Well said, this is not just a trend on flyertalk, its a trend of web boards in general. Many boards are quite mature compared to they were even 5 years ago. Many have members with thousands of posts and have seen the same topic appear what feels like again and again.

Sometimes people come in for quick advice and don't search, or searches bring back so much info its hard to weed through it all. The time spent bashing could be spent answering someones question.

When I came to this site I know just a small percentage that I do now, I couldn't come in and start answering questions I had to ask first. It seems like a select few make the environment worse by teaming up on new people. These same people complain that there are not enought 'quality' posts but then complain when there aren't 2 or 3 pages of new posts a day on the starwood or AA threads.

I know I'm wasting my keystrokes even typing and I'm sure people will come in and question the point of this post, tell me its a repost (chances are w/o posting a link to the repost) or claim it needs moved to another area. Sooner or later these people will have the entire board to themselves and people will migrate away or the site will 'mess' with the wrong person and become the target of hacking or denial of service targeting...happens all the time