Let me clarify and amplify:

Firstly, this is my opinion only and other flyertalkers and talkboard members may feel differently.

But a decade ago when I started posting I loved the simplicity of Flyertalk. There was United, Sheraton (Starwood hadn't started as I recall) and everything else went in 'The Buzz.'

But that little town grew and goodness knows there were growing pains. There was sprawl that was managed by creating subcategories for travel issues. Then we had to bring in cops to patrol the streets and a city council to manage the growth. But growth and sprawl continued. I hated it. I hated how I used to be able to keep up with every thread on FT, but as things got segmented out I felt like I was missing stuff. I actually took a little break from FT in 2004.

But when I got over the need to know and read every thread on FT, I came back and found that an amazing thing had occured: instead of there being a single 'FlyerTalk community' there were many communities, sort of 'FlyerTalk neighborhoods' each with their unique personality and quirks: the UA folks, the community clique, the OMNIvores, the BA Bowery, the Womens travel circle, the TSAhatas, etc.

To me, this 'segmentation' allowed the community spirit that makes FT so unique to continue to thrive in spite of FT's phenomenal growth and success. Previous TBs have tacitly acknowledged this phenomenon by continuing to expand FT forums based on a 'know it when you see it' basis of "need" plus "critical mass" plus "potential."

Creating these sub-communities is more of an art than a science, but with only a few notable exceptions all of the TBs have done a pretty good job of judging when an idea/time is right for a new sub-community.

So every time I see a poster say, 'That's just going to segment us further,' my first thought is 'I know how you feel,' but my second thought is, 'but that's exactly the point.'

Again, all IMHO and OTBMMFD!