FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Question 1: Effective Feedback
View Single Post
Old Oct 31, 2008, 4:28 pm
  #14  
nsx
Moderator: Southwest Airlines, Capital One
 
Join Date: Sep 1999
Location: California
Programs: WN Companion Pass, A-list preferred, Hyatt Globalist; United Club Lietime (sic) Member
Posts: 21,589
Find compromise and consensus; don't polarize

Originally Posted by Randy Petersen
submitted by lucky9876coins
What do you believe is the most effective way for TalkBoard members to receive feedback in the public forum? Would you seek feedback mostly by reading the comments of the membership, or would you engage in debate with the membership?
The TalkBoard Topics (TBT) forum can be contentious. Furthermore, the viewpoints posted there are not necessarily indicative of the views of most FT members. Some of the people who post on TBT have completely immovable opinions. All this makes it very challenging to wade into TBT and achieve any useful result.

But that's what I've been doing for all of 2008: wading right in there and attempting to get TalkBoard members to see the advantages of cooperating with each other. In effect, I've been working the flip side of this question: using TBT to give my feedback to the TalkBoard.

The TBT forum is best used to find and cement a compromise on a difficult subject, where the easier path would be for the majority to steamroll the opposition without accommodating them. I am pleased as punch that my efforts this year have helped avoid steamrolling and have helped achieve a remarkable result on the most contentious issue of the year: how to handle suspensions of TalkBoard members. You can read the full details of that in the Question 5 thread later today.

Here's what I will _not_ do on TBT. I will not start petition threads asking for a meaningless head count of people who agree with me without providing any opportunity for opponents to be counted or dissent to be heard. Maybe it's just me, but I find such threads to be both polarizing and pointless.

Polarizing action would be a perfect fit if the TalkBoard members were supposed to operate like politicians. I reject that view. In my opinion, the TalkBoard should be a cooperative group, not a bunch of political backstabbers. The recent (presumed at this point) success on the new TalkBoard guidelines brings this cooperative ideal closer. This was the improvement I wanted to see before deciding to run for TalkBoard. Because I'm no politician.
nsx is offline