As a regular poster to OMNI, I want to say that closing OMNI was a good move, Randy. The section had nothing to do with miles, points, and travel.

It is my fault!

Please accept my apologies!

Frankly, I feel sure that many saw this coming, yet, as I've noted before, it would be far better, IMHO, to have addressed those FT members, the chronic offenders, who caused 99% of all the problems!

In any case, I naturally respect the opinion(s) of our kind benefactor, Randy.

Life goes on!

In time hopefully, OMNI will be back!

All the best,

-Mark

I didn't close it. A number of members of FlyerTalk closed it when they repeatedly did not comprehend that regardless of the forum you post on FlyerTalk, you must abide by the rules of our TOS and really even more importantly, the rules of simply simple discourse. We have asked far too many times to respect others point-of-view and that message was not getting through. There are likely other Internet chat boards where those topics can continue - under someone else's terms.

Interesting factoid: OMNI was created at the request of less than a dozen members. It was closed at the behavior of more than a hundred members.

I've probably posted less than 100 times in Omni out of my 5500 total Flyertalk posts. So I won't miss it like oxygen like some here might. However I believe it did (does) have true value to our community. Moreover, I am sure that some innocent and helpful OMNI discussions will now move to other forums. I'm sure we all know that Flyertalk is a Community. That has an awful lot of value on the Internet these days. And more than most global internet communities, many of us actually meet in the real world. That has even more value because it carries a measure of trust.

So when a member of our Community has a question, he/she can ask that question here and get great answers from trusted people. Mostly these questions are of a direct travel nature. But sometimes they don't fit in one of the travel forums. I had such a question recently that I posted in Omni. I'm a new habitant in France and I asked for help in buying a car here. I got connected with a Flyertalker of some good repute who is working on helping me. Where else on the Internet could I get that? Flyertalk is my online community and I trust many of the people here. So next time I have such a question (if Omni is gone for good), I might ask on Travelbuzz and hope a moderator doesn't pounce on me for being off-topic.

Another way of looking at it is that the Internet is like a flowing stream. You can place rocks in the stream to block the water, but the water always finds a way through. If you put enough rocks in to stop all the water, you will find that leads to more dire consequences later.

I think Flyertalk has done a great job with Omni. Perhaps it could do better by shutting people off more regularly if they are mean, but shutting down the whole thing doesn't help us in the long run. It actually hurts us as a Community.

I will miss OMNI a great deal. I have developed some wonderful online friendships through it and I want it to re-open. I volunteer to be a moderator for it.

--richard

I've said it before ..

Every major online community has a place for off-topic posts that is similar to Omni. The biggest difference is that discussions regarding politics and religion are not allowed.

Remove those two items from Omni and perhaps we can bring it back to what it was about 3 or 4 years ago instead of the scapegoat for all FT misbehaviors.

I don't doubt there were TOS violations, but I would venture to guess that almost every single complaint had to do with politics & religion.

IMHO, I think we've thrown out the baby with the bathwater and penalized the entire community for the actions of a few people that continuously posted about politics.

Randy, please reconsider. Bring back Omni as a fun place and good resource and ban political and religious discussions.

Mary

I used to post to Omni a while back, but after a while it became a headache to be engaged in many of those topics. I must admit that Omni drew a crowd which was not particularly keen to the focus of this Community. I respect the decisions made, but will be saddened at the fact that I too, made relationships with those who I conversed with there.

I'll miss it too, mostly for the non-political threads like the sports discussions and the random stuff.

OttoGraham's endorsement of closing OMNI is faintly ironic because OMNI's closing was primarily (IMO) linked to the pattern of posting large number of political discussions which lead to name-calling.

First and foremost, I respect Randy's (and everyone else involved) decision to close Omni. It's his board not ours

I am sure that the burden of running Omni was getting to be quite large but I do agree with Stimpy in that it was great community with a built in trust factor if you needed help or assistance.

Anyone who had posting privileges also understood the rules and that they could loose those posting privileges in Omni and other places if they did not play nice.

Kicking some of those people out might have been a good first step followed by removing Omni if it continued to have trouble posters. I do understand that removing over 100 members, as you alluded to in your post, would likely be very time consuming when you factor in the emails from those members asking "why?" and having to reply to them so closing Omni was probably easier.

FWIW I actually have learned A LOT from Omni from a news perspective if nothing else. I have followed the debates about politics, religion and misc tid bits that have made my day (penguin games have been great ^ ). Some of the debates got pretty heated to say the least but what I really enjoyed was the "prove it" attitude that often prevailed. Links would appear to back up arguments and then I could form opinions based on that. I trusted more of the news I got from Omni than I did from the TV or newspaper as there was always dialogue surrounding it to give a broader context to what was being discussed. Randy, it is not your responsibility to have my news brought to me I am just saying that Omni really was a great place that was more than SSM or the Election which seemed to be the hot buttons for most

I'm sure others will voice opinions as well. Now matter what happens, thanks for this board because it has made my travelling life more than I could have imagined (or Mrs Cattle's for that matter )

OMNI is where my sense of FlyerTalk community really developed. It is where I got to know fellow FlyerTalkers. It is incredibly valuable that way.

I'll miss OMNI, but I won't miss the OMNI-only crowd - that is, the members who posted infrequently (if ever) outside of OMNILand.

Anyone have a suggestion as to where we can go? I'm still waiting for Otto to respond to a question!

To places like Travelbuzz to discuss your latest experience while flying?

^^^^^^^^