This is an important issue... more than most posters may at first recognize, and it isn't really about simple and silly threads on Omni that exist solely for padding post counts. It also really isn't primarily about post count being a substitutional metric for trust.

This core issue is behavioral, and concerned with behavioral motivation in a relatively large community. Most behavior is, at one level or another, driven by reward, or lack thereof, based on metrics that include status and renumeration, or currency. The only measurable currency on FT is post count and title, and right now, it is earned without regard to "quality" of the behavior relative to the core purpose of the board.

If the core purpose of this board is travel related conversation, then any currency on this website should be structured to reward travel related discussion, and issue no reward for other discussion. The Omni section of the board exists solely for this other discussion, and participation in it should confer no "currency" or reward in the board status system.

The analogy here is to cut back a plant that grows tall and thin, because pruning will make it much fuller and more vibrant. Status is real, and everyone here knows it, because it is avidly pursued in a hundred different proxies for "real life" status, including FF programs, etc.

Status is just as real on FT, and is conferred by post count, titles, elected office, etc. It is no more and no less than a proxy for "real life." So again, the issue here is to whether status is to be granted for noncore activities on this board. The lengths to which people will go to obtain this status is evident by the lengths to which they argue against their own dimunition of status in this thread, often without making reference to that as being their motivation.

That alone acts as validation of the core theory. I applaud the TB for willingness to adjust board status in the "coin of the realm" by making it aligned with behaviors that increase the total value of the community.