This year has been a banner year for FlyerTalk. Randy left us in good shape and we have continued to experience stunning growth over the past 12 months. Why? I really don’t know, other than the Google search engine loves us and delivers a lot of newcomers to our doors. Clearly, we are doing a lot of things right.

As proud as I am of FlyerTalk, I know that we can continue to improve. It’s a competitive world, there are alternative websites, and many of us use social media. I see a lot of discussion and event organization that used to occur here moving to Facebook. How should we evolve to better fill that need? How do we remain vibrant in this rapidly changing Internet world? What new technologies or structures in the board should we be asking Internet Brands to add in order to keep members coming back to us? These are the questions we need to answer.

Here is my challenge to members of the TalkBoard: I would like to see recommendations for how to take FlyerTalk to the next level. How do we turn a newcomer who finds us thru Google search into a contributing member? Is it important to retain a sense of community? If so, how do we best do that with such a large community?

I’ve given away luggage tags to members on six continents this year. People care about being a FlyerTalker. As many of us have experienced over the years, FlyerTalk is an emotional connection. Is there anything we can do systemically to help foster that? Is it important to keep FlyerTalk in the press? Should TB develop a database of those willing to field press queries and their field of expertise? What about bloggers? We only have THE GATE. Should we ask IB to expand their platform to host blogs? If so, what content is sought?

These are a few examples of where I believe the TalkBoard can serve me and this community as we move forward.

Unfortunately however, I continue to see a misguided focus on perceived ills of the past. This is my second request. Give it up, folks. History cannot be rewritten. It’s almost 2012. Take where we are today and suggest ways to continue to improve.

In the end, all suggestions are made to me as the Community Director and I make the decision as to implementation. I am passionate about having good health on the board and to facilitating its continued growth. To this end, I’ve tried to give a sense of the areas in which TalkBoard can help. Let me also talk about some suggestions that are never going to happen. These changes would throw us into acrimony and disharmony – and I simply will not allow that to happen. Under my watch:

1. The Moderator private forum is never going to be open for public reading.
2. Public discussion of individual discipline is not going to occur.
3. Public discussion of individual moderator action is not going to occur.
4. TalkBoard is not going to become the overlord of moderators.


There is enormous sophistication in the moderator process. Just because individuals here are unfamiliar with it does not mean it doesn’t exist. We have:

1. Carefully chosen moderators. There is a systematic process for how we identify a new moderator that begins with identifying active members in the forum where help is needed, and determining if the person models the behavior we want for moderators;
2. Training protocol for new moderators;
3. Assignment of a seasoned moderator to lead the trainee thru a training period;
4. Good practices document for moderators;
5. Good practices document for senior moderators;
6. Document templates for using PMs to calm a forum;
7. Formal system for review of appeals and masks;
8. Formal system for review of moderators;
9. Annual rotation of senior moderators;
10. A voluntary annual workshop where we spend a day together reviewing the practices above and sharing best practices across the forum.

Do I plan to release any of these documents? No, I do not. Do people in this forum get to discuss them? No. Randy considered the ever-increasing sophistication of the moderation system one of his great accomplishments on FlyerTalk, and so do I.

There has been a tremendous level of introspection within the moderator group that has resulted in a high baseline for what it does. This group is continuously growing and evolving its practices and raising its standards. In everything we do, we strive for a common understanding of the FlyerTalk TOS which members agree to abide by on signing up for FlyerTalk. As has been the case from the beginning, forums can and should have their own personality, but there is a common understanding of acceptable behavior across all of them.

Bottom line, folks, simply because individual frustrations occur within a group of 80-plus volunteers does not mean the structure is broken.

Is it useful to see thoughts on mega-threads? Absolutely. In fact, I’ve begun active discussion with moderators as a group and as individuals on this topic. And I learned that a forum pointed out as having unwieldy mega threads began a significant effort one year ago to turn that around.

Is it useful to determine that moderators have and can open threads to discuss forum structure? Sure. Does TalkBoard get to impose that requirement on moderators? No. There are forums where it suits the members well and others where it would simply revert to bashing the moderators about specific historical actions -- just as we’ve seen here in recent weeks.

As I mentioned, the TalkBoard is accountable to me as the Community Director. I want to be clear about the recent topics of discussion which I consider irrelevant to the TalkBoard and which will be non-starters if they are to reach me. Please stop wasting your time on them. Instead, look forward. Focus on the key issues of broad interest to the members of this community and the ways in which we can further strengthen the health of the board and the experience of our members to keep them coming back.

It is my hope for the New Year that we can engage constructively and successfully on these challenging topics. If the TalkBoard can look forward as I’ve suggested, I’m confident that we have some great minds that can accomplish great things for the next generation of FlyerTalk.