One other thought regarding this issue.

I belong to a few other specialized boards. All of them have off topic areas. All of them count the posts in those off topic areas. Yes, some of them have off topic areas segregated by interests.

The situation is exactly the same as FT - a board geared toward a specific topic where post counts can give newbies the wrong impressions.

However, FT, as well as those boards, have a pretty active community and bad information of often corrected very quickly.

For some reason, almost since it's inception, there has been a negative attitude toward Omni.

What I don't get is why FT is that much different than other specialized topic boards where some contributions to the community are of less value than others.

Doesn't IB also own cruise critic or some other major cruise board? Well, the last time I visited that board, and it's been a while, their off topic area counted too.

So again, what's so different about FT?