Maybe I can shed some light on this. Yes, I (alone) made a decision to open it up. Over time, I've come to value OMNI for its eclectic number of humor, off-topic and otherwise valuable information. The fact is that OMNI exists because our members asked for it years ago and in fact we were likely the first travel or deal-type Web site to offer the expanse of information beyond our specific topics of miles, points and travel. In reality because of the actions for a few, we sort of buttoned it up for many years. With the recent version upgrade of our software (vBulletin), I was looking over the changes in the base software and started to wonder why some of them were there and upon some research found example after example that indeed the Web has been moving forward in trends. So, with that in mind, i started to look around and while embarrassed to day it, "discovered" that nearly every travel or deal-content Web site had knocked us off, that is, they have their own off-topic forum, including the recently relaunched fodors.com (Fodorite Lounge). But I also noticed that all of them left their off-topic forums open for all members. Look at fodors.com, LonelyPlanet, TripAdvisor, Slickdeals.net or even FatWallet. Anyway, I started to think that perhaps much had changed since we started OMNI many years ago and that the trend seemed to be to make it easy for all members to share this type of casual information. Can anyone deny that these Web sites also have very passionate members? And in some ways, my decision was made to try and make it easier on FT to get around, reduce the efforts necessary to try and overcome these restrictions and to make OMNI that much more valuable to our members who do see that wonderful wealth of information about topics in our lives outside travel. If I trust you with giving me valuable travel information, why wouldn't I trust you to give me some additional valuable information, maybe about which flat-screen TV is best or which to choose between DirecTV or Comcast, etc.
Anyway, it was a decision that was thought out and researched quite a bit.