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Old Dec 3, 2011 | 7:36 pm
  #117  
exbayern
15 Years on Site
 
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 6,964
Originally Posted by SanDiego1K
We've been very mindful about having international representation among the moderators. We want to be careful that they represent the international draw of the board. Over the last few years, we've dramatically increased the number of mods from outside the US. Today, we draw over 40% of our moderators from outside the US. We have moderators from Canada, Australia, Argentina, Singapore, Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK.
That is good (although I believe that at least one is an American living abroad).

Let me be clear that it has nothing to do with being anti-anything. But as an example, a new poster comes to FT and asks about airport security from SIN to LHR.

He receives responses telling him about TSA rules, which are actually quite different from some of the rules in the UK (and elsewhere) regarding his particular question. Even when corrected, posters continue to quote TSA and American experiences. Finally the new poster expresses confusion and frustration and leaves.

That isn't a very positive welcome to a new international member. Another thread going on right now about security at LHR detours into a discussion about TSA and American rules (which again, are different in this case) by the second or third post. No matter that several non-US posters try and explain that some rules differ around the world, the conversation continues to come back to TSA and American rules, even though the incident occured in the UK.

Those are two examples about very specific instances where detouring into US conversation are not helpful, and can confuse readers. I can think of many other threads in which I participate where the conversation is dominated by North American viewpoints, even if the subject matter was actually quite global.

I don't have a simple answer, because I also know that we tend to cluster in our geographic groups here. Long ago I broke away from M&M (although I do enjoy lurking there) But the BA crowd tends to frequent the BA/UK threads, just as some people tend to gather on Airlines of India, etc. I suppose that if I only flew LH/LX around Europe, I too might stick close to M&M rather than venture into the greater FT community.
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