FlyerTalk Forums - Positive ID

Many great and wonderful ideas here. I certainly tip my hat to those with experience in this world and I am very thankful to dovster for him kind concern (i still am reminded of his kindness of the Christmas story).

My thoughts on measures such as this are always with a bit of research and the (hopeful) calmness of the bigger picture.

I'm not a big fan of positive ID because I don't consider the true nature of the information on FT to be something requiring literally a background check. I feel that exceeds the expectations of the Community. It surely can't be for the money because I'm well aware that I've put in well over $250k since FT started into IT support, bandwidth and associated costs. I'm fine with that investment.

Probably the thing that I've always focused on is the noise/signal ratio. In January there were just under 700,000 visitors spending an average user session of over 17 minutes (just under 30,000 visitors daily). These visitors accounted for aronud 100,000 posts. My guess is that less than 100 posts needed the attention of a timeout. You do the math. Of the posts that caused commotion on FT, it's what, about 18 members who can't seem to like another's guts. Would I consider penalizing 50,000 people for the sake of those 18 members? OK, let's say it's 50 members (adding in the trolls, etc.). Still, I just can't see infringing on the privacy of all the other members to stop this many from 'HeHateMe.' Let's remember, in your proposed system, we can't exclude anyone, so I'm going to ask 50,000 people to re-enroll in FT?

I'd rather shut FT than become a board of inconvenience. I'm with the poster about that 95 percent of members don't have a cluse as to what you are talking about. In fact, if you really look at the number, it's probably closer to 98 percent and maybe higher. What you don't have the option to see, and I do, is the 'view count.' When you mention things in ORP, I can actually see not just the respond rate as you can see (post replies), but the 'view' rate of each thread. If looking for a tale of woe, you'll be disappointed to learn that it's not much more than what you see is what you get. Most daily threads get page views in the thousands daily, sometimes double digit thousands. ORP, the highest thread view recently was 332 and that's the highest of one thread.

Look at boards such as Fodor's and Lonely Planet. Both have ties into publishing houses and I don't think you see any move to a paid site there. They do have similar challenges.

I really can't be moved off free at this point. Over time, perhaps, but just not now. I'm convinced that with two things in place, life will be great. First, a move to a new technology platform. We have a site re-design meeting on next Wednesday to cover the graphical 'new look.' Our real challenge right now - we've tested moving 2.5 million plus threads to other technology and while a very laborous project, have those details worked out. We are trying very hard to try to move this site out of a frame set. Not an easy descision but doing so not for complaints, but for what we hope is easier navigation in the future. The new platform has tools like 'ignor user' which we will use very strictly since there is simply no excuse any more for ignoring a nemesis on FT. Also, it contains 'notify moderator' which will make it easier for members to help us manage the board through our moderators. Because of this change we've decided not to mess things up for moderators by developing new tools that will soon become outdated with the chage.

That and as has been mentioned before - several months ago i emailed all members of TalkBoard and TalkTeam (moderators) of my intent to install a Community Director in this new year. I've gotten a few ideas from their feedback for helping fund such a person but the first priority is the move to new technology. I'm thinking this a $30-35K job but a few moderators told me to budget $60K. That puts the idea in far newer light. But, I've been tweaking what I can do in-house to save a few pennies in my organization to fund this personally if i have too.

This would move my personal commitment to FT to over $100K a year. You will never follow me to the bank on this one except to cosign a line-of-credit to keep it going. FT is a valuable property and I intend to see that it's value increases to the members and if sometime in the future, it shines on me, cool, but in the meantime, that's not my end game. My end game is simply to calmly work hard enough that FlyerTalk has something of value to each member who calls it their #1 place on the Internet for information about frequent flyer miles and points.

I may add more later, but I'm approaching deadline for the next issue of InsideFlyer and it's tough to get more out of 24 hours than I'm already facing. I hope I've at least framed out my current thoughts and welcome additional input.