Hi stimpy!

I used to feel like you do. Hell, at one point I thought it would be a good idea to restrict FlyerTalk to those with actual status on airlines. Or have a private forum for those with BIS status. You know, a place for REAL flyers, not fake credit card mile collectors.

But over time I have come to see that different people have a different perspective on the points and miles game. And on what FlyerTalk is to them.

That led me to become a lot more liberal and egalitarian in my thinking, including viewing OMNI as an equal part of this online community. After all, you and I are friends because of flying. But when you and I drink wine in Burgundy or beer in London we talk about a lot more than just flying and points and miles and hotels. And so it is that although FlyerTalk brings flyers and credit carders and travelers together on this IBB, fact is that once here, we may want to talk about things other than flying points and miles.

And the thing is, people's lives change. Some of my best friends from FT have stopped traveling. That doesn't mean I don't still value their opinions and comradeship. And so it is with OMNI. Just because someone retires from the road warrior life doesn't mean I don't care to commiserate with them about Brachel getting cast on The Amazing Race, or talk college football with them.

There are plenty of places on FT for us to get our flyer freak on. But sometimes it's nice to put the freak flag down and talk about other stuff with folks with whom we have something so fundamentally important in common.

Anyway, that's my take on why OMNI is as important a part of FT as any pure travel forum.

Of course, what else would you expect from an ENFP?!!? My wife, the INTJ thinks OMNI is a stupid waste of space and time.

Same here.

I never tried to legislate Omni out of existence. It's fine for the reasons you mentioned and I have about 7% of my 20,000+ posts in Omni. But we can and do prevent abuses of our little IBB here. I think Randy's decision to eliminate Omni post counts was in order to prevent one of those abuses. It's been discussed ad nauseum, but it seems that several of the people fighting for their lives to get Omni posts to count are often ones who don't post much in travel forums. So I wonder why? It's already been asked and not satisfactorily answered as to why it matters to them to have a high post count. But why should we as a community allow abuses to happen?

I don't care about the fact that the Omni 7% of my total posts did or did not count (I think they were mostly from many years ago) because those posts were made in the spirit of what you posted above. No counting games! But I obviously do care that people can successfully misrepresent themselves as very experienced travelers and give out misinformed opinions on travel, when their Flyertalk Evangelist status is based over 90% on non-travel posts.

All I can say is that anyone who uses post counts or FT status as an indication of expertise is in trouble.

Heck, in the VERY early days of FT (I'm talking 1998 here), there was a guy who claimed to live in Paris and had all sorts of connections at nightclubs and things there. I entrusted him with setting up some stuff for me. Turned out he was an unstable college student in Canada.

So I learned very early on to trust but VERIFY anything I learned on FT.

Anyway, all of these post-count issues are all settled and the new paradigm will be implemented once the last TB member votes.

We'll see how/if that works and move on from there.

That explains much.... coming from an ISTJ!

Right, you made a newbie mistake and quickly learned from it. Should all the thousands of newbies here have to make the same mistake? Or should we make the tiniest effort to try and make things just a little bit safer here? Maybe not everyone learns as quickly as you did.

And even if you are smart enough to take in criteria other than post counts, post counts and Evangelist status clearly mean something to people who have only been here a year or so.

Stimpy, I understand what you're saying, but that horse has been out of the barn for a while.

As well, I can identify at least one person (there are more) who has been posting completely content free, and in many cases, incorrect responses in every thread possible. So much so they have well over 10k posts in a little more than a year.

If someone takes advice from that person in the wrong topic, they're going to be in for a surprise.

That's why I'm all for removing counts and count related titles - after 14 years almost (!!!!) they're pretty much meaningless.

I don't accept that. And it doesn't seem as if I am the only one. This current TB has just proven that they can reverse decisions pretty easily. Maybe the next TB will reverse it again.

Stimply, if you'd like, I can direct you to several threads in which people have thousands upon thousands of posts - in a lounge thread. As well, there are the old counting games in which a few people got nearly 20k posts there. How about Randy's contests?

That's why the horse has left the barn.

This motion was never about Omni by itself - it was about treating OT consistently.

As well, I never felt this decision should have been made by the TB - Randy, late on a Friday afternoon in the summer, unilaterally decided to open up Omni to everyone (including google), split it into 2 parts, have the posts not count, and assign moderators.

All because a few people were abusing the system.

I'm all for correcting abuses, even if it involves some simple reform as Randy did. And I recall during last years debate that I came out strongly in favor of better moderating of lounge threads. It can be done and I see no reason to accept bad behavior.

Someone made a proposal in the BA forum recently that Flyertalk should limit posting more than 5 times in 24 hours within a single forum.

There was a bit more to it than that although you've got the gist of how the decision was made. Both Pizzaman and I were new OMNI Mods when these decisions were made. Randy ran a bunch of stuff by us for our input but never got back to us after we gave it to him.

I was in favor of splitting the forum into OMNI/Lite and OMNI/PR but said that someone should have to be a registered FT member and logged in to view it. That would have kept out the Google bots.

He didn't follow my suggestion and instead opened it to everybody in the universe. And I don't think TB was involved with this in any manner but I don't remember.

It was and always has been the owner of this boards prerogative to do what they want with this board and when they want to. TB is simply an advisory board which is available when/if the owner wants our opinions about something. They're free to use us or not but I don't believe anybody on TB is under the impression that we run FT.

Randy didn't correct abuses... he threw the baby out with the bathwater. Correcting the abuses would have meant preventing people from racking up all those posts while counting.

But, as we all know, he was famous, when faced with a problem or abuse, to get rid of the feature rather than the abuser.

The only issue in limiting someone to posting 5 times in one forum is that the number is too low. Some days, in the forums that I post to frequently (not Omni) I can answer more than that - particularly if someone has a lot of questions and I have a lot of specific knowledge.

Thanks for correcting me and filling in the blanks.

So while he took your input, he didn't listen either?

The google bots were the biggest issue, and I personally spent quite a bit of time deleting posts that I didn't want out there, lest someone connect my handle to my name. It was probably overkill, but it was done before the google bots got them. I'm not the only one who did it either.

I know TB doesn't run FT - but since some decisions are made unilaterally, and Randy pretty much made this decision on his own, IMHO, the TB should have "purview" ( on this topic either

Agreed 100% on all points ^. Time to move on

I thought you were bowing out of the thread? Or did I read Post 601 incorrectly?