romsdeals3

My blog is definitely not the most useful blog! I think onemileatatime is the most useful for booking advice. Otherwise I just go to google!

DavidSkaggs

this is one of the most painful threads to read.

i hope future bloggers don't use this thread as a basis of how they should approach their blogs.

hotelmotel

Of course they won't. They will continue to use the approach that garners them the most $$$$ the quickest.

oliver2002

Interesting development: two bloggers seem to be about to jump ship from the leading aggregator.

Had some lengthy email and bb exchanges last night. My gut feeling tells me its 2006-07 all over again, this time in the blogosphere.

84fiero

I was oblivious to the FF world at the time - what happened in 2006-2007?

austin_modern

I find FTG to be irritatingly hard to read, so I rarely bother stopping there.

Generally I think TPG does a reasonable job of consolidation of whats going on in the various programs I participate in, plus he's spend time/money to present his stuff in a reasonable manner so you arent clawing over thousands of crappy links in every story.

Still doesnt beat coming here to the forums, as FT and other forums, provide near instantaneous to deals prior to many of the blogs picking them up and the deals going kaput.

oliver2002

Ventures with lot of cash purchased assets they believed to be the key to web 2.0 success, at the time these were BBs that always popped up at the top of google searches.

the hotel bar

http://thepointsguy.com/2012/12/my-r...-credit-cards/

MileageUpdate

I would say it isnt an easy task collecting and linking to the best stories out there that are relevant to earning points and miles. Lots of fluff and tons of stories with filler and CC links. I would like to see more people blogging about real strategies/insight instead of repeating the same 2-3 themes.

TravelSummary

I have been trying to advocate for this for quite some time. If it's not new information, simply link to where that information exists. This is why FT is great...consolidation. This needs to happen more in the blogging world where possible.

pilotb757

Totally agree about John from Loyalty Lobby and ill add one more who does not post every day and has good content , Jared from OTR and Wandering Aramean.

the hotel bar

Wandering Aramean doesn't really participate in the konga lines of hat tips, and certainly doesn't pimp CC's. Also has very useful tools

Probably has done more the help out the FF community than anyone in the past few years except Frequent Miler

Tiki

This is very interesting, especially since the leading aggregator has very high Alexa rankings.
The About Me page of the new aggregator doesn't say who is behind it, does anyone know?

By contrast this is Flyertalk's Alexa ranking.
So these two bloggers are basically starting fresh and trying to build new rankings.

Tiki

I have no issues with censoring profanity as long as the rest of the post is kept intact and maybe just replace the word with $%#& so people knew what the person was originally saying-if that makes sense.

The one thing that really annoys me on FT generically is when threads get closed. Some mods forget that there are people in all time zones here and if a thread is going in a way they don't like in the US time zones, they lock it so when Aussies and Asians wake up, there could have been an interesting discussion that we can't participate in.

ma91pmh

I live with the censorship that FT implements. But it is inherent in every area. I cannot make personal attacks, even if worded politely. They will be removed by a moderator. You seem to be arguing it's ok to do this though on a blog against the author, as long as there is no profanity involved. I see a pot and black kettle right there.

Secondly you can't question a moderator's action here. Well that is the ultimate trump card. Some blog authors take this approach - Delta Points springs to mind. At least he's open and honest about it, but I prefer fully open dialog, where only obvious spam and stupid stuff like "your mom is an xyz" content is removed. But the fact is here a moderator can take an action such as closing an entire thread or removing posts and you are basically not even allowed to discuss it. More pots and kettles here.

And I just don't buy the distinction on FT being a community. Heck it's the same community members that post comments on the blog. And MilePoint lives just fine without any moderation (as do many other huge online communities). I think there are arguments for and against moderation of forums, I prefer not to have it but can live with it, so this is not an argument for or against moderation. But I do not buy that someone can say hey it's ok to moderate my forums over here, but you over there on your blog, you have to let everyone take a crack at you. That attitude generally stems from folks who do not like what the guy on the blog over there is saying. And that is where it turns to real censorship.