I think a paid forum goes against the spirit of FT. I stumbled across the site through Google, and over the past year I've studied to learn all the nuances of the FD, though I still have much to learn to get to Raffles's level. As a broke grad. student with a boyfriend overseas and an insatiable desire to travel, I'm not a real mileage runner but just looking for an affordable way to see the world. Now that I'm graduating and might actually have the freedom to pounce on some great flights, the FD loophole has been tightened to almost nil. Am I ticked off? You bet. But then again, it's not like I discovered this trick; in fact I would have never learned about it without FT. I find that, for the most part, the flyertalk forum model works very well. True, some people will join and spam boards out of greed, while others may rip deals to other sites out of ego, but despite the trolls I tend to believe that most members want to help each other out and learn more about traveling, not spoil everyone else's fun.