PG: Thanks for giving me the opportunity. I have said it before and I say it again...
We have so much noise here now, that even the occassional pearl of information gets lost or ignored. I think we were so much better off before we had endless threads about fares; community; parties; schedules; general service issues; air accidents; is one airline better than another airline etc. etc. etc.
All the noise in the background detracts from the origional purpose and value of this forum. Last time I mention this, most replies thought that the range of topics covered was a good thing. The general thought seemed to be, don't look at a forum if you are not interested in that topic, but inevertably this becomes harder and harder. If non-FFP related topics are allowed in one forum, some posters will post similar things in another forum and then people reply and so on and so on.
Once the value has gone - and the value used to be optimizing FFP's - the effort to reward ratio becomes to great for those with a genuine interest and they go away.
Lot's of people have gone away, my friend Catman is the latest example.
The sad fact is that the people who go away (with some exceptions) are the people with the most useful contributions, because they are here for the real puropse of this board.
Perhaps everything that can be said about FFP's has been said, and we have to find other ways to fill our time on this board.
Perhaps adding more and more features and forums is not the best solution, but perhaps the needs of advertisers and their need for an ever increasing number of posters and thus irrelevant threads will prevail?
But one thing is for sure, things will evolve. Sites like the excellent 'Mileage Workshop' (and many others) have already started to fill the gap left by this site loosing its way. If we carry-on along this path, it will not be very long before all the 'useful' information is somewhere else and all we are left with here is a site which has forgotten its purpose.
Nick
PS: Nobody bother to tell me how guilt I am of irrelevant posts (this is a prime example), I already appreciate the irony!