<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Punki:
...In order to survive and remain at the top of the heap, one goal of FlyerTalk must be to attract and maintain the really smart, creative, funny, frequent flyers who can make great contributions and develop wonderful miles and points schemes and plans. These are the truly creative, intelligent (and not easily controlled) types.
These are the people who think out of the box and are so in demand that somebody is paying to fly them all around the world, all the time just for their ideas and insights. These folks are very busy and often only jump on line at relatively slow RCC (or other club) hookups. They don't have a lot of time to spend hours and hours looking through tons of forums. They need to get in, read, post and get out....</font>
Punki, to respond directly to this concern you have that the people who "make great contributions and develop wonderful miles and points schemes and plans" will go elsewhere, I believe this quote from Randy on
this thread makes clear his feelings on the matter:
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The answer also lies in the fact that you may be looking at what FlyerTalk looks like today. I don't. We have a few ideas about FllyerTalk that may double and triple the current post counts. Now, imagine yourself in a world where there are 1,200 current last 5 day posts in this Buzz! you are thinking about. Your best mileage tip of the day is surrounding with comments about obese passengers, what's the grossest thing a passenger has done sitting next to you, radiation at 33,000 feet, the best way to get from the airport in Mexico City to centro and the latest financial report on AirTran. Maybe I'm selfish, but i don't want to share my best mileage tip on that board, nor would i want to try and find a gem from that 1,200 daily posts in one forum - i just don't have the time.</font>
It sounds like Randy is thinking ahead to a time when the 'best' posters or potential posters will avoid FT
because of chaos and dis-organization. Randy envisions a place where they (and all of us) won't have to "spend hours of time looking through tons of forums" because everyone will know that the forum or fora we are most interested in will contain nothing but useful information contained in on-topic threads.
To respond directly to the original topic, I have seen threads which ought to have been locked but weren't, but I have never seen a thread which was locked but I felt shouldn't have been. Is there some inconsistancy in applying the rules? Yes. There are only a few people moderating and things will be overlooked or simply not gotten to. I believe most people do their part by infoming Randy or a moderator when things get out of hand. If they don't know about it, they can't act on it.
Keep in mind the line Randy has to walk in applying these rules. A heavy-handed, no exceptions stance will result in shreiks of 'gestapo' and 'censorship', while a more relaxed application will have people shouting 'favoritism' and 'unfair'. I don't believe Randy will be able to please everyone here all the time, so I think he is doing the smart thing and going with his gut. Yeah, so it's a little fuzzy at times.
If anyone missed it when you signed up, here are
'the rules':
Rules, Policies, and Disclaimers
Actions That Will Compel FlyerTalk Intervention:
- Inappropriate Posts
- Off topic Posts
- Offensive Language/Material
- Personal attacks
- Condoning of Illegal Activity
- Invasion of Privacy
- Commercial Messages
- Copyright Material
The post about 'Where's doc' probably fell into 'Inappropriate' and 'Invasion of Privacy', and you may feel that is rather arbitrary on Randy's part. But so is allowing 'Arturo' to post, strictly speaking.
(edited for clarity)
[This message has been edited by tigertiger (edited 04-20-2002).]