The new flyertalk
 

I logged in on FT after a few months and got the shock of my life. I am going to rant here a bit. The mods will lock this thread, edit this post, ban me etc. Bah.

I have no inside info about FT. I know the locals only from reading their posts. Personally I rarely post, only when I have something informative/funny to say. :D

For undisclosed reasons, Randy and FT seem to have decided that newbie-friendliness is more important than information content. This will lead to the following inevitable next steps:

1. Eventually the contributors providing the value will be gone. D'oh.

2. Most people don't come here to have people hold their hands. Who is the "most people"? The regulars are. Why do we come here? We come here for travel information and to talk to like-minded travellers. And when we see (1) leading to a reduction in value, we will go away too.

3. What will be left is akin to myspace, with such low signal/noise ratio that it is useless for us, the current users. But for the new target audience, those who book one ticket a year on orbitz, FT will be an awesome social networking site.


There are ways to fix the newbie-asks-stupid-question-and-gets-slapped problem. For instance, prevent new registrants from posting for a short period of time, say 3 days. And in the meanwhile, make sure they understand How to ask questions the smart way.

But, no.

FT would rather be the myspace.com of the FF industry. All noise and no signal. Well good luck. Helps to remember that you don't piss off your suppliers to get more customers, because when they stop supplying you have nothing to sell. Websites and businesses that don't realize this deserve to go out of business. Whether Web-2.0 or not.

End of my rant.

It would be good for all of us to remember that FT is Randy's to do with as he sees fit. Including running it into the ground. I am not saying that's what he is doing, just that he does not need our permission to do it.

IF SO, We MAY just have to take our toys and go play elsewhere. That's what many did when The Motley Fool pulled a similar stunt in the Web-1.0 era. At the current rate, that's what will happen again here.


Edit #1: Added 3 words + highlighted one phrase above.

Edit #2: To include my post #60 here.

My life does not revolve around FT, and consequently, I have neither the energy nor the inclination to continue an argument here for an unbounded period of time about what moderators/newbies/oldies/Randy should or should not do, especially given that a number of posters have demonstrated an incredible inability to understand the basic issue involved.

For the final time, I'll state it again: I logged in here after a gap of a number of weeks and the amount of useful, reliable, authoritative information available to me seemed to have degraded significantly.

Further, there have been rather bizarre and arbitrary policing of some fora.

Apparently, a number of others agree.

Your Mileage May Vary.
Peace to all.
Keep flying.

To reiterate what I posted in a soon to be deleted thread:

FT certainly is far different than when we first joined. Change, even for the worse, is inevitable I suppose. Some of the more tenured FTers feel that the exponential growth over the last year or so is turning most of the broads OMNI-like. FT used to be a great place to get inside info and get a leg up on the system. Now it has more than its share of know-nothing know-it-alls, agitators, kids or those that behave like them, and my favorite the wannbe alpha-male. We also never needed such intensive moderation. We've lost a couple of great resources over the years (TOS prohibits me form naming them), but I suspect the "brain drain" will only accelerate as more folks get fed up. :(

To reiterate what I posted in a soon to be deleted thread:

Move on, man. Life's to short to be part of a forum that makes you so unhappy. ;)

I would like to nominate this post for Post-of-the-Year! :-: :-: :-:

Yeah, maybe I should myspace to try and make some friends....... ;)

<<nevermind>>

Because this thread pertains to FlyerTalk in general and not about American Airlines or the American AAdvantage frequent flier program, I thought that Randy Petersen would be interested in reading this thread, commenting on it, and make the final decision regarding it.

Regards,

Canarsie
Senior Moderator
on behalf of American AAdvantage forum moderators Plato90s, onedog, askworldtraveler, JDiver, and techgirl

<<better response>> ^

Cheers.

<<^>>

And, as I said there (it's gone):

Alternatively, we can try to make this a better place, and return it to what it used to be.

Cheers.

While I find many annoying posts on FT (and you may find mine annoying), I still think it's a great place to find information. Despite the numerous personal attacks I receive when posting in certain forums, my questions are always answered. I don't really think any substantial changes to FT are warranted whatsoever. Unlike many here, I don't "long for the old days" when FT was a small clique.

Not "old days of a small clique". We just need to rewind the clock to Q1, 2006. Before FT decided to be yet-another-myspace. When FT had a modicum of respect for contributors.

Sure, for example, it is annoying to be attacked in threads where I didn't even post (like this one, before I started participating), but not such a big deal. Move on, ignore it, whatever, this is still an extremely valuable community. There will always be people on FT, as in life, that must simply be ignored.

Randy, you may also want to read this thread as some background:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=586784