Punki

While I trust and admire wharvey's judgment and intentions, he simply is not Randy Petersen. If wharvey is in charge of what can and/or cannot stand on ORP, then, at the very least, the name of the forum must be changed to "Only Randy Petersen and wharvey".

Personally, it saddens me deeply, as an original FT member, to see FT develop into a BB that is so heavily restricted and lacking in spontaneity. FT, as it now stands, feels sterile and controlled and, honestly, IMHO, rather boring, compared to the truly exciting community that it was in the beginning. I can remember when I could hardly wait to bounce out of bed in the morning to see what exciting posts my FT friends had made during my night. Now I check it out of long-standing habit, but find little of interest and almost nothing to cause joy, laughter, awarness and/or inspiration, save Dovster's crazy planning of the VCE party.

Maybe these heavy restrictions are necessary, due to the disruptive nature of many of the current, newer, contributors, but the result is a far cry from the joyful, wonderous and spontaneous community that, serendipitously, exploded into the amazing celebration of the original PIP, and all of the wonderful friendships that sprang forth, therefrom.

Sadly, we have lost many of the truly brilliant, funny, inspirational and knowledgeable contributors who made FT such a wonderful and special place to visit. I fear that this last round of "restrictions" will drive away those last die-hard, and amazingly valuable contributors

Darn it, I love this place and want it to flourish and grow, but everything I see happening lately looks to me like a step away from the days of glory.

wharvey

This post was originally made in the "Welcome wharvey" thread.

While I am reluctant to moderate a thread that was started about me, I am moving this thread as it is more about moderation of this forum and other actions that the owner has taken than with the subject the original poster intended.

I will leave this open for discussion at this time. However, this thread is NOT to become a thread about moderator actions. Per an agreement between Randy and myself during the last moderator chat, we agreed that moderator-type threads would not be left open in the ORP forum. However, they will not be deleted and will be viewable to the entire community as long as they are not personal attacks. When they appear, they are to be closed and reported to Randy for action.

So, I moved this post from the other thread since it was off topic.

Randy has received a notice about this post so he can take action if he so desires.

William

wharvey

Speaking as a FT member, I would not blame the recent changes on new members... in fact, from my perspective, it is our more "senior" (as in time on FT) members that cause much of the fires... and then yell at the firemen once they show up and do something.

We cannot have it both ways... if we want a spontaneous community, we have to make sure our spontaneity meets the TOS and is not disruptive to others.

William

RSSrsvp

Punki, it is not only the new members as you well know. IMHO, the old-timers are even more guilty of this disruptive behavior. You can still have a joyful, wonderous and spontaneous community without personal attacks. We have also had the appearance of "weekend" trolls on the ORP board during this past year. Unfortunately Randy is on the road quite often and cannot police this board for these TOS violations 24/7. Therefore he has decided to appoint a moderator to be his backup. One would logically assume that there would be no objection from the FT community to the appointment of a full time moderator under these circumstances. After all, there wouldn't be a moderator here unless Randy felt it totally necessary.

ClueByFour

^ ^ ^

I can assure you that wharvey does not read Randy's PM inbox nor his e-mail. Thus, if anyone has something that Randy really needs to know or address, it's still possible to communicate these things to him--it just won't be in public. (this makes the assumption that wharvey would have any reason to edit such things designed to bring something to Randy's attention. Unless they also included something akin to what is discussed below, I'm confident he'd never have to do it in the first place).

What this really does is the days of people reposting information from private forums (against the TOS) and inciting huge flamewars (against the TOS) and so forth are at end end in ORP when Randy happens to go out of town for a weekend. In other words, no more using ORP to abuse the TOS. It's a good thing.

SEA_Tigger

Since I'm only preparing to enter my second year of membership, I can't speak of how FlyerTalk was in the "before time".

I never visited OMNI (and never wished to), so I can only speak of the forums that deal with Points and Miles, though the various "Buzzes" (TravelBuzz, CommunityBuzz) do have a more "general" flair to them. I've just started the occasional visit to chat and, while usually quiet, I have seen conversations both whimsical and engaging take place.

I agree that the Airline/Hotel/Car forums are running about 30% informational requests, 20% "commentary threads" (where a question or comment has spawned a generally enlightening discussion thread), and about 50% carping/complaining about a program's changes or a recent experience with that program/company.

I am sure back in "The Happy Times" before 9/11 and the Tech *BOOM* (as opposed to the Tech Boom), things were wonderful as a frequent traveller. I have fond memories of when First Class was an adjective and not a noun. When perks flowed as freely as did the champagne. When a Five-Star property could legtimately command a Five Star Price. The travel industry was making money hand over fist as we all flew paid First/Business/high-fare Economy on our dime or our company's and the industry rewarded us by using that lagresse to make our trips comfortable, convenient, and memorable.

But once the economy imploded, so did the spending. We paid less because we had to, and the industry responded by cutting back on all the perks to try and staunch the red ink. Those who had enjoyed the good times understandably lamented their loss, and faced with new fiscal realities of their own and their travel partners, started to look for new partners that would offer them the best deal for their money.

I've limited my DOOs to SEA and ORD, yet have found them all rollicking good times. I'll do my first "Euro-DOO" this year (either BCN or LHR) and will probably do my first "Asia-DOO" in January with SIN as I want to visit NRT and can add SIN to the intin for only $100 more in airfare. So I'm hardly the voice of experience when it comes to "in-person" gatherings. Yet a day does not go by when a FlyerTalker visiting some city around the world announces the fact and almost immediately plans are made to get together with them by the locals. Heck, here in SEA we've had people cross continents - and even oceans - just to have a steak.

Yes, there are personalities and personality conflicts involved with members both brand-new and founders. But to make any comment beyond that is to become a part of the issue, itself.

Even before wharvey was appointed Moderator of this forum, ORP had finally settled down once Randy "laid down the law" a few months back. Before then, ORP was a perpetual motion machine of people complaining about other people - both in the thread topics and the thread bodies. Since that time, I believe we've had less then a dozen threads, and almost every one (if not every one) has dealt with an issue regarding a loyalty program, and not a person.

So perhaps wharvey's "term of office" will remain quiet, dealing with the issues that affect us as members of a particular loyalty program.

Punki

I suppose old and new are relative terms--heck, I even think of you as a new member. You are undoubtedly right, however, wharvey, some disrupters are older posters, and some are newer posters.

IMHO the problem stems from the method in which abuses are handled. It would appear that the current FlyerTalk trend is, when a bunch of people abuse a medium, to eliminate the medium, rather than eliminating the abusers, which effectively puts the control into the hands of the bad guys.

In order to turn FT around, it will be necessary to eliminate the bad guys, not the medium they choose to abuse. I would not be at all surprised to learn that many of the same bunch who abused the "blings and dings", were also involved in abusing thread ratings. Their primary goal is to cause trouble and they will always be able find another medium to disrupt until they are finally dealt with, once and for all.

ScottC

But things like "thread dings" and "reputation dings" only cause concern to a (small) yet very vocal group, 98% of the board didn't give a damn about either, which was clear because only the same group of 20 or 30 people were posting/complaining about them.

IMHO things like public flaming, multiple TOS violations, commercial spam posters, multiple handles and trolls are a far more serious problem as they DO impact the general membership.

Taking away a few features that didn't add any kind of value to Flyertalk is a very insignificant problem, you mentioned the "old days"; in the "old days" we didn't have these features, and nobody every asked for them either, so losing them can't be too much of an inconvenience.

We need to keep the handling of "abusers" in the right perspective; In the case of the blings and dings saga 2 members WERE punished for their actions, IMHO the correct action. But Flyertalk is about miles and points, it's not about FT staff wasting resources to find culprits of childish pranks and punishing them.

There will always be cliques on the board, and there will always be people with a hidden agenda, that isn't something unique to Flyertalk, it's something that is unique to human nature. There probably isn't a member on this board that hasn't pushed their own agenda a little in their favor, or emailed a few buddies to complain about XXXX member.

missydarlin

Since this is not the first time the issue of lack of "spontaneity" in FT has come up, I went back to read through some posts I made a couple years ago. As I am still of the same opinion, I submit for your reading pleasure....

Post #14

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...highlight=days

I'm also especially fond of a quote by Arturo, who sadly has spent very little time amongst us as of late..........

bigjim

^ ^ ROFL I have never experienced Arturo but your quote here has made me smile from ear to ear. He is quite eloquent and I agree 100% with his position.

Doppy

Yes, this does seem to be the case.

Analise

It sounds like you long for FT to return to being the same little "club" of buddies who arranged for Randy to have this website. You did offer it as a gift, did you not? I could be wrong.

This is an internet site in which new people are welcomed daily and often these new people add a new vitality to FT. Would you prefer that FT be open only to those who were original members plus those with whom you get along? That's what it sounds like.

Times change and people find out about FT. They also leave. Priorities change, opportunities abound. Instead of longing for more charm in times past of your days at FT, do what you can to add the charm you think is missing. In the process, you just might discover that these new members are as delightfully charming as you are.

cblaisd

Beautifully put!

Five stars :-: :-: :-: :-: :-:

RSSrsvp

If one would consider the obvious fact that a moderator was placed on this board with Randy's blessing, perhaps a PM or email to him would be more appropriate than these public posts every time there is any change on FT?

robb

Do we also need to change our business cards to show our assistants' names since it's not really just Rob, but Rob and his assistant?

However, I don't want to wade too deep here, because this seems like one of those posts that can't possibly confine itself to a single issue. I assume it actually has nothing at all do with wharvey, but is a continuation of a long-standing complaint that the OP will not rest on until, well, I guess it's all done precisely the way she wants.

In the two or three years since this complaint began, the trend has been squarely away from "precisely the way she wants" so forgive me if I don't try to answer this one issue. It seems that the only winning move is not to play.