Hello.
I found this thread while trying to figure out this he-who-shall-not-be-named thing.... between that and Gemac's sig line there is clearly something going on here at FT, but from reading the AA board I can't quite figure it out. I think I may have wandered into a discussion about "how FT is changing and not for the better." I hope you don't mind if I share my thoughts with all of you.
A few things highlight for me how FT may be changing and becoming more of a place for random posters who have "poor netiquette" and/or little desire to stay engaged for any length of time.
The first was the ipod conga, where the number of posts was insane... I don't participate in congas but I remember thinking "what the heck does this have to do with flying, and who are all these people anyway?"
The second was the 12 Days of Xmas, where FT gave away miles every day if your name was selected and you replied in 24 hours. IIRC, about 2/3 of the names were people with ZERO post counts. And yet FT decided that they were eligible to win 1000s of miles! (Now, not many of them did, but they could have). The 12 Days game, I confess, made me wonder what I was doing here in the FT community. I felt like a loyal member, who tried to read and post respectfully, and it felt like FT was saying "hey newbies... here's what you can win for joining us!!" I really didn't like it.
The third is that FT seems to be getting much more press than in the past. I don't know if that's intentional or not, but clearly you get a different type of person when you are written up in mainstream publications (NYTimes, WSJ, USAToday) than when you're a smaller, viral community. If the goal is to give FT a higher visibility, well yes, then clearly more new people will show up! And travel is one of those subjects where (a) you get people of all knowledge levels (b) people's expectations of online communities may be very different than, say, online communities of Harley-Davidson enthusiasts or game players. Travel communities in general get a lot of random, one shot posts.
Okay, so those are the data points I see. So, what to do going forward? First of all, DallasAudiGuy remarked that age and netiquette habits may be related. I have to respectfully disagree with his opinion that older users are more "newbielike." In my research into online communities, I have noticed that older users are usually a bit more respectful and willing to sit back and watch before jumping in than younger users are. This probably has something to do with major societal trends and being part of a "linked, always-on world" in general.
I very much like the waiting period before posting and before starting threads. I think that's a great idea. Should somebody new have an absolutely urgent question, they could ask the moderator to be excused from the waiting period (and the mod could review the question in advance to make sure it's framed properly).
Regarding search on FT, my experiences with it have been mixed. Sometimes I don't know how to ask the question, even though I know the information must exist in a thread somewhere. Sometimes the search results are old, and I'm not sure I can rely on information that is 1 or 2 years old. Usually search works reasonably well, as well as it does for search technology in general.
I spend a fair amount of time on a few forums (AA, SPG), but recently I've had cause to post to BA and to United. Candidly, it feels a bit funny to feel like a newbie on a site that I joined years ago, but I'm still learning the ropes of many of the forums. I am grateful that people let me be a newbie on their forum, tho' I suspect that my post count (and hopefully polite manner) encourage helpful responses rather than a anti-newbie tirade.
Anyway, sorry for the very long post. They were just some random thoughts while I procrastinate on doing work.
