Oh boy, Chat! Now that is a community! ^

Now that is funny. :D

I will miss OMNI. On many occasions, it provided real problem-solving answers, opinions, and recommendations that no other Internet community could provide. IMHO, the FT community as a whole is one of the most online communities because of our diversity. We are all fairly educated, yet we possess a very broad knowledge set. OMNI was the catch-all place where one could go to tap that knowledge set.

On one hand, you could say "Go find an electronics board to ask your question about home stereos." I've tried that. It sucks. I'd rather hear from FT'ers. :)

I'll also miss the games, sports talk, and other whimsical threads. I won't miss the politics/religion too much because, frankly, people had long stopped exchanging fresh ideas and were simply regurgitating the same things over and over again. But it was easy enough to stay out of those threads if I didn't want to participate. I don't see why they should have an impact on OMNI's future. Overall, the flame wars in OMNI were mild in comparison to most boards.

Maybe OMNI should lie dormant until post-election. Hopefully, it can be born again...errr, sorry for the religious reset...later this fall. I'm going to be shopping for a new digital camera about then, so I'm gonna need it... ^

I know that some people in OMNI used it constantly to ask advice about consumer electronics and other purchases

:o

I don't understand this comment at all. In order to be familiar with OMNI, you have to post there??? :confused:

You only need to READ OMNI (or even just the thread titles) to perceive what a pile it had become! Lots of people read a lot (on FT in general and in OMNI specifically), but post little or nothing. I posted in OMNI occasionally, but the place had become overwhelmed with ever more and more political shouting.

One thing that needs to be emphasized is that FlyerTalk is provided to us as a FREE resource, subsidized by Randy and a few ads. OMNI consumed a lot of computer, employee, and volunteer moderator resources. I think it ended up seeming like more trouble than it was worth to our generous host, Randy. :(

I do hope OMNI can come back in a non-political form. The fun, lighthearted stuff and the "FlyerTalkers helping FlyerTalkers" threads (whether with relationships, bosses, building contractors, pets, cars, or whatever) were genuinely worthwhile and mostly harmless. I think some FTers were even helped! :)

And one modest request: would it be possible to put OMNI back up in "read-only" form, so that we can look at it without being able to post to it?

New ORP Moderator
 

Did anybody besides me notice that this forum has a new moderator. Welcome to wharvey. My thoughts are with you!!!

It's too bad it was closed, but (in the absence of a "OMNI-closure" message, I'm going to assume here) Randy probably decided to hone the board's focus on miles and points. A sensible decision, and one in the long-term interests of the board, no doubt.

Would be interesting to hear more from Randy about his decision to close it, and is it temporary or permanent? Will the forum description be altered? But he's already spent too much time on OMNI, IMHO, so whatever happens, happens. That's life. :shrug: :)

Wharvey, my prayers are with you :D

I was going to say that, but I didn't want to get into religion right off the bat. :D

As someone who's only discovered FT in the past year, I have to admit that that is the oddest thing about it. There is this surreal obsession with decorum and standards that... well, frankly it is like some of the members are less interested in having discussions than in making discussions presentable. Sometimes you just have to leave things alone and realize that not everything has to be fixed. I doubt that attitude will ever be prevalent on FT though.

I beg to disagree. There were some very knowledgeable people there and some very intelligent debates. I can personally say that I have learned a lot there from both sides in the political debate.

Now you need not read any of the political/religious threads if you feel that they were "pile". So ultimately for the people who are complaining, it boils down to that they saw too many threads there on topics that they would rather not see in OMNI.

Sure, which is why I will respect any decision by Randy (and I also think that Randy should just make a decision and close these and other OMNI discussions in the "Only Randy" forum, and keep the "Only Randy" forum free of all such discussions).

If OMNI consumed a lot of computer resources then presumably it was also generating proportionately more ad revenues. I'm sympathetic to considerations that it was taking up too many employee and volunteer resources (though on the latter topic I suspect there would be enough volunteers if that is all what is needed to keep OMNI up).

I hope that there is a forum where political/religious topics can be discussed, even if that means splitting the current "OMNI" forum. I'd be even for a non-moderated forum, with the stipulation that admins/moderators would not entertain any email or spillovers to other forums (like "Only Randy") related to political/religious discussions.

Agreed.

Well, the obvious and oft stated first; it is Randy’s board thus his decision to make.

It took me nearly a year after joining FT to even find Omni but is was an interesting and sometimes even enjoyable place to interact with other FTers.

I do however have to disagree with a few things that have been said previously in this thread:

1] Make no mistake about it; a half-dozen or so trolls closed Omni. I personally am not into conspiracy theories but it would not surprise me to find out that this cadre made a concerted, if not completely organized effort to bring this event about and are now celebrating their pyrrhic victory. Sadly, though transparently understandable, some members of this group, or their “handles” are quite new to FT.

Congratulations.

2] FT is far too large a community to not have an Omni-type place. There are simply too many members, too many interests, and too many topics to deal with in terms of only ‘miles and points’.

While Omni as a distinct forum may now be gone I assure you that, whether it takes a week or a month, many Omni-type topics will find themselves cropping up in many of this boards other forums. Whenever a large, diverse group of well-educated and affluent individuals get together it is a given that subjects like politics, religion, and human sexuality will arise. FT, at the size that it now is will be no exception.

Whether or not Omni is viewed as a good natured free-fire zone for FTers to take a break from miles and points or as an escape valve to keep these types of topics out of the miles and points forums, Omni provided, IMHO, a valuable service.

3] Moderation: From my perspective the moderation was pretty good. A tough job that was impossible to get perfect but workable none-the-less. In the last few days [weeks?] the only real problems came from those people previously mentioned. Why not simply and finally deal with those individuals. Lets not play games here; with few exceptions we all know who they are/were. When they violate the TOS…gone.

Another problem I am sure that the mods have had to deal with recently has come from some more established members who are offended [?] at the shorthand way that “their” religion is being referred to. Yet these same people would not hesitate to use words as equally pejorative in nature to refer to those with a left-of-center outlook. Why not have the mods simply send them a note when they complain that what is good for the goose…? This would work for any side of just about any issue, no?

Also, why not seriously boost the required post count to participate in Omni. In listening to Randy describe how Omni came about it strikes me that Omni is really a privilege and not an FT right. So why not require someone to have say, 500 non-Omni posts before being Omni capable. It strikes me that a 500-post threshold would deter many a potential troll.

Any way, I am sure I could think of a few other things to say on this subject but that is it for now.

Cheers.

And as I asked before, you probably learned a lot, but chances are, no one has switched positions. And I mean that for everyone who has discussed politics in there


We talked about it before, no man's land, thunderdome, something along those lines.

But then again, you go into that forum, start into a bloddy battle with someone, then he/she has a birthday or posts something in SPAM, and then BAMMM, one :-: rating, and everybody goes nuts.


I say we forget about it, no politics, no religion.

I've seen many people there changing their outlook gradually. Why would it be a success if people switch positions and a failure if none has?

As a non-OMNI participant who read all of FT for over a year before registering to post and read OMNI for at least half that time, I agree 100%. I know that the OMNI moderators have gotten a lot of support in this thread, but if you ask me, the moderators were the problem in the thread. Their moderation was NOT even handed when it came to political discussions. If you viewed it as "fair and balanced" then you likely see Dan Rathers reporting as "fair and balanced" as well - you'd be wrong in both cases.

In over a year, I don't recall seeing anything in OMNI that I found offensive. It seemed to be a pretty tame political (and lets stick to that, because that's where the problems were) discussion where each side presented their point of view and (in some cases) supported it with links to legitimate news. Frequently a thread would get locked or include a "warning post" from a moderator to "cut out the personal attacks". I'd read through the threads and try to figure out what the offending post was. Generally it would be a situation where a conservative-leaning poster would be making a logical and well-supported post that the moderators disagreed with. What it boiled down to is that they couldn't handle the truth. All you need to do is read through the ORP forum for the past year and it is quite clear to see that moderation in OMNI was a huge problem (although it appears that some of those threads in ORP have been deleted).

Don't get me wrong, its Randy's board and we read it for free; he can do whatever he wants with his property. If he wanted his board to be a tool to elect John Kerry, he could have left OMNI open. Obviously he decided that he didn't want his board used for that purpose. But, all this gushing over the "great job" the moderators did really hit a nerve with me. Unbalanced moderation may not be the only cause of the demise of OMNI, but it certainly played a role from my perspective.