey and deciding what changes we should make to the organization in 2008. Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing some of these with you and explaining our reasoning. I'll also take several of your comments and suggestions from surveys and explain our position on each of them.

Several people have asked if we're going to be applying the banner on Viewpoint to the main site. We certainly will, but not right away. With the other changes we'll make to SimAirline.net (and therefore the menus as well), I'd like to wait until then before placing the Viewpoint banner on the rest of the site.

I've added a poll to Viewpoint, which will rotate over time. Eventually they'll probably be based on content in Viewpoint, but I'd like to hear what you'd like. In addition, there's now a list of links. Right now this just includes airline-related blogs, but we plan on adding more over time. What sort would you find interesting?

Viewpoint has received a great reception so far, but we always need your help to keep it going. Taking a few moments to comment on the entries in Viewpoint or 'karma-voting' go a long way towards letting us know what you think and enjoy in this new feature. And of course, if you'd like to write any articles or specials for Viewpoint, let me know so I can set up an account for you.