Because one's post count is objective and antiseptic. A reputation metric, on the other hand, is not.

Too bad, I guess.

Nobody is saying that birdstrike doesn't contribute. Just that his non-topical contributions should not incrementally increase his aggregate post count. Nor should mine. Or yours.

The TalkBoard should categorically discount individual threats by posters to take their ball and leave based if this motion passes. Just as they should discount any threats from those in the opposing camp to do the same. Would your opinion of the merits or lack thereof of this proposal change if any one of the long-tenured and well-established posters in support of it made the same threat to leave if the motion failed?

When you think about how many members as a percentage of the community who have posted here, it is a small number of people.

Heck, I bet you (but do not know the numbers) that the majority of flyertalk members do not even have OMNI access or don't post there.

As far as more people coming in to post their comments, that could be due to the email/PM campaign that is currently going on by the Anti-OMNI-post people. Heck, there may be a campaign on the other side.... but I have only been forwarded the one side message... :)

I personally feel that something must be wrong if it is getting such a reaction from some members.

I will again ask, "What will change in the OMNI experience if your post count does not go up each time you post there?" How does that change the experience?

William

But I think that is the wrong question. I think the correct question is what is the FT community, and is there more than one way to be a part of that or contribute to it? In that sense, I think this move would remove Omni from the FT community.

Ahh, but when other Non-Travel/Points/Miles posts are included is the post count as "taint-free" as claimed?

Time For Intermission
 

While this thread is quite fascinating, I'm not sure that it is truly 100% focused on the TalkBoard's upcoming vote. There are a lot of posts that could be viewed as debates between two individual opposing parties, versus addressing the community as a whole.

I think it's time for a short break. This gives everyone time to re-read previous postings, and re-load their ammo for more calm, focused target practice. ;)

We'll reopen the thread in a few hours.

My apologies to those who are inconvenienced timezone-wise by the break.

P.S. This is being done unilaterally. The TalkBoard has not asked me to intervene.

Good idea.

I've read through the entire thread during the break and I think that we really need to discuss five points that seem to be of our biggest concern:

1) What is the real problem that we’re trying to solve here? Is it about the fairness of post counts? Is it about the reliability of posters? Is it about post-padders? We’ve heard all kinds of different arguments, but we need to know what we’re dealing with. How can we have a solution to a problem we’re not sure exists? So let’s start with the basics: what is the problem and what is the evidence for it? Who precisely is calling for action?

2) The proposed solution, inasmuch as it is a solution to the problem of poster reliability, will do nothing to fix the problem. As has been demonstrated, posters that rely on post counts to get reliability information are not making the wisest decisions. This is because “Evangelist” status can be obtained in OMNI or S.P.A.M or any other forum. Does an Evangelist who has most of their posts in S.P.A.M, Travel Contests and Hyatt really have any more reliability posting in United than someone who got Evangelist in OMNI? Not in my opinion.

3) The concept of community should not be discounted. OMNI is a part of FlyerTalk, and as part of the community it contributes greatly to it. I’ve learned quite a bit there, as have many others. To suggest that travel information, or any other information exists only in non-OMNI forums is silly. Tangential to this, those folks that have spent a lot of time in the OMNI community feel that this new move would be a bit of a slap in the face. The TB is essentially saying: “Your posts might be good, but they’re not good enough to count in the post count (even though we’re not going to go through and judge the quality of your posts individually.” TB, if it goes through with this motion, is effectively ruling on what counts as a quality post and what does not.

4) In addition, all of the problems identified by the proponents of this motion, solutions already exist. I suggest we look to what is currently in place, rather than create new policies, in order to deal with the problem. Post-padding measures, for instance, are already on the books.

5) Finally, given the divisive nature of this thread, I think it behooves TB to seriously think about it is reflecting the will of the FT membership if it approves this motion. The statistics posted by Dovster are right down the middle, 50/50. I find it very difficult to swallow the idea that TB will make sure a big change when half of the FT membership doesn’t like idea.

That is my synthesis of the major problems voiced on my side of the aisle. Hopefully we can have a productive dialogic exercise now..

Thanks for the time-out Moderator2. ^

Last post for me in this thread:

I, and the other pro-count posters, are passionate about FlyerTalk as a Community. A Community centered around travel, yes, but also people for whom FlyerTalk is more than some sterile discussion of miles and points.

Earlier in this thread I said that my posting habits would be unlikey to change should this ill-advised motion pass. That is still most likely true so I'm not threatening to "take my ball and go home" I'm just profoundly disapointed by those posters who think contribution should only be acknowledged if it is made, well, anywhere but Omni. For the most part, my posts in Omni are about the same quality as my posts in Trip Reports, TS/S, Travel Tech, and San Francisco.

In my opinion, posts in Omni are a net contribution to FlyerTalk should continue to be recognized.

Regards,

birdstrike.

Well thought out and said magiciansampras.^

It's all of the above, although I characterize the second point as one impacting "credibility" more than "reliability." Any one of the above reasons is a good one to make the change. I'm not sure why you expect that all proponents of the reform must necessarily agree on a single reason for its passage.

I strongly suspect it is much more difficult to pad one's post count in the regular travel fora. For one, OMNI is policed with a much less heavy hand. Duplicate threads, rampant and uncontrolled posting that is utterly devoid of substance -- never mind travel substance -- and the like are allowed, if not in theory, definitely in practice. It is generally only when a poster starts making ad hominem attacks that we see a crackdown in OMNI. But more fundamentally, posts in OMNI are by definition purely ancillary to the mission of FlyerTalk.

No, no, no.

The proponents of this measure are not passing judgment on what constitutes a good post; instead they are passing judgment on what constitutes a relevant post.

There are many posts and threads on OMNI that are more educational, helpful, and/or thought-provoking than many of the posts in the dedicated travel-fora. But the value of those OMNI posts is not intrinsic to FlyerTalk. As such, it is a mistake to give them statistical significance on FlyerTalk.

This proposal is not a slap in the face to those who enjoy OMNI, like me. It is a slap in the face to those who dedicate excessive focus and energy on FlyerTalk to discussing issues wholly unrelated to travel, and a justified one at that.

Post-padding doesn't just include rampant posting in silly threads like the countdown/count-up ones in OMNI. Undoubtedly many FlyerTalkers who concentrate on posting in threads and fora related to "miles and points" consider all OMNI posts to be superficially padding one's post count. What solution exists now to correlate one's statistical measure of FlyerTalk contributions to posts in furtherance of our collective understanding of "miles and points"?

How do you conclude from a sample of those who care enough to post in this thread or who are even cognizant of this debate in the first place that half of FlyerTalk is opposed to this change? Only a small fraction of FlyerTalkers participate in OMNI and I submit few, if any, of those who do not frequent OMNI have any reservations over the passage of this proposal. It might be accurate to say that the opinion of FlyerTalkers who enjoy posting in OMNI is fairly evenly divided, but that in and of itself is probably pretty compelling evidence that this proposal has great merit since you'd expect that if the loss of OMNI post counting was such a devastating blow to those of us who enjoy OMNI, that we would uniformly oppose this reform.

Let me add one final thought. I fully support this reform. I would also support other reforms to eliminate giving credit to posts in fora that are unrelated to FlyerTalk's core mission (Community, S.P.A.M., the lounges, etc.). I definitely support eliminating the silly titles that accompany reaching certain posting thresholds. I would even support an amendment to create dual post counts: one for posting in the travel-related fora and another for OMNI posting. Perhaps the latter would be the best solution of all; it would allow prolific OMNI posters, who feel that their personal worth turns on their OMNI-enhanced post counts, to enjoy the "fruits of their labor" while allowing everyone on FlyerTalk to see just how stark the disparity is for many posters between the embarrassing quantity of their staggering contributions to OMNI and their correspondingly meager contributions to our understanding of "miles and points."

If the issue is relevant posts, then please take away the post counts for me that were the result of posts in Community Buzz, SPAM, Travel Tech (my domain name registration issues have nothing to do with travel), The AC Lounge Thread, Coupon Connection etc.

They are completely irrelevant to the issue of travel.

Merci,
MapleLeaf
(now signing out of this thread as well)

Like a few others, I have said about all that can be said.

The original Motive doesn't hold water.
The revised Motive doesn't make any sense.
and now the rules are adapted as we go along.

And I don't care what anyone tells me; there was horse trading going on for the support of this bull er motion and that kind of behavior is just reprehensible.

I'll see you all in a week.

Maybe I will regret posting this, but here goes:

Obviously, I don't make the rules here and I don't get to vote on them, but singling out one particular forum does seem mighty strange to me, and I seriously doubt the current proposal will do anything substantive to resolve the underlying concerns/issues, whatever they may be.

Regardless, I really don't care what happens. I post where I want to, when I want to, and on topics that I have some knowledge about (or, perhaps, on those that I think I have some knowledge about). Whether I get an extra number in my post-count profile is completely and totally meaningless to me. Whether someone believes my post is good, relevant, travel-related, worthy of some sort of credit....again, I really don't care.

That all being said, I completely agree with what magiciansampras posted in Post # 671 above.

For my personal post count, I could care less if you remove the omni posts and removing them would not make me stop coming to FT or such. I don't think a post count means anything.

So take away the post count if the TB thinks it is the best move, I just don't understand it and I can understand why some people have strong opinions against removing the post counts.

If a section like OMNI, travel contests, Coupon, whatever is part of FT then the posts in that section should be counted as it is part of FT. All my opinion.

If Omni posts are not valid enough to have a post recorded in a persons post count then how do people rationalize having Omni a part of FT at all? If it is not worth including the post count then why have it around at all, instead of making Omni a second tier or non participating forum of FT just remove it all together for a trial period and see what happens to the number of hits FT gets.

If Omni is still going to be a part of FT and not removed all together and it is considered to have a purpose and place as a part of FT then the posts in it should count like a post in other forums. Should it not?

Looking at the number of posts in Omni, I'd say that Omni is part of some people's FT experience and why the come to the site as often as they do. Does Omni always (or anytime) have to do with Travel, NO it does not, but that does not make it any less a part of FT IMO.

Because different problems require different solutions.

The post-padding problem can be solved by tougher post-padding rules. This is something the TB could implement. There are also post-padding rules on the books. Maybe TB could have a moderator meeting and discuss how to better handle the post-padding rules.

With respect to the "credibility problem." It hasn't been sufficiently shown to me, and others, that there are people on this board that see such a credibility problem. Who is calling for it? I think in the course of this thread we've seen maybe one or two empirical examples of credibility being an issue, and even in those instances the community came through in the end. I really don't see this credibility deficit that you do. Nevertheless, let's assume that there is a problem. The credibility problem could be solved a number of ways. First, how about bolding the join date? That's much more important than the number of posts in terms of credibility. Second, a disclaimer can be provided when you sign up that post counts do not, nor should they, convey anything about a poster's credibility in any issue area. Finally, maybe the area where users list their airline/hotel status stuff can be expanded. This to me offers the most telling information about a person's credibility; it is airline/hotel status that matters, not FT status.

If it is about fairness of post counts, then I think TB needs to re-think post counts from the bottom up. If we really want to say that post counts should only reflect travel posts then a much bigger initiative is needed. Singling out one forum of many (including S.P.A.M, TS&S, etc.), isn't going to help anything. And if you do think it is going to help, how? We'll still have a lot of users running around with high post counts because they posted links to travel contests or links to free golf balls. Is that fair?

Really? Do you know how many one line "no value" responses I see on a daily basis in United? There are so many equivalents of "Great post by the OP!" it is remarkable. Both you and I would agree that the two are largely equivalent. Whether or not it is nonsense in OMNI or United, the offense is the same, isn't it?

That may indeed be the case. But who cares? For your point to matter we'd all have to agree that not only should FT be about miles and travel, but only posts that are related to "the mission" should be counted. Otherwise we're not being fair at all, are we?

And I submit to you that the current proposal does a very bad job at passing that judgment. I don't think many posts in OMNI are any less relevant than those in S.P.A.M or DiningBuzz. Why are we singling out one forum?

I simply disagree. FlyerTalk is a "community of flyers." OMNI is a cultivation of that community. We're travelers and we get together to discuss things. Whether those things are posts or restaurants or what we did last night at home, I think it is all part of community-building and as such intrinsic to Flyertalk.

The solution to the OMNI games problem is to move OMNI games to a separate forum. This was brought up in the early going of this thread.

I find the combination of join date with # of posts to be a sufficient measure of FlyerTalk contributions. In addition, I find the ability to list airline statuses to be extremely helpful. I would think that any rational person would judge credibility first by the status obtained while traveling, not while posting on FT.

I'm going by the statistics I have available. If TB wants to have a strawpoll I'd support that as well. But I can only go by who comes to this forum to give their 2 cents.

One final thought with respect to the issues contained in this post. If the main issue really is credibility, then I really feel that the proponents of this motion are going to have to show this to be a problem. I certainly am not satisfied with the evidence presented to date.

I really hope that we're not dealing with what you mentioned in passing here: That implies to me that individuals are upset about "superficial post padding" and not the credibility problem.

---

BTW, thanks to all who have PM'ed me with your support. :)