"agree with you 100% GregoryGrady. I couldn't have worded it better myself and I would love to do anything to at least get credit card referrals out of their pockets and maybe diverted to a charity like Red Cross or something"

cause flyertalk members are mostly interested in finding deals for the benefit of charities ?

A closed forum may be of great benefit to some. Of course the other side of the coin is by nature some good deals are found by people who don't travel 100-200 days a year, and are found either by great research or by being stumbled upon. These folks won't be a member of this closed group. They might more likely be a member of flyertalk and post the deal here. So effectively the closed group will be at times feeding of the open group and become exactly what they were set-up to prevent, non-flyertalk groupings benefiting from deals posted on flyertalk. Or does that suddenly become ok now, as long as the "few" get all the deals ?

Also becomes a bit of a problem for deals that require new people to keep it going, i.e. referrals...by nature most being referred are new to the particular deal, or maybe totally new. So does this new closed group come onto flyertalk and "harvest" new people to act as referral fodder ?