OK, Randy, the other guy with no airline status can jump in line in front of me on the oversold flight, because by the time he gets to the front, the EXP desk will already have rebooked me by phone .

Actually you make good points, and I had not seen the analogy between tiers in airline/hotel programs and the FT community. I had assumed that the screens for CC/OMNI access were merely intended to assess reliability of posters, rather than to be a reward for "top" members. I haven't used CC yet, but it's easy to see the value of efforts by FT (through rules and moderators) to increase the chances that we are dealing with reliable community members when we do use CC. The statistics that Randy cited about the types of posts by people who want CC access are disappointing and enlightening. I spend most of my FT time on the American Airlines board and I have found so many people to be generous contributors.

To Randy's credit, FT has grown way past the point where he, or the moderators, can personally take the time to assess each person's contribution. So I had assumed that the requirements only related to post counts and the passage of time, which do not need human input to compute.

Randy was very kind to give me a personal reply to my earlier post, which I had not asked for or expected. It is easy to see why he has achieved legendary status on FT and elsewhere.