Closing section of existing site - should I redirect to new site

[FattyB]

On one of our news sites we have a distractions section. Flash games etc. I opened a new section of the same under a different name as the old one was using a defunct script.

Now I don't really need to redirect the traffic to the new section as it will build up fast enough. Seems a waste. The old section is PR6 and gets 20 30K per day.

I was going to setup another site just catering to this. I though redirecting the traffic from the retired section might be a good way to get it started. It gets a lot of search traffic on key phrases.

However, would this been frowned on by search engines? I mean I have redirected with 301s internally on the site before but never to another domain.

Could it impact existing site, other than lost redirected traffic?

Unethical to redirect users to this new site without asking?

Thanks
James

[g1smd]

I would redirect the traffic, but also make sure the new site has link back to old site so people can easily get back to that content.