That is true, Missy, Randy, can do whatever he wants with his website.

He is, however, a very intelligent man who is constantly evaluating and re-evaluating this wonderful cyber world that he (by his own admission sometimes unwittingly) has created. He has also, both privately and publicly, encouraged FlyerTalkers to bring up issues that they feel are important for the development of FT and has on many occasions, again both privately and publicly, expressed his gratitude for the contributions of the general membership.

That is, BTW, the reason that holding this discussion in public is of great value--it allows an opportunity for all of the fine minds of FlyerTalk to work together to develop concepts, strategies and solutions.

We now have a problem on FT--many people make inappropriate posts in MilesBuzz, many of those (IMHO innocent) posters get flamed and discouraged from continued posting, and that encourages an atmosphere of aggressive behavior on FT in general.

doc is absolutely accurate in his statement that it doesn't matter what we who understand the system do or do not know. Our concern as committed regulars has to be with enhancing the site for others who are not as familiar with it as we.

The cause for the current problem is two fold:

1. The most restrictive section of FT--MilesBuzz--is placed in exactly the position that most people will be drawn to post general questions. This almost invites newbies to make a mistake which will be followed by a flame, hurt feelings, aggressive behavior and general ill will.

2. For years MilesBuzz was the general topic section of FT so it is only natural that posters who may have been around for years but only very occasionally visit the site, might not be familiar with all of the recent changes. They post where they have always posted and get flamed and moved. Now that just doesn't develop good PR.

What are the possible solutions to this problem?

We could move MilesBuzz to a less enticing spot which would discourage general posts or we could add a General Topic post to FT Miles, or we could completely reconstruct the design to make FTMiles a section exclusively an area ristricted to posts about miles, moving Community, Coupon Connection, etc. to another board.

I believe that simply adding a General Discussion forum to the top of the page above MilesBuzz makes the most sense because in enables, enhances and encourages.

There may be some far more clever solutions to the problem at hand and I invite you all to propose yours. To ignore or deny the problem, however, only adds to and exacerbates the situation.

[This message has been edited by Punki (edited 09-14-2002).]