RFDMinnesota

"I know what provides value to the entire Flyertalk community and this isn't valuable!" Doesn't carry a whole lot of weight

tcook052

Except when the forum was proposed it was billed as being about the blogs and discussions of information they generate and not about the bloggers which is definately has become focused upon. Heck, even the forum welcome and guidelines says "discussion is permitted on the blog but not the blogger" so perhaps this discussion is needed to see whether the forum needs to refocus and decide what is and is not permitted.

kokonutz

I, for one, welcome and praise our moderator overlords, and do not question their ways nor wisdom.

jackal

I don't have much of a dog in this fight and am keeping an open mind on the topic itself, but I will note that, in at least one small way, I've found the EM&PR forum helpful in exactly the ways you mention above.

I don't regularly follow many blogs (yours may be one of the few I actually have any interest at all in reading!), but the discussion in the EM&PR forum has helped me to contextualize whatever information I do see on one of the various blogs when I encounter it.

To me, that seems as if I am being guided by the experiences of other members who have gone before me and benefiting from other members' experiences.

nsx

I could be imagining things, but it seems to me that Gary in particular has attenuated his use of blatant clickbait titles. I respect Gary greatly but I criticized him heavily, both in EMPR and on his blog, for that annoying practice. I like to think that constructive criticism of this sort helps improve the blogs.

Where criticism goes wrong is when a poster can't accept that the blogger's judgment may be both rational and different from that of the poster. Such posters do tend to grind their axes to nobody's benefit but their own.

kokonutz

Well, I learned recently on the EMPR forum that facebook has a new algorithm that punishes click-baity titles.

So while I agree that Gary often responds to suggestions and criticisms made in EMPR (on his blog, never directly in the forum), I think he had other reasons to back off the click bait too.

Adam1222

While it sounds nice, its really hard to separate discussion about a blog that is written about personal experiences and discussion about the blogger. In many of these cases, the blog just functions as the public persona of an individual. Even where the blogger is being discussed, for example, in the recent outpouring of sympathy for Lucky's boyfriend's family, the discussion comes from content on the blog.

Where a blog is written as a news publication, with objective or quasi objective coverage of the industry, its much easier to separate author and product.

It's not a coincidence that the threads on EMPR that talk about the bloggers as individuals as opposed to as businesses are those for the blogs that tend to write from the most subjective, personal perspectives. TPG, for example, very rarely does anymore, as it is owned by a corporation and has many employees. There isnt much talk about Brian because Brian really isnt "the blog" anymore.

skunker

Isn't TPG the blog? We weren't discussing whether Brian himself had 1 million likes or had Facebook ads, but the entity called "The Points Guy." Brian is the face of the blog, but the blog is now a commercial operation and the discussion fits entirely under the founding rules.

Kagehitokiri

question - does one of the arguments supporting closure boil down to following:

x does not like some of the posts/comments/etc in the forum, but x is not a moderator of the forum, so x wants the forum closed.

(similar to x does not like some of the posts/comments in the thread, so asks moderators/CD/admin/IB to lock/delete thread.)

multiple people have long advocated closure of forum / advocated against having forum, so i'm clearly not referring to any individuals.

i personally find that 'discussing moderation / moderators' seems to cover a lot more than some non-mods on FT seem to consider.

nice.

in the past haven't a lot of comments re ben's blog been about the COMMENTERS on ben's blog? i mean, sometimes the FT comments could have been more specific, for people reading the FT comments, and i never understood the point of those FT comments myself, but different from being 'about' ben.

tcook052

Sorry bu my comment wasn't meant about TPG specifically but as OP has found more and more personal information is up for debate which as noted really wasn't the forum's charter at the outset.

To a degree perhaps as to their favoring one hotel chain over another, for example, but getting into very personal matters is to be quite a different thing.

bhatnasx

Haven't read every post in this thread - but I noticed that some folks comment on the limited numbers of people commenting on the threads in the forum & that it's the same folks over & over again.

One of the things that I think was done poorly when the forum was created is that it was "hidden" away in Travel & Dining when I think it should have been listed under Miles & Points and given a more prominent place and categorized correctly. If SPAM is under Point & Miles - then I think this forum should be there too.

Another thought - as a long time FT'er who's been a moderator and a TalkBoard member, this forum is one of the forums that I actually still enjoy regularly reading as it has insights that are interesting to me.

And finally, I wonder if the blogosphere's growth has undermined FlyerTalk's usage? I'll be honest - posts from Wandering Aramean & VFTW show up on my FB page and I probably get more "frequent travel" information from FB and the links that folk share on there (and from the various groups I'm in on FB) than I actually get from FT. I'm really only on FT nowadays when I have a specific question or need. But from a "news" perspective, I no longer read the forums for information because the bloggers seem to summarize "all the relevant info" and the EMPR is a place to discuss it.

Don't get rid of this forum. If any of the TB member's vote to get rid of it, then I would not believe they're acting in the best interest of the members.

MatthewLAX

But you should read my blog, Mary!

-----

I hang out with many of the BA bloggers and their reaction to the rantings in that forum range from total indifference to amusement. None are offended. I do admit to reading the thread very regularly -- I find it highly entertaining and often pathetic, a sort of light-hearted OMNI/PR.

I would keep the forum. Those who post what they do merely offer a reflection of themselves.

skunker

Amused all the way to the bank.

You also have to admit that those threads provide material for posts (e.g. Krug and tug, your post on traveling with Ben and why you ate at Italian restaurant in Colombo, etc.)

sbm12

They are not the subject of this thread. Take your red herring and try again.

kokonutz

You came up with the metric.