I am part of the initial membership of the Cartel and I think you guys pretty much hit it on the heads. It's a newb friendly aggregate of travel and miles hacking methods and tricks. It might be old hat to this audience, but I don't think people who frequent these boards are the target.
It took me a while to get much use of of these board because I always felt like everyone was speaking in travel slang and threads went on for seemingly ever. I'm comfortable with using this resource now, but others might wanna pay to have their hands held.