Positive ID
 

I brought this up in another thread but it got buried in the crush of posts, so I decided to make it into a separate thread.

I think that FT would greatly benefit from having positive ID of all posters. This would eliminate the possibility of someone using multiple ID's to make unacceptable posts and then disappearing.

I suggest that Randy institute a policy whereby nobody can post unless he has bought a one-year internet subscription to Inside Flyer. This would only be required of him one time, would cost $12, and would have to be paid for with the person's own credit card. He would have to supply his billing address and telephone number.

True, there would be minor drop off in posters but I don't think most FTers would have a problem forking over $12.

It would also help offset Randy's cost in keeping FT alive. There are very few advertisements on these pages and I doubt that they are a great source of income for him.

Your thoughts?

I agree that there needs to be some time of positive ID system.

However, I am afraid that the $12 fee to post (I KNOW.... you get a magazine... but many, including me... do not find that magazine helpful... as the info is usually dated when the magazine arrives) will cause many people not to register.

I might suggest that people have to pay $1 or $2 to register... and that Randy send them a luggage tag or two for that cost.

That way, the price is minimal, we get a positive ID, and the person gets something for the small "donation".

There have been many threads on raising money for Randy and this site. He has resisted all attempts... I have a feeling this site is not meant to be a money maker.

Just a different thought on how to support your suggestion of positive IDs.

William

William, that is not a bad improvement on my idea

How about if we carry it one step further and allow ANY purchase made from Randy -- as long as a credit card was involved with billing address and telephone number.

That way, people could chose between the magazine, the tags, or whatever they would prefer from the store.

Incidentally, anyone who already is getting the magazine would not be required to buy it again.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/thumbsup.gif http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/thumbsup.gif http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/thumbsup.gif

I was always for something like that.

How about paying 12-15 bucks for your FT handle and posting rights and getting 1000 Starpoints or airline miles in a programm of your choice just as if you subscribed to inside flyer.

Then no mailing of goods (e.g.luggage tags) would be necessary and we had a good incentive.

Wonderful idea, Flamboyant 1!

Any of the above sound like a good idea to me.

------------------
-alan in sitges, home of the new, improved Si-Re-Do

flamboyant 1's idee is excellent. Let me expand on it a little...

Well, if I was managing a site like this, the fee mentioned by flamboyant 1 would become a yearly subscription fee, and it would still not preclude losing posting rights if someone clearly violates the rules.

I'd probably make the site (at least partially, parts could be viewable without registration as a "teaser") viewable only upon registration. For the registration, I would demand a "real" e-mail address (I'd exclude free e-mail services like Hotmail etc.). Then, I would allow registered, but non-paying users to browse the site for 30 days. After these 30 days, they either have to get a subscription or they lose their viewing rights.

You would have posting rights only after your subscription payment is received.

Less traffic, but I would set the pricing to what the market can bear http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif, so that the contribution would be sufficient on the one hand, and the positive identification of all active posters would be a positive side effect. New visitors would not be precluded from "getting into it" - the initial registration process for viewing would have to be very simple. Just enter your legit e-mail address, click on verification link in the e-mail you receive, done.

Additionally, for special fees, you could introduce different member rankings and rights later (edit, search, special titles). Your title/rights would reflect how much you have given to support the cost of running the service. Peer pressure works wonders...

The payments received should be sufficient to at least support the following two things:

- Redesign (urgently needed, imo)
- Better board software (more stable for sure, and possibly more functions - if you pay)


These ideas are only spontaneous ones from the top of my head, so please feel free to criticize/add your ideas/modify http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif.

I think member rankings/etc./different levels of paid services could also be bundled nicely with promotions in cooperation with travel partners such as airline/hotel companies...

A site like this has a lot of potential, I would say.

One thing would always have to be clear to all cooperation partners/advertisers, and that is a bit similar to the situation a newspaper is in with its advertisers:

There will be no censoring on behalf of cooperation partners or advertisers regarding what people talk about - no deleting of discussion of targeted promotions, etc.

Perhaps the payments received by the participants might even help to decrease pressure from said companies to push their agenda through and make this site a marketing and customer service tool for them where they would start to feel free to think they can censor members' postings - unfortunately, we have recently seen such tendencies already.

To clarify, even though I would preclude "free" e-mail addresses such as Hotmail etc. from being used for registration, they could be used by the users as their contact address in their profile - other users would not get to see the "main" e-mail address used for registration.

All the above replies seem to overlook one small reality.

The more users and vistors to FT, the better for Randy.

Paying even 1c to register would deter a pretty large slab of lurkers and new sign ups - IMHO.

www.MoreMiles.org for instance has strict entry criteria for new posters. However it is a tiny board. For Randy's staff to duplicate that on a board this size would require him to employ several staff simply to verify it all, at a scary real $$$$ cost.

A real email address (no Yahoo/Hotmail) would be a positive start I agree, but the trolls would surely work around that one too?

------------------
~ Glen ~ sipping bubbly from a UA 747-400 exit row 15 near you SOON!

You would have a somewhat more sophisticated system - as I said:

Part 1 of the site: Viewable without registration - as a teaser
Part 2 of the site (the majority of the rest): Viewable only with registration, and only for 30 days
Part 3 (after 30 days, and perhaps certain "premium" parts of the site - and posting rights): Only after payment of subscription fee

This way, the same amount of people would still see part of the site. You would just slowly suck them into registering - and paying.


This would be true if Randy made the majority of the money to cover the cost of running this site from banner pageviews and/or click-throughs. I might be wrong, but that is not my impression. At the big portals, everyone used to think "the more eyeballs, the better, we will worry about monetization later". That view has changed significantly.

I have no problem with lurkers viewing the site for as long as they want without registering.

The point here is to get rid of anonymous posters, using multiple ID's, who feel free to cause whatever problems they want anytime they get to an internet cafe.

I don't see all that many ads on the forum so I doubt that Randy would lose much in the way of revenues if he had a somewhat lower number of posters -- and this would be more than made up by the fees to be charged (which he would decide).

One thing to keep in mind is demographics. Airlines, hotels, etc., are looking for people on the high end of the income scale. I doubt that very many of these would be put off by a minor charge.

One reason that I would make registration even for viewing at least part of the site a requirement is that it would allow you to slowly build a profile of the user, which would in turn make the user more valuable as an advertising target over time. Anyway, this is just a side aspect that distracts a little from Dovster's goal when he started the thread, I guess, so I will leave it at that.

Banners are relatively new on FT IIRC? The 'staircase' ones especially so.

The huge critical mass of FT is I understand a valuable asset to Randy's fairly large core business. He or staff can consult to airlines or Hotels etc and KNOW backwards the issues their users have. New ideas can be bounced off this audience. Concepts can be floated. Press can and often do can draw from it.

A large FT makes all the above easier and more effective. IMO.

Randy has posted before IIRC that new staff to his core business he sits in front of a computer and has them spend a day or so surfing here just to get a "feel" how Frequent flyers think and act. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

ANY kind of a fee or restriction or registration really drives down participation I feel on ANY website. The idea on paper seems to have merit, but it is Randy of course that needs to be convinced, and be very interested in his thoughts if he cares to share.

------------------
~ Glen ~ sipping bubbly from a UA 747-400 exit row 15 near you SOON!

I have to go with Ozstamps on this one. The paperwork and staff involved in verifying ID's on a site like this would be horrific. In cases of flagrant rules violations there have always been enough techies on this board to trace back to who the poster is.

As for me - though a lot of you know who I am and have my "real" email address I sure would not want all that spam going to my work account that the email harvest programs pull from here.

Jan

That is simply incorrect. It takes some effort setting it up and that's it.

Sometimes it is simply not possible, as the recent cases have shown. There are ways to cover your tracks on the Internet. You would have to spend a very high amount of time and effort to really trace someone who covered their tracks.

Apparently you have not read my post. The e-mail address you use for registration would not be the same as the one displayed in your profile - IF you choose to display an e-mail address in your profile at all.

I agree. I just don't think you are going to have the same quality of information here if you require any kind of fee or Veri-Check/credit card verification system. Most of those who post now and enjoy FT may be all for it. How enthusiastic will new sign-ups be? So you'd have a certain size membership, which would then naturally diminish over time, and departing members would not be replaced at the same rate by new sign-ups.

As nice as they sound, a fee system or positive ID check are just not the right solutions for FT. I'm not even sure that FT, per se, has a problem. As I said before, there are one or two problem posters who are trying to create a scandal here, and they need to be dealt with.

Also being overlooked is that instituting a fee/credit card check system does NOT reduce trolling or flaming. There are other IBB's which have subscription fees, and they STILL have to deal with trolling and flaming.

Obviously, this is a very valid and most important consideration, but this would be taken care of by the fact that you would make parts of FT visible without registration. The details, of course, would have to be worked out, but one thing does not necessarily contradict the other.

Responding to the mention of moremiles.org: I think they took it a bit to the other extreme - it is very difficult to become a member of that site, plus, it really does not serve that much of an additional purpose compared to this site. "Network effects" are at work here and once someone else already has a certain critical mass, it becomes hard to compete with something like that which already exists. If you restrict registration too much for a new site, you will never reach the critical mass that you need.

My proposal would be to take the critical mass that exists and to slowly start to monetize it in a better way, without doing damage to the core business the critical mass is supposed to support, while at the same time getting rid of some of the trolling problems.

It can be done, and it would actually make Flyertalk MORE attractive to advertisers and cooperation partners.

I disagree. It would surely reduce it. It would not totally eliminate it, but it would eliminate the element of "anonymous trolls" we are currently dealing with.

Perhaps I should also disclose that I used to work at a large portal and that I have gone through the same kind of discussion before.

It has been done and it can be done.

I belong to a site that requires "professional" certification, costs $400 a yr, positive ID, real emails, and posting with your real name.

The flames abound in that groups equivelant of OMNI

I very much doubt that TalkTeam, Enquiring Mind, or ftomnibox would have made the posts that they did if they had to do it under their usual user names.

Moreover, if they did use their regular tags it would give the readers more of a basis to judge their accusations. A respected, serious, member of FT would be seen in a completely different light than someone who has a reputation for being a troll.

Personally, I don't like the idea of banning anyone -- including somebody like ftomnibox/consience. However, that is not my decision to make and if Randy does want someone off the board, this would give him a way to make certain that this person is not back the next day with a new tag.


[This message has been edited by Dovster (edited Feb 01, 2004).]

Well, but then if the issue is TalkTeam, Enquiring Mind and ftomnibox, then deal with them.

Aside from jan_az' board, I know another popular board which charges and yet still has a lot of flaming and trolling.

Now, does making a change from free to subscription-based reduce trolling and flaming? I don't know - maybe, maybe not.

But the fact is that you can't do anything about mad people who lack self-discipline to not post insulting, offensive and aggravating statements. That has more to do with upbringing and emotional state of mind than socio-economic indicators, IMO. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

That is a problem of moderation, then. The example you cite does not support an argument of "sites with verification and payment have the same problems, so why bother" argument at all.

A little excursion:

I know this will probably rub some people the wrong way - but if I were the one that would have had to pull the trigger, I would have banned a lot more people already. With a site like this, you have to set a signal sometimes and just outright kick people if they start challenging you. This is not a democracy. This is a free site that belongs to Randy (as far as I know).

People forget that. Just today I read people saying "I have every right to do so" etc. No you don't. You have no right here if Randy decides you don't. This is a free site and Randy can do with it what he wants. You can - as I am just doing it - make suggestions on how to improve the site. But they are what they are - suggestions. You can argue with other posters. But if Randy decides, it is enough - you have no right to complain.

That's the way it is. Again, this is not a democracy or a debate club. Any right that you have on this site is derived from Randy allowing you to post here.

If Randy decides that what some describe as "seagull management" is the way he decides to run the site - perhaps not answering e-mails or be inconsistent in enforcing standards (I don't know what experience they have made) - then that is the way it is. People may be annoyed with this, and I can understand their disappointment, but they have no right to complain. Again, even though he seems to be the friendly, grassroots type that would like to involve everyone and give them the feeling that it is their site - it is not. It is his. I think many people feel they have spent so much time on this site that part of it is theirs and this is why they get so bitter and angry when something does not go their way. I would have probably kicked these people to set a signal (I am saying this even though I know that some of them are my favorite posters). It is a little bit like in a company - if I am the boss and some employees start behaving like they think they are free to do whatever they choose, I will have to fire them at some point, even if I think they are valuable to the company - just to show the others: This is how far you can go and not a step further, and I will not hesitate to fire even my favorite employees if they cross that line.


Coming back to what you said about the site where people pay a lot of money and they still have flaming problems: That site apparently does not make it clear in their terms and conditions that paying money does not mean you can do what you want. You will still have to abide by certain standards and once you start insulting other posters, you risk losing the rights to post that you acquired when you paid your subscription fee. Tough luck. Kick one or two and you will see that others will become more hesitant, after having paid money, to lose their posting rights.


The problem here right now is that you cannot really act like I just described and enforce the standards, because people can easily always come back and cause trouble again or even be vengeful and REALLY try to cause trouble.

Hence my strong support for requiring positive identification as outlined in my proposal, if I were Randy.

That is exactly the point. If you require positive identification, then you CAN do something about them - you can exclude them from your site once they appear to start feeling they are bigger than your site and try to claim it as their own by their behavior, end of the story.

All that being said, since I am not the one who has to run the site, I am just fine with things being the way they are, as it contributes to my entertainment and I have no hassle with it http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif.

The whole discussion just brought up my consultant/previous job experience side http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif.

Me, too. But...



This is all IMHO: I've been here long enough to make an educated guess that Randy does not subscribe (!) to the notion that it's "his way or the highway".

Rather, while he retains the right to ban people, of course, he DOES seem to try to be "fair" and non-arbitrary. There are rules, and if you follow them, he will not ban you just because people don't like you or whatever else. That would include complaining about things you feel are legitimate to complain about.

I mean that "private property" stuff and talk about "you have no rights here" is all fine to talk about, but Randy has stated that he does not want to stifle opinions, and has invested a lot of time and resources into fine-tuning the terms of service, so would he just rip it up in a moment of anger and just start banning people left and right? No, I would bet not.

Well, the board of which I'm speaking has a Terms of Service, just like FT, and an even stricter moderation policy, banning far more people than FT, and STILL they have problems with flamewars, so again, it's not clear to me that restricting membership on the way in (with fees and subscriptions and veri-check ID's) is going to accomplish that much, if anything.

I know Randy has a different approach to this and I commend him for his patience. I am just saying that I would have been less patient http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif.

How are you going to do that, though? You can't exactly give people a psychological test as a term of membership. Additionally, while legally as owner you can probably ban whoever you want, from a board-morale standpoint, you can't just start arbitrarily banning people without it coming back to haunt you, like on some other moderation-heavy boards a lot of people here have bashed. You have to try to be "fair" in the eyes of the FT community, or else you create more problems in the aftermath. That would mean establishing rules and then respecting them, including Randy (while at the same time retaining the right to breach the rules if he feels he needs to).

I don't think I said "arbitrarily". But I am on a board where they are very strict and quickly ban people if they really did something wrong. This does not stifle discussion among members, but one thing I have seen there is that once the board owner comes in and says "end it here", they really do - because they know otherwise they are out. One or two people have tried to say "I dare you to ban me" - they have never posted again, and the others have taken note for the future. It is like with children, they will go as far as they can if you do not stop them at some point.

I agree with the positive ID idea. Implementation is not easy, but... sometimes life is just like that, not easy.

I also think that FT should have two versions, one freebie version, and one full version that should cost $$$$$. But, heck, Im not the owner of this circus so... what do I know...?


------------------
Gaucho100K

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

How about a "members buy-out"...instead of "management buy-out"...just kidding...

A positive ID system is a ridiculous suggestion. But yes, it might pacify the few here who can't seem to ignore the bait.

I disagree completely with any positive ID suggestion.

Any chance for a response with some substance in it?

wwhat is getting lost here I THINK, is that Randy has been very clear whenever thtis has been brought up - that he does NOT want to make FT a paid site. Whenever you charge money for something you have the repsonsibility that goes with it. If you pay a fee can you request your $$ back if the site goes down? Seeing as Randy has no staff dedicated to FT specifically (witness how weekends are an issue if the site goes down or flames explode) I can't imagine he will change his mind and change his business model because we can't work it out.

And there ARE hassles with a paid site, just in terms of administration and maintenance. There ARE people (not any current FT'er of course) who would complain if the site was slow for a few hours...

[This message has been edited by squeakr (edited Feb 01, 2004).]

Yes they would http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

That is the reason why I am suggesting a moderator for this forum and maybe some more tools for all moderators, like the one that we have in OMNI

I really don't think paying is an answer, positive ID would be a turn off for many new members.

Keep things they way they are, and use your available resources.

Call me nuts, and chances are you already have, but don't we have a huge amount of people already volunteering, and more that have applied that want to help?

Why not tap this and just control things that way?

But that is just my humble opinion, what the heck do I now anyway http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

I think having too many moderators and giving them too much power makes it more difficult to enforce consistent standards and to check that the character of those individuals qualifies them to do their task properly.

If anything, this whole thing here has shown that more power to the moderators would not really solve anything, but create more problems. I am not surprised that some of them would ask for that, though.

I totally agree with attorney28. He made good comments.

Well, it might be difficult to implement but I still think that paying (initiation or yearly fee) for FT won't be that bad if we got some kind of additional bonus just like ordering a real magazine subscription and getting an additional gift,

like the 10000LH miles for my mothers new Focus subscription.

While well-intentioned, I don't think that credit-card verification would be int he best interests of flyerTalk.

These trolls represent a very small portion of our community, and they inflict their damage on fairly limited scales. 95% of fT has no clue who some of these people are, and don't care.

It would be a travesty to scare away a good portion of those who come to learn about points and miles in the name of weeding out a few bad apples (who, by the way, would almost surely find a way to defeat the verification, anyway).

So what exactly do you base your claim on that this "travesty" would actually scare away a good portion of the members, as you claim?