I'd like to chime in here with a neutral perspective. I have been involved with assorted internet communities like FlyerTalk since 1995 (although I have only been here since last year), and also did a 3 year stint with a Law Enforcement Agency where I investigated a number of internet related incidents dealing with identity fraud, harassment and threats. Sadly enough, situations like this are somewhat commonplace.

I have seen many communities disintegrate over minor issues and my opinion is that FlyerTalk is dealing with this in a more mature manner than most others. At trip.com, the situation deteriorated to the extent that some members actually called the FBI to level false allegations of child molestation against their nemesis. Thankfully, things here have not degenerated to that level, and hopefully they never will.

motnot is right when he states that much of the drama has been caused by the very public departures of notable personalities from this board. If PremEx or the others had chosen simply to walk away from the board and maybe email their friends privately about their reasons for leaving, I would wager that well meaning users like essxjay would not have started a thread such as this. Whereas an acrimonious situation may have been initially created by the actions of users such as Ozstamps, the situation has been exacerbated by the response it has received.

The wonderful thing about internet communities is that they can provide the same level of positive interaction as *real* communities, but when it comes to negative interaction there is no physical link that forces one to stay involved with the negativity. In other words, you can walk away from a bad situation and return later without any permanent damage. However, conversely, a confrontation is more likely to have far-reaching consequences because it becomes enshrined in print for posterity and thus others become exposed to it who might otherwise have remained in blissful ignorance.

IMHO, Randy is taking some good steps as far as a) imposing *timeouts* when discussions go excessively negative and b) deleting permanent records of the worst situations. However, this is a vicious circle, because the users can keep coming back, re-registering and starting new threads. The only exit from this loop is for someone to take a tangent and move on to other matters.

FlyerTalk is way too invaluable a resource, both as a live community, as well as a potential marketing tool, for Randy to allow it to go down the tubes. It holds other levels of significance to its users. We all need to recognize it for what it is worth to us individually, and accordingly make the effort to rectify our own perspective of the situation. If a majority of people are able to do this, the problem goes away.