Originally Posted by
lo2e
What's to prevent someone who is trying (knowingly or unknowingly) to "kill" the deals from getting to x posts and y days of membership fairly quickly, thereby gaining access to the special forum, and would just go about their business again? And how would you know if someone that was doing something to "kill" the deals didn't already have the x posts and y days met, so they could access it already?
The idea is not to stop deals from being killed -- that is impossible. Rather, the idea is to only allow contributing members of the community to have access to said deals, thus perhaps encouraging some responsibility around their distribution and discussion. It would also give other members more encouragement to post deals knowing that abuse, while not disappearing entirely, would likely diminish as a result of the more controlled audience.
Mistake fares will be noticed and corrected -- it's just a matter of time. (I once used an ex-Japan mistake fare that was not made public in blogs or forums as far as I could tell, and it was corrected within two weeks.) However, legitimate-but-cheap fares may remain extant for quite some time -- unless they are abused. The idea here is to reduce the potential for abuse from FT, which is why I agree with the idea of implementing some nominal threshold for viewing.