Originally Posted by
sbm12
Really? You never thought to just consider the "why am I seeing this" link and figure it out yourself?? Nothing really new there, though I suppose that's not necessarily a metric to use.
But that's not really what the discussion there is about. The prior topic was all about how much he pays for FB ads and before that questioning if he pays for trips or not. Putting aside that I simply do not care, I'm trying to figure out why those topics are valuable in the context of this community. How does knowing a site's ad budget affect people here reading the content?
Is your standard that discussion that people could figure out themselves are not valuable? Again, that would rule out Info Desk and half of Flyertalk.
You really just seem to be imposing your value judgment on others. At best, you are suggesting that there is some mythical magic number of members that you think must be engaged in a forum -- Not that the number of posters is equal to the number of people who find a forum valuable. I know there are many threads I read and find valuable and don't comment on, for various reasons.But there are many forums and threads on FT that have a narrow appeal. That doesn't mean it doesn't have value.
Your argument seems to meander between a few points;
(1) Posters are derogatory/personal/mean/slanderous - people here have shown why that's not really true
(2) There tend to be a dozen or so very active posters - that applies to a lot of forums
(3) It isn't of value - Lots of people have made cogent arguments disagreeing. But a forum that leads to Thepointsguy, OMAAT, and VFTW making improvements is valuable to the community, not just the people who post. Certainly more than a thread on what you ate today.
What you haven't responded to is the burden --- shouldn't the burden be on the person who is trying to shut down speech something more than "I don't find it valuable"? I can make an argument why every post you've made in the past 7 days isn't valuable to me, or is duplicative of something else on the internet.