I'd get rid of the moderators, one of which saw fit to merge a thread of mine in coupon connection with another that was years old, claiming they were related. It made people assume my deal had already been completed.

Ridiculous and stupid. And he was incredibly rude about it.

Moderators should only be to get rid of spam and abuse.

Require moderators delete content that is well out of date. For example, I was just looking at a hotel review thread that started in 2001 and the posts from 2001 are still there. I find material that old has little value in deciding whether I should stay at a property in 2016, and elite perks that were offered in 2001 may be very different in 2016. I'd archive all material that's more than 5 years old as a start to clean up forums with old, stale, out-of-date material.

Does anyone say "I'd really like to see what the hotel experience was in 2001 before deciding to stay there?".

I'd also eliminate permanent moderators and require a rotation out of the moderation role every few years to experience FT solely from the member point of view. We already do this with Talk Board members timing out.

Has FT ever considered a paid moderator corps of a few members to cover all the forums? I could see that offering a more consistent experience in terms of moving and deleting content. Aren't there something over 100 moderators right now?

All of what's been mentioned, especially the Voldemort thing. And:

Enhance the Ignore User function so that quoted text from ignored users is also blocked or whited out.

And, of course, revamp the look and feel to properly reflect 2016. Or even 2006, which would be a momentous step forward. :D :D :D

A like button may help reduce the number of ^ posts.

In addition, I'd like to see an "appeal" process for suspensions. Inform someone why he is going to be suspended and give him a chance to defend his actions.

Definitely get rid of the mobile site or drastically fix it. I wanted to look at a wiki on a thread with hundreds of posts already. If you keep scrolling down the page to get to the link to view via the full site, you'd have to scroll through the whole thread. I put my phone on airplane mode and then scrolled which stopped it from loading the remaining posts, put the phone back on normal, then clicked the link for the full site. That needs a major change IMO and many others in this thread agree.

I want to build on the post that said that the site shouldn't be a place just for frequent fliers... I believe it shouldn't be strictly about mileage/reward programs.. Take a look at the DL, UA, AA forums for example. It is not just talk about the reward program, it can be about anything regarding the company. Meals, lounges, fleet info, new routes, financial performance, etc. etc. Yes points/miles/status/whatever it may be are still talked about, but I think it is less in the airline forums vs. hotels and rental cars. IMO FT should be less focused on miles/reward programs and more about travel in a broad aspect.

Regarding moderation - there should be an appeal process that goes to a senior moderator (or group of them) who only take appeals from certain group of forums (say a group of SMs for airline programs, another group for rental cars, and so on). These appeals would be about moderator action and the appealing party can respectfully explain their case and the SM can keep it in place or override the original decision and can respectfully explain their point of view.

I would bring back the FT app for Apple and Andriod (something which can be easily done!)

Feature requests - My #1 request is to show us that you actually CARE about what the community wants. Figure out a way to track feature requests. Uservoice is an example of such a system (but ridiculously expensive), I'm sure there are others. When a given feature gets a certain number of votes or comments from distinct users, commit to doing some sort of detailed analysis of what it would take to do it and let the community know why you are/are not going to do it.

Moderators - They should be paid staff.

Hate speech/name calling - This should be banned in all forums. It is not, and can be easily fixed.

If I ran FlyerTalk - some major things would change
 

First: no more commercial ads whatsoever on the site.
Second: an insignificant frontpage, and log-in access only. Only after logging in the real information by the community appears.
Third: a small (very small) membersip fee to compensate for no commercial ads.
Fourth: Steps 2 and 3 would greatly help in keeping all this 'inside information' really 'inside', inside the travel hacking community. It is all way too openly accessible to the world, right now. Spoiler alert!
Fifth: in-depth interviews with succesful FF-ers, pilots, airline bobos and so on.
Sixth: negiotate special deals for the FlyerTalk members with airliners, perk programs and so on. Win-win: the airlines get fantastic customers, this site gets even more value. See points 2 and 3.

You want to lock down places like the AA and UA forum so that some forum about travel hacking, and I don't even know what forum you're referring to, can be less accessible? Why don't you just ask the Talk Board to establish entry requirements for this "travel hacking" forum instead of locking all of FT down? You can do that right now.

If you lock down all of FT, we're going to lose thousands of members who won't be willing to pay a user fee, and scare thousand of potential new members away that won't have the chance to see what's on offer here.

I agree. My time on FT (reading and posting) has reduced a lot with the removal of this interface.

Do something about the ad's. They are very intrusive sometimes and regularly slow the page load time considerably as it tries to do something smart in the background.

I use a brand new high spec laptop but can hear it struggling sometimes when I try and view a forum

Agree with both comments, but the Moderator Group will refuse to accept any of the above, and they run FT (a few dozen members, among 100,000s) so this will never change.

It is certainly the main reason many senior and high posting FT'ers post little in recent times. Not good at all for IB ad revenues of course, but that's the clear trade-off.

Those policies worked fine in East Germany and the USSR. Both successful Global superpowers today, as we all know. Times change. @:-)

"Moderation only in MODERATION" - might be a really novel concept to consider, going forward. :cool:

Never going to happen here however, so why even bother asking members for input?

There used to be an "Ask Randy Petersen" forum here, where such things could be raised with no Mod sanctions, but a Moderator would immediately lock any new topic along these lines. Bizarre. Stazi.com.

Perhaps this thread is like those PayPal "how did we do" surveys that no-one there ever reads or acts on either? :D

This post indeed may disappear at any second with no advice to me - that is fine, as that is what the current TOS allows for.

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If I ran FlyerTalk, I'd wonder why I should run the place and not resign. :D

However, if conscripted and left with no option to escape to do other things, then:

First, I would want to know what I should want to make of this place that it isn't currently.

Second, figure out what isn't working to make this place into that which I want it to be.

Third, recognizing what the constraints are to changing the place.

Fourth, go about changing FT while keeping in mind that there is a need to avoid wrecking that which works pretty well around here already.

Then repeat the above cycle.

I know one thing that I personally don't want FT to be: to be obsessed about reducing "signal to noise" to such extent that member exchanges/dialogue get stifled and make this place less useful and less entertaining to me.

One of the things I like best about FT is that it is moderated, which keeps the conversation more or less civilized most of the time. Occasionally the moderation goes a bit too far, but not often IMO. I wouldn't mess with it too much - it's not so broken as to require fixing. I find one of the biggest issues with the moderation is arbitrarily merging a legitimate new thread with an older thread with dozens of pages, where the connection is dubious.

Ads are a necessary evil, however the popup ads that interfere with the functionality of the site must go. Ditto the ones that overlay the content. Generally the way the ads are presented needs much improvement.

The mobile site as it is now is so bad I don't use it, even on my iPad right now. The main site is fine, but if the mobile site could be made halfway useable, that would be good for those who want it.

As a general comment, FT is a great site! Thanks!

I'm not a frequent poster but have been a member for a number of years. I want to be able to access OMNI but I won't just comment if I have nothing to add to get my numbers up. Inquiring minds want to know what goes on behind closed doors!!!