Personally, I hate rudeness and snarkiness and think the mods should take action when people post in a rude or demeaning manner.

One way to avoid having newbies defect to blogs is to prevent bloggers from advertising their blog in their siggies. Why is FT giving them free advertising?

The "blog" in my siggie is just a travel diary on Travelpod which back in the day, that's what blogs usually were; so it is not one of those commercial blogs that are all over the place so I wouldn't think it is a threat. I have been seeing heaps of blogs that are competition to FT being advertised in various siggies and this also raises said blogger's profile on search engines.

I am not one for politics but if Talkboard is supposed to be about running FT and keeping it's members happy, a lot of FTers are unhappy when the bloggers expose hidden loopholes in certain promos that lead to the promos getting shut down. The same thing seems to be happening on the Trick It thread. Many of us have developed a way to discuss promos discreetly, so loopholes don't get picked up by search engines or over-exposed. The bloggers not only expose the loopholes, they give step by step instructions to all and sundry. I've already noticed that this year there are fewer promos than last year, jury's still out on if there will be a Grand Slam and I expect the lucrative points deals on DA in April and May won't happen next year either.

In short, it is not in the best interests of FT to help bloggers increase their readership.