Since when does less than 2 become several? DYKWIA much?
You obviously Don'tKWIA. Who could blame you... :-) But you probably shouldn't infer either. Not that I need to explain myself to you but I was a (silent) member for several years, lost/forgot my login at some point, was out of the game for a few years more and then decided to return this year out of curiosity. As I said, mainly lurking, reading hours on end, but then again, that's not a crime here, right? Cheers ^
Just in case this ridiculous idea gets adopted, he wants to stake a claim to access to the information that would go private.
Well, that just makes no sense. As I said in my first post in this thread, I also don't have access to OMNI (for example). But do apply some simple logic: Nobody who tries to collect miles through all those schemes in earnest can advocate for a public space where these ideas are published purely for ad revenue or clicks, just to be killed a few hours later. The life of a trick should be worth more than the few additional click it generates when published publicly. ;-)
If you are someone who knows secrets, you will always prefer that they are kept in private groups, rather than public fora, even if you are not a member of the former. You might, after all, get a chance some day to earn your way into the group, whereas if everything is public (and therefore dead) anyway, the whole thing is just an exercise in futility!
If this is the way FT is going, and it is, I'm heading out. If you're trying to keep information private, why tell anybody, especially folks you know only through an internet forum? Kind of like the old joke: I only trust two people, you and me. And I'm not so sure about you. . .
Miles and secrets, ur doin it wrong. It's Ben Franklin who said "Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead." Good thing we're not trying to keep state secrets here, just finding a place to have a quiet talk and exchange ideas.
Or are you that person who stands in the middle of the town square and discusses his ideas and problems with his friends using megaphones? I mean, who does that, except for politicians and crazy people? There is really no advantage of doing that, except to attract unwanted attention, and the same holds true for Flyertalk and the public availability of this forum.
It is also not correct that keeping certain things private is a new development on Flyertalk. If that would be true, you would have been "heading out" for a long time. There has always been OMNI (which was publicly available for while, some time ago, I seem to remember, which sparked the craziest outrage). OMNI has otherwise always been a closed group and I think that's okay (even though I don't have access to it). There has always been the PM system (as in "private" messaging), or are you advocating that all PMs are published on the homepage now as well?
So, sharing stuff in small groups, more or less privately, is not a "ridiculous idea" and certainly not a new one. You have all that backwards really. The internet has always been a place where small groups of like-minded people have found a place to discuss things that were of interest to them, in relative isolation: If you weren't part of the group, you didn't get the messages. It is really a fairly recent development that everything gets "liked" on Facebook and twittered about or, for that matter, shared publicly with everyone, even and especially people who clearly only want to exploit the ideas of others for their own financial gain (blogs, ads) and who have no interest whatsoever in the actual topic of frequent flying and will shut the whole thing down eventually. This whole thing is extremely shortsighted and will be the death of every community in the long term.
It's an attitude of "don't tell everybody, but tell me."
And since when is that a bad thing? However, I think it should be rephrased: Don't tell everybody, but tell people who don't want to destroy it, people with genuine interest and people who have earned it. HOW you determine that is your problem, but one thing is certain: Making it public is the wrong way. Do you leave your front door open for everyone? Nay, have you actually
removed your front door and all windows, so people can just come in and take what they want and destroy your house in the process? Come on...!
Because FT is here to make money from advertisements. The more traffic it can get, the better.
Is that really true? Or are you just saying that because you are equally disillusioned with the whole thing, like me? I mean that would make Flyertalk no better than our "good friends", the bloggers, who steal ideas to publish them for clicks/views (which ultimately define their ad revenue).