Seems like it's payback time... Look who's now posting in "my" BA board...

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum15/HTML/003980.html

The shoe pinches when it's put on another foot, doesn't it? BA is of course welcome to Boy Zero, may he run up his post total trolling on the board that misspells labor "labour" and program "programme."

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-Otto

Amen... and same here.

I do not post nearly as much on the airline or hotel forums anymore because I get tired of petty debates over the validity of ones experience or opinion (which is particularly annoying when the "I never fly" folks spend time trying to discredit the ultra-frequent flyers").

I knew I was teetering on non-participation when I started automatically skipping any thread that had more than two pages of posts (assuming it had burst into a flame fest). Then I missed a couple of DOs and felt like all I had missed was the miles I would have spent flying.

I disagree that there is one "clique" running or manipulating anything... rather a bunch of people run amok. This ranges from folks in Chat who delight in spreading ridiculous rumors about other FTers to personal attacks to just needing knee-high waders to get through the sewage in most topics just to find anything of real value.

I have had at least a dozen FTers (all "true" frequent flyers with at least 1000 posts on FT) say to me in the last month that they are no longer finding even marginal value in what they are getting out of FT. And I seemed to have crossed the line myself in the past couple of weeks.

The thing is though, I don't think that there IS a solution to this... I've participated in bulletin board communities in the past and sooner or later they reach a certain critical mass and implode. My personal solution has always been to back away from the mess rather than to continue to contribute to it.

Well said, techgirl. There seems to be no easy solution. I too have been feeling that the signal-to-noise ratio has deteriorated significantly of late. And that really takes the fun out of participating.

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Vasant

Case in point...

... not only am I being personally attacked by another moderator (and of course, his good friend Double Zero has jumped into the fray), but we yet again see the battle between the "factions" taking place.

I am so freaking sick of this place... and while many of you say "good", I can assure you that for every vocal participant that bails out of the community, there are ten more who do so quietly... and another bunch who come to FT for the first time and never visit again.

So true techgirl. I have a couple of good friends, 1000+ posters who have simply given up on FT. I'm almost there myself. Sick of this place is probably the best term to describe the way I feel. There was a DO in Toronto last night, thought of staying in town and attending, had made plans a while ago to be away for the weekend, and thought I know that will be enjoyable, not sure about the DO. Might have been nice to meet some of the other Air Canada posters, including the 1 guy who feels it is his right to attack every post I make, but nay life is too short for negativity.

Ain't that the truth. I was copied on some stuff that was "reported" there about me, that was to say the least, complete bull****.

No accountability there at all. And people get to attack others who aren't there to defend themselves or challenge the accusations against them. And no way to even find out what was said after the fact (unless someone emails you).

I witnessed and recognized that at once and knew it would only get worse with time. And that's why I stopped visiting Chat after the first couple of weeks (except for Randy's organized chats).

Many months since I was on chat, so it sure was not me.

I recall reading that chat logs ARE always retained and available to Randy and staff? Perhaps they might be published somewhere for the interest of thise not present ... might be a way to keep things more accountable?

I can't decide if I should be upset that people are spreading rumors about me in chat or upset that no one's spreading rumors about me in chat...

[This message has been edited by skofarrell (edited 05-19-2003).]

if its the latter, just let me know, I'll be glad to help out as I've never been on chat and need an excuse to start.

Has the itching stopped now you have that cream? Oops... was I allowed to mention that on FT??

I think the only solution, even a partial one, is the one Randy has adopted already by adding a number of volunteer moderators to the most active forums.

While there are several ongoing problems, I think swift moderation in deletion or lockdowns has limited the damage and drama. Even avek00 has backed off from his more inflammatory remarks. We can't be sure why, but I think the happy trigger fingers between myself and 777Brit probably had something to do with it.

So while trivial discussions continue, the flame wars are kept on a relatively low level.

That's probably the best solution we have given the size of the community.

Get over yourself, the air of self importance from 'volunteer' moderators has tended to fan flames rather than douse them...

This is of course poppycock, UA has the most moderators of any board and that is where the major problems are/were. Trolls don't back off when a moderator appears. Moderation is just one of the desired results for a reall troll.

I've seen threads go far beyond the level at which I would have locked and/or selectively deleted posts. That's just a matter of different standards.

Trolls exist to provoke reactions. Rapid deletion and lock takes the fun out of it, unless they'd like to attempt to simply flood and repost - which would earn them a timeout from the WebFlyer tech staff.

It's been said in other boards that FT:AA is over-moderated and OT posts are a lot less tolerated than on more liberal boards like the BA board. I'm fine with that as a price to pay for keeping a certain level of civility in place.