I would bet money that the vast majority of the "multiple posters" were:

• people who forgot their password or username and just signed up for a new account with the same e-mail (these people may have made one or two posts, then forgot about FT for a few months, then came back;
• people whose old account disappered for technical reasons;
• people who just wanted to change their name and made no secret of it {wingless, for example)
• two or more real people in one home sharing the same computer and using one e-mail -- which is quite common.

My bet is that the number of people who had multiple logins in order to decieve were quite small. Of that, the number who used multiple logins to post to support the posts of their other identity is even smaller (close, maybe very close, to 1).

I honestly don't care whether people have multiple handles or not. Actually some of my favorite posts have been from alternate handles that have left me ROFL. (I love you arturo)

The real issue for me is the quality of the posts. Quite frankly, I would rather see a polite, intelligent, helpful, honest, circumspect, restrained, charming, accurate, and humorous poster with a dozen handles than a difficult, argumentative, rude, or misleading poster with only one. Unless an alternate handle is being used to argue, flame, support one's own position or perpetuate a falsehood, who cares?

While we must have at least 7 handles tied to our little spot on earth, I am afraid that with the exception of Even Steven (who was pretty funny even if I do say so myself), they are all pretty boring--most of them arising from the fact that Joe can never remember exactly how he registered and keeps signing up again and again. Add those to my and my son's very legitimate handles and it looks a lot more mysterious than it really is.

I'd be willing to bet along with opus17 that the the most likely explanations for most of those seemingly intriguing "mutilple handles" are probably pretty boring when you get right down to it.

I'd like to chime in here with a neutral perspective. I have been involved with assorted internet communities like FlyerTalk since 1995 (although I have only been here since last year), and also did a 3 year stint with a Law Enforcement Agency where I investigated a number of internet related incidents dealing with identity fraud, harassment and threats. Sadly enough, situations like this are somewhat commonplace.

I have seen many communities disintegrate over minor issues and my opinion is that FlyerTalk is dealing with this in a more mature manner than most others. At trip.com, the situation deteriorated to the extent that some members actually called the FBI to level false allegations of child molestation against their nemesis. Thankfully, things here have not degenerated to that level, and hopefully they never will.

motnot is right when he states that much of the drama has been caused by the very public departures of notable personalities from this board. If PremEx or the others had chosen simply to walk away from the board and maybe email their friends privately about their reasons for leaving, I would wager that well meaning users like essxjay would not have started a thread such as this. Whereas an acrimonious situation may have been initially created by the actions of users such as Ozstamps, the situation has been exacerbated by the response it has received.

The wonderful thing about internet communities is that they can provide the same level of positive interaction as *real* communities, but when it comes to negative interaction there is no physical link that forces one to stay involved with the negativity. In other words, you can walk away from a bad situation and return later without any permanent damage. However, conversely, a confrontation is more likely to have far-reaching consequences because it becomes enshrined in print for posterity and thus others become exposed to it who might otherwise have remained in blissful ignorance.

IMHO, Randy is taking some good steps as far as a) imposing *timeouts* when discussions go excessively negative and b) deleting permanent records of the worst situations. However, this is a vicious circle, because the users can keep coming back, re-registering and starting new threads. The only exit from this loop is for someone to take a tangent and move on to other matters.

FlyerTalk is way too invaluable a resource, both as a live community, as well as a potential marketing tool, for Randy to allow it to go down the tubes. It holds other levels of significance to its users. We all need to recognize it for what it is worth to us individually, and accordingly make the effort to rectify our own perspective of the situation. If a majority of people are able to do this, the problem goes away.

Gosh. This is not at all what I wanted this thread to be, and I am now deleting the contents of the lead post.

Just to clarify my original intention:

1) I mostly just wanted to publicly state that I miss PremEx here on Flyertalk;

and 2) I wish I had chewed on fallinasleep's post from last December more thoroughly at that time. If I had I might have contributed less to the flaming and more to the defense of the real issues at hand, e.g., the viability of Flyertalk, not to mention the folks who made Flyertalk the superlative site that it is (or was). The removal of access to PremEx's Unofficial United Help Desk is a major casuality of the actions here of late. Perhaps I contributed to its removal, and if so, I'm sorry I did.

My first attempt at flyertalk failed. I can't remember the user name now, but even when I emailed and got the password it just wouldn't work. So I created a new user name and it is the only one that I have ever posted with. I just assumed that occassionily this happened. Maybe it occurred alot more than I thought. I don't even know if it is one of the 1900, but it could be. So maybe a multible handle that was never used to post and I can't even logon with.

In the early, innocent days of FlyerTalk there was no rule/'law' against multiple 'user names'.

I and Gisela are 'responsible' for at least 30 different/'fake' usernames:
[*] 3 (Rudi, Gisela, Pabst - Pabst 'invented' by gaucho100K and used primarily to respond to his posts has now been deleted by the
FlyerTalk-administrator) were registered with my actual email address: [email protected]
[*] at least 27 (including IDUR, ghost, ghost 1, ghost 2 - ghost NN - all those
were created at Halloween 1998; for a one day/night-appearance only): were registered with my old email address: [email protected] which is not working anymore (and so I guess that non-functioning email-address probably got also an email from Randy asking for deleting all but one 27+ 'user-names').

ozstamps: the main problem I had, when I thought I 'discovered' your practice of multiple 'user-names' wasn't the fact that you did it, but that you said several times before, that you would never do it.

I really felt silly and very disappointed, when I defended you vis-�-vis some of my friends on this board, with my arguments: "at least he 'rides his attacks' under his own handle openly, he is not hiding anything/anywhere ...".

opus17: Don't forget the "special purpose" alter ego handles Santa and Kris Kringle. Their well-known owners likely received the "multiple IDs" e-mail. No FT gift exchange for 2001?

essxjay: I wish you hadn't deleted your original post. I don't fully understand the context of the replies this way.

FewMiles..

------------------
FlyerTalkers' Resources on the Web: http://home.webflyer.com/fewmiles/
Unofficial Guide to AAdvantage: http://home.webflyer.com/fewmiles/AA/
oneworld comparison chart 2001: coming soon

My vote for the winning post on this thread goes to motnot.

FewMiles: I did not receive the e-mail, probably because I use separate e-mail addresses for dgolds and Santa.

That's exactly why it shouldn't matter about about multiple user names per individual e-mail account.

What Randy needs to do is ban the sinister users, even if they have only one ID or e-mail account to his or her name. I personally feel bad that Randy even has to deal with this kind of nonsense. Out of respect for Randy and the rest of the community, if I got a time-out, I would simply retire from FT (and if these words also become as prescient as my words in essxjay's original post, then I will have no problem going quietly).

I, for one, had another user ID, wideawake, on FT that has never been used. I created it last December when I was planning to retire my current name since I wanted to highlight how meaningless post count was to the quality of member's contributions (and when I thought Ozstamps would finally leave this board after being outed, out of humiliation if nothing else). wideawake was created with a secondary e-mail account of mine that I don't even use or know the password to anymore. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know how to create a new e-mail account (and a corresponding new user ID) for the purposes of deception, supporting one's other identity, and maliciously attack others. Sadly, it has been quite clear from precedent in this community that even schizophrenic stamp collectors or psychotic grandmothers from Alabama can create a new e-mail identity.

BTW, I just love the way that Ozstamps is able to change the subject of a thread when it highlights his character flaws and the damage it has caused this community. I remember Jon Toner mentioning something about this in his last post on FT. I miss Jon Toner too

What thread subject matter is there to change? It has been deleted.

In theory, I'd agree with the idea that having multiple handles is OK, that what is done with them is the issue. But only in theory. Because right now the dynamics of FT cannot support that idea.

Once ozstamps did what he did, having multiple IDs no longer became tenable. In effect, he ruined it for everyone, but what else is new? Like it or not, the reality is that the destructive effects of multiple handles have been demonstrated, and Randy has taken action.

You may disagree with IP logging and the ban on multiple handles, but it doesn't change anything. You may think Randy is punishing everyone while letting the main offender off easy, but it doesn't change anything.

Maybe in the future, Randy will decide that people can behave themselves enough so that the ban on multiple handles isn't needed, or maybe not.

Until then, as I said before, just do your part to make FT better.