FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Question 12: OMNI
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Old Nov 4, 2008, 4:15 pm
  #5  
bhatnasx
FlyerTalk Evangelist
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Greener Pastures
Posts: 10,515
Originally Posted by Randy Petersen
submitted by Cholula
OMNI is FlyerTalk's most popular forum with 70% more posts than our largest airline or hotel forums. Do you visit or contribute to OMNI?

Do you believe that OMNI contributes positively to FlyerTalk? Please explain your position.
What is your opinion of the recent changes, i.e., political/religious threads split off into a separate forum and no minimum post count requirement for posting in OMNI?
I was wondering how long before this one came up!

Whereas I don't participate in OMNI regularly at all (maybe 10 posts my entire life), I read it on occassion (admittedly rarely, though).

As for its contributions to FlyerTalk? I definitely feel it has a place here on FT - it's a great place for many folks on FT - especially those who have "graduated" from focusing on points & miles. For many, Points & Miles brings them in, and OMNI keeps them here. Although I don't personally need OMNI to enjoy my FlyerTalk experience, I can understand those that do.

As for recent changes...I actually like the seperation of OMNI & OMNI P/R (it may actually bring me into OMNI as the P/R aspect is one of the things that kept me away from OMNI). Regarding the lack of posting requirements & the ability to search it all - I don't know that I agree or disagree with it being the right decision, but I think if that decision was made, it could have & should have been rolled out to the community a little bit better.

One of the challenges is that even though we are a community, it's still a corporate owned bulletin board whose patriarch will be the managing director for only so much longer. We're extremely lucky to have a member nominated & elected advisory board with management who takes the considerations seriously. That is what makes FlyerTalk such a wonderful place.

So did Randy & IB make the right decision to change OMNI? Maybe, maybe not? Was it rolled out to the community in the best fashion? Probably not.

In my day job, I've spent the last 6 years working at the corporate headquarters of the multibillion dollar Fortune 500 company (the highest Fortune rated position in its industry) - I recently transferred to a position in the field where I work with some of our corporate managed products & some of our franchised managed products. I can understand & appreciate that every business decision (including the one to change OMNI) was made at some corporate level by someone who thought it was the right thing to do. Unfortunately, I don't think the folks that made that decision (whether it was Randy or IB) necessarily fully considered the impact it would have on the end users and what their response would be. FlyerTalk is like a "loyalty program" in that regard - management makes decisions & the end user has to accept it whether they like or not. The greatest thing about this particular program is that the end users can elect a body, your TalkBoard, to represent them in their interests. No matter what the result is though, management still has to evaluate whats best for them. In this particular case, IB &/or Randy, felt that this was the best move for them to make for the long haul. And keeping in mind that FT was started as a pet project that Randy personally financed through profits from other ventures, which IB may or may not have the means to do in the future, if it keeps FlyerTalk operating under the core principles Randy set out to have it operate under, rather than bankrupting it & going under, then I'm all for it.
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