Sorry, as noted above, the motto seems to be:

"Teach a man to fish and he, and several other amateur fisherman, will crap all over you for giving them a fishing pole and not just handing over the freakin' fish"

Cheers.

I'm a huge advocate of search/FAQs. Aswering "What is Global Services?" once a week gets tiring.

I welcome newbies and their input, but my thought is: If i'm thinking about it, someone may have already asked the question. So, I search and I personally try to use the most abstract terms, like if I were to search for 'Global Services,' I'd probably just look for 'Global' and wade through pages of junk not to miss anything I'm looking for.

Teaching one to fish is better than just feeding them.

I think most of us here agree. It's just the criticism one gets for the fishing lesson that get old, the comments that my fishing line is broken, the fish aren't biting, and the old fisherpersons (how's that for PC ) are just plain mean.

I still take that approach, and just deal with the barbs.

Cheers.

I concur. Of course, the "wade throu pages of junk" problem is exercebated by two tendencies here on FT. First is the splintering of information by the tactic of "just answering the question" without referring the OP to the existing recent thread on the exact same topic. This ensures that while the new thread may contain new information not contained in the original, there will be heaps of repeated information that you will have to wade through to get that new information. And, of course, all the information in the original thread will not be repeated in the new one, so you will have to wade through that also. And, in reality, it isn't just a second thread, there will be a dozen or more, and 95% of each one will be just a repeat of the others.

The second tendency is poor thread titles, which proliferate because veterans who suggest a more descriptive thread title than "Hey! Gimme some help!" will be jumped on by a dozen of the same newbies who will complain that search returns too many threads to have to read every one. Of course it does, that's why the threads have titles, so that you can only open those that appear to pertain to the topic you are researching, but these folks can't see the irony of their positions.

In short, we are getting an influx of newbies who have absolutely no grasp of the way a board like this works. This is the "Ask Jeeves" generation, and they don't understand the distinction between getting an automated response to their question and taking up the time of one of a very few knowledgable people to save them the effort of researching their own questions. The idea of actually contributing to the community is totally foreign to them, so they never open a thread to see if they might have an answer to someone else's problem, they just go away until the next question pops into their head, at which point, they come back and start another thread.

Thanks for the post and I think I can appreciate where you are coming from on this. Like you, I am more pleased with the original mission of FlyerTalk. From what i understand in my ongoing research of where Bulletin Boards are right now and where they are going, it's really a reflection on the Internet and not really that of FlyerTalk. A few observations: There is likely a few things we can do on FlyerTalk to assist members in their answers. Actually, that was the original intent and still is for our moderators. Fact is that it is more convenient to just start typing than it is to ask a question. One of the things we are implementing with the last upgrade, was a new messaging system that will allow us a more complete way to first talk to new members of FlyerTalk. A better explanation of these things will likely do wonders. As well, we have been toying with the idea (one from about 6-7 years ago) to have a "Newbies Only" section (may or may not be within each forum, still pondering those ramifications) in which some of the more experienced members who do like to answer questions will assist them - outside of the mainstream of the forum itself. Then once the newbies sort of "get it" they will feel more comfortable with the forum itself. now, having said that, we are also looking to endorse in an even better way, the establishment of a better Q/A for each program so that it becomes a better way to help members intuitively. A few forums have these, but not all and each effort can become better with the help of our members.

Anyway, this is on the radar and i think you'll see some things in the near future. As for some members who remain hostile - we would hope that the efforts of our members to address this situation would be acknowledged and maybe convince them that newbies often do have things to offer once they are welcomed into the community. If we all do a good job showing them the answers, they will in turn answer the next generation of newbies.

And we still haven't let up from trying to configure the right solution for search on FlyerTalk. Almost all larger boards have the very same challenges and from what we can tell, no one have a perfect solution yet. We are however involved in a possible solution now and perhaps later next week will have some news on it.

Again thanks.

I tend to get less upset that newbies (and even some non-newbies) don't use search, but

1) that they don't use the stickies. In most forums either the moderators or other members have spent EXTENSIVE amounts of times putting together incredible stickies with everything from base to advanced knowledge. I think these are terribly under appreciated and under utilized. I know in the DL forum our mods had to have spent 1000's of hours on them and I still see the same base questions posted that are DEFINITELY answered in these. And these stickies have GREAT tables of contents to them, so its not so you cant find the data

2) do not look at even the first page of current threads before starting a new one, too often they open a new thread when the same question was asked 4 lines down.

I will agree the search function itself can be a bit clunky, but FT is NOT a hard place for newbies to find info, in many cases they just dont choose to look!

Randy I think this is a GREAT idea! And would be mroe than willing to volunteer to be part of it. As I read your post I almost wondered if we need some kind of FT "welcome wagon" where a group of people get a list of who is new each day (I say this not knowing how many new registrations there are a day and if it is rational to do) and could proactively welcome these people and offer to be a 'mentor' to them. Possibly even dividing the new registrations up by major program (if they list them when registered) so their welcome would come from someone from the board/boards they are most likely to frequent.

Another thought..and I know this would take a lot of work (again I post this being fully willing to be one of the members who helps put it together) but what about having some kind of "new poster chat/workshop" given a couple times a week (lead by a rotating team of volunteers, not asking Randy to take this on also). Where we could cover stickies, tos, searching and so on. YES I know this is all covered in the help sections, quite well, but this would allow a more interactive venue that might attract people more than sitting around just reading. I hesitate to post that it would be mandatory to attend before posting (cause I am not sure I like that idea) but it might be an option Randy could ponder.

Another option, a flash type intro program which covers some of the same stuff.

I understand what you are saying about the stickies, Lehava , but I think it tends to be human nature to ignore the stickies, just like it is human nature to plunge right in first, and then only read the directions when our instincts fail.

FlyerTalk was the very first bulletin board I every visited. When I came here I wouldn't have known a stickie from a banana peel, and search was a totally foreign concept. Heck, I still have a hard time coming up with the exactly right combination of search terms to find the precise answers I want.

Part of the beauty (maybe most of the beauty), of a bulletin board, from my point of view, is that it is a naturally flowing interaction between human beings from all over the world. If it comes to the point where all of the questions have been asked, answered and indexed, the interactive responses between human beings cease to exist and instead of a bulletin board, we have an electronic travel manual. Not that there would be anything wrong with an excellent electronic travel manual, but it wouldn't be a bulletin board.

Actually, for many of us who have been around since the beginning, we already really do know everything we need or want to know about miles and points. That is probably the reason that fora like OMNI and Community are so popular. We still love the community, but don't really have much need for mile and point information.

Personaly, I am glad I joined during the time when all stupid questions were personally and graciously anwered, thereby forming permanent real-life friendships in the process. If you ever do form a Newbie board, I will be happy to go there and answer any questions that I can. I doubt that I could ever give back an amount equal to what I have learned.

I disagree with your assessment... while I do respect your opinions and see your points as very valid there are always some questions that a newbie will -always- ask... the idea behind FAQs and Wiki's is to make the most commonly requested info available to anyone, anytime.

FT's been around since 1998 (in it's current form, i suppose) and you were around when it was a few people communicating, but most of the "wow, that seemed so basic but I never knew that" questions that were asked when you first came around have been answered 100x over at this point.

The volume of traffic here has increased exponentally. I don't mind personally answering questions, but, if it's something that keeps coming up... then it's tedious.

FAQs and such do not stifle discussion. I can assure you that a lot of people are tired of the "What is a Global Services member?" type questions. FAQs handle that just fine. They don't call it Frequently Asked Questions for nothing . Point is, it doesn't stifle discussion at all, it actually can enhance it by making sure members are 'armed and ready' when asking questions in the forums.

I think that it's important to point people in the right direction, but in a friendly and helpful way. We also need to remember that newbies may not be familiar with bulletin boards or BB etiquette. They may not have the online experience to do an effective search or know what a sticky is for.

For the people who don't have patience for newbies (and I understand that is the reality too), I just wish they would refrain from responding at all, and allow members who can gently help and explain where they can learn how to navigate FT. It's like mom said, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all". And since we're disussing quotations, I thought it was, "Teach a man to fish, and he'll sit in a boat and drink beer all day".

I don't know civicmon, until I read your post I didn't even know that there was an FAQ on FT. Prompted by the information you supplied, I went and searched for the FAQ section and typed in "Global Services" and got the following response:

"Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms."

It just seems more intuitive and natural for someone involved in a UA discussion to ask, "What's Global Services?" and for someone else to respond, "Some mysterious poo bah UA status that is higher than 1K" than to expect a new person just checking out UA to stop in the middle of his/her discussion and go search for FAQs.

I guess my skim and ignore skills are pretty well tuned because I just ignore the stuff that doesn't really interest me and focus on the the cool stuff.

That may be what you taught your man...

Randy - I think this is a terrific idea. Might I suggest that you could try it in one forum on an experimental basis, to see if it works, and how to improve it, rather than toying with the idea for too much longer. I think this could be a major improvement to FT, and would like to see it implemented as soon as reasonably possible.

Well, try searching in the UA forum specifically.

The 'faq' under 'help' on the top of the page is woefully inadequate.. more of a vbulletin help vs. anything else.

too tired to go on.. can/may comment again tomorrow.

I believe that we were all new here once and that far too many people on FT tend to forget that.

I further think that today's newbie is tomorrow's old hand. Cut 'em some slack.