GUWonder

Most of us focus our contributions outside of FT, often as a financial decision. His contributions outside or FT -- even when financially-driven -- benefit a lot of FTers. That someone willfully cuts frequency of posting to FT is not how I'd judge anyone's contribution to the FT community -- just like a willful increase in frequency of FT posting by an individual (thought-leader or not) is not necessarily considered a universally great thing. People sometimes remain members of the community even when some kind of visibility drops or changes -- this would be a case of that even when the contributions are not via public posts on FT. That said, isn't there an irony in the criticism, given that the criticized industry's changes are largely about "what have you done for me lately" instead of taking a longer-term view?

His contributions are more readily followed by more FTers on his blog than if they were pecking around various parts of FT looking for the same sort of info. While I am of mixed opinion about the blogs and their outcome in terms do my own maximization of the airline and hotel programs, they do consolidate/package information that is more readily digestible by the average FTer than it would otherwise be. We have to keep in mind that most of us posting on this thread are not really representative of the average FTer who is a rare contributor in the past, present and probably even future sense of being a "contributor" to positing visibly on FT.