Rudeness to "ANew guy from school".
 

I read with dismay the snappy, rude responses to "A new guy from school." A number of years ago I was treated in a similar manner as a new poster. So I stopped posting here, and provided info to FrequentFlierForum instead. They were quite nice over there. Then, about the time that the nastiness migrated to there, the moderator here did an admirable job of cleaning out the nasties and creating an atmosphere of civility. So I began to post here again.

I do hope we are not regressing to the way I and others were treated years ago. Note that the new guy from school was new to the forum and was asking a question he thought legitimate. There was no way for him to know otherwise. But man, was he told! So now we have lost a poster. There is no way to know how much he might have been able to contribute once he gets addicted to this stuff.

So why do we post here? I post and maintain my website below to help people travel who would not otherwise be able to travel. I get a lot of beginner emails to my website. I always try to be polite and direct these beginners to the correct places to find the info they seek.

I avoid acronisims. I do not expect people to know even what UAL means, let alone which airlines own the mileage plus or AAdvantage programs or whatever. (Even I don't have those memorized.) And guess what. Many of my original beginners are now contributing actively to my website, and thus to you.

Again. Why do we post here? Who do we want to help? Do we want to help people not experts on miles, or do we just want to have an "in" group club?

I do hope the moderators once again take an agressive, proactive stance on mean posts. It appears that, sadly, a fix is needed once again .

Well said, this is not just a trend on flyertalk, its a trend of web boards in general. Many boards are quite mature compared to they were even 5 years ago. Many have members with thousands of posts and have seen the same topic appear what feels like again and again.

Sometimes people come in for quick advice and don't search, or searches bring back so much info its hard to weed through it all. The time spent bashing could be spent answering someones question.

When I came to this site I know just a small percentage that I do now, I couldn't come in and start answering questions I had to ask first. It seems like a select few make the environment worse by teaming up on new people. These same people complain that there are not enought 'quality' posts but then complain when there aren't 2 or 3 pages of new posts a day on the starwood or AA threads.

I know I'm wasting my keystrokes even typing and I'm sure people will come in and question the point of this post, tell me its a repost (chances are w/o posting a link to the repost) or claim it needs moved to another area. Sooner or later these people will have the entire board to themselves and people will migrate away or the site will 'mess' with the wrong person and become the target of hacking or denial of service targeting...happens all the time

FWIW, I think one of the problems at FT has always been beyond anyone's control: a lot of people who post here are frequent business travelers; some are brusque and demanding people by nature (especially when hiding behind a cloak of invisibility). Even people who are nice, normal people at home may spin their heads around like Linda Blair when they are at a customer service counter. They also skew a little young, which means there are some Gordon Gekko wannabes who post here. This results in all sorts of unfortunate behavior on FT, such as impolite behavior and even posting in the wrong forum (cough cough).

I have always thought that the best way to deal with a bad board (nasty posters, out-of-control mods, or whatever) that has good info is to just lurk.

I believe it's because some of us are tired of seeing people post a question, get an answer and never come back to contribute.

Many of the forums here have FAQ sections, and it looks to me that people generally do not read them carefully enough. After I signed up for FT, I spent a couple of weeks reading through the boards (mainly MP board which I'm most interested in), and then started posting. I believe faults are at both sides. As FT gets mature, regulars here see the same question over and over again and lose patience while newbies here do not read through the posts enough yet want instant answers.

And I'm guilty of posting something like "Use search function" once or twice :p

This topic really isn't the latest frequent flyer program buzz, so it's off-topic for the MilesBuzz forum.

If you have a concern for Randy Petersen, there's the Only Randy Petersen forum. If there's a matter for the TalkBoard's attention, there's the TalkBoard Issues forum. Or if it's not really clear how to bring your concern to the attention of folks who might best see it, feel free to drop me a PM.

Best,
Gary
aka gleff
MilesBuzz moderator