Well, I have to admit that I joined a.net when I was 16. (Now I'm 18)
But I don't tend to be the "experts", cause I'm not.
But I still think the overall quality has gone down dramatically despite the "restrictions to accept members".
Surprisingly, then don't listen to negative comments, all they want is to be praised. They don't have the word "shame" or "improvement" on their dictionary.
They even hire some 15 or 16y/o to be the chat moderator, plus some immature people (who are under 25, but not all)to be the forum crew. I really think this is a joke. Getting more moderator and crews makes the quality of the site even worse.
By the way, I'm Bigo747 on airlines.net, shared by 3 people, but I'm the most active. So if you got comments or suggestiongs, don't hesitate to e-mail me!
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Al B:
A.net *used* to be a good spot about 4 years ago. Cluey people, a *lot* of those "in the biz" from drivers to groundies, and decent informative posts/discussions. It went to the dogs about two years ago when all the 14-18 year olds (who know everything about airline economics and the aviation industry) moved in en masse. The learned people left because of the dribble that was allowed to remain posted (such esteemed threads like "What do you prefer on board - Coke or Pepsi?" and "Which airline has the sexiest FA's" not to mention "Why nobody fly Anchorage - London nonstop? It's a good route" and other such notables.) Not so much the topics itself, but the amount of crap topics that literally flooded the board, as well as the "absolute truth" of absurd rumours or totally incorrect operations - "I know it's true that UA are selling all of their 737's because my friend's older brother's girlfriend who works for a catering company told him." Then the kids decided to see who could post the most when the post counters came on line - lot's of threads with a reply consisting of a smiley only and other such rot.
It really did die and the kids were left to their toy. I think reality hit Johan about 10 or so months ago when he stopped new members (some kids had 3 or more nicks) and since then, the quality is slowly (very slowly) starting to rise again. The ratio of good threads/posts is climbing against the idiots. Kids being kids, they've either matured or tired of the a.net "fad".
I have now started looking in there more often again after giving it a rest for quite some time.
(Yes - I was a silly young thing once as well!)</font>
By the way, about that Singapore_Air kid, he's just 14y/o vietnamese in Britain. You can usually found several his "posting trend":
1. All Press Release with link (no personal thoughts) only
2. Posts to praise his Singapore Airlines
3. Claims to have "certain degrees" of relationship with SIA's London Office
4. No postings/comments regarding some negative aspects/comments/news about SIA
5. Believes SIA is better than Cathay Pacific(I think so, but it doesn't need heavy attention on this)
[This message has been edited by jiml1126 (edited 02-14-2003).]