Originally Posted by
kishme
Originally Posted by
Adam1222
The problem is you can always create a separate dedicated forum for anything. The goal is to encourage new users to learn to be self-sufficient, by using the search tools on this site and researching themselves rather than having people do the work for them. This is not a site for spoonfeeding "newbies." People are not going to go running to a dedicated forum to do so. And if you got a lot of replies by posting in the wrong space, good for you?
For the first 5+ years i was a member of this site, people got by just fine without any Information Desk forum at all. Now you're essentially asking for more fora just to be created for people who refuse to search the site and find the answers to their questions.
I researched three hours before posting my question. How many US airlines and FFP programs exist and are they all straight-forward? At what point does a forum offer a place for newbies and not just members of elite and diamond status? Who better to offer help to someone who might want to engage with the community?
I'm all about using the search bar, but with constantly changing FFP programs, and a wealth of knowledge here among members, I don't think it hurts you to have a separate forum. That 28-page thread (30-pages since two days ago when this was originally posted) isn't doing anyone any favors.
Just from my own personal experience of managing a large-scale and highly technical forum in a niche product industry... There are plenty of people who are more than willing to offer help to the new folks who have shown they've done research before posting, and aren't looking for a "spoonfeeding" handout. Our veterans are super active in our newbie board, and don't get anything other than a 'thank you.' But even the newbie board is a place for users to connect and talk about a shared interest that they're passionate about, which I suspect is the same reason that your users are active on this forum. Just because you don't want to help newbies doesn't mean all of your users feel the same way.
My tiny experiment of "posting in the wrong place" and getting more responses shows that there is some validity in my statement. I'm surprised you aren't interested in giving users a place to facilitate this conversation.
So instead all of the information should be repeated anew in a new thread each time some newbie is referred by the Points Guy or another blog? Your experience doesn't prove a point. If *everyone* had posted their request for help in one forum, and nothing else was there, you wouldn't get helped. You only got help because you posted in the wrong place and thus your post stood out. A collection of 100 separate threads of people asking for personalized consulting services isn't going to get much more attention than a thread of 100 people asking for personalized consulting services.
Your experience on some other website isn't particularly relevant. Most Flyertalk veterans skip the information desk because few posts actually belong here, and broad requests for "tell me what to do" are really hard to answer efficiently. If you have a specific question about a program, by all means ask it and I agree people will be more than happy to answer it. But super broad questions like "plan my vacation" and "what FF program should I join" aren't conducive to answering 300 times.