Chex .. with all due respect that point which you and a couple of others have raised has nothing whatever to do with this motion, and I'd suggest it is off topic in this thread.

If you'd like to see the Evangelist title removed, please feel free to start a seperate thread urging TB to debate that.

Glen

I'm very much in favor of this change. FlyerTalk's stated purpose is "miles and points" so re-focusing post counts on posts that ostensibly advance those objectives is an excellent idea. ^

FlyerTalkers who have bloated post counts that deceptively suggest a deep commitment to this board, but who really have derived a vast majority of their post count from their dalliances in OMNI will take it on the chin. And deservedly so.

I personally enjoy posting in OMNI (but have never done so in the complete time waster threads like the "count up or down to 100,000" or "who will post next" ones). But I'm more than happy to have my post count solely reflect my contributions to actual frequent flyer-related threads.

I am glad to see that the TalkBoard is discussing this issue. I support this motion. I have read this entire thread, and I feel there is a problem that needs to be addressed. In the past in CommunityBuzz there were threads such as "5,000 Post Club", where one could congratulate a member for his contributions to FT. This would be a member of several years standing, who had added to your knowledge on your airline or hotel board perhaps, or who had reached this milestone from organizing several DOs you might have attended. Sadly this has now been devalued, as visitors to CommunityBuzz know.

So, does anyone else think we should change the rules because of what just a few FT members are doing?

Double bingo....

There are ulterior motives here.... I wish those who are pushing it would own up to them.

Why not take away all of the "TSA Sucks" threads too. After the first one, the rest are repeats. Once those are gone, I'll sign up for the nonsense in OMNI lack of relevance.

Just how many times do we need to see that Skip Hawley is stupid?

Bingo....

I think this is the third time this topic has shown up.

[To borrow from the esteemed ozstamps:]

".. with all due respect that point which you and a couple of others have raised has nothing whatever to do with this motion, and I'd suggest it is off topic in this thread."

If you'd like to see that done, "please feel free to start a seperate thread urging TB to debate that." :D

[I find the following words from the above post to be amusing: "There are ulterior motives here.... I wish those who are pushing it would own up to them." That is, you've owned up to the ulterior motive of attacking the criticisms of DHS/TSA through "mission creep".]

If this motion were not to pass -- and policy remained the same -- this topic will still not go to rest. Is the policy the problem or is it a handful of posters who are the problem? If it's the latter, Randy Petersen has a way to deal with that. Also, as the TOS can't be pulled up, is there a TOS about "post-padding" or the sort?

again, another bingo...

I will ad, as I did in another thread that as soon as OMNI count is eliminated; so should the counts for lounges, the community buzz threads, and the skip hawley threads.

This has already been suggested and discussed in a parallel thread aka “ A Modest Post Count Proposal ” which is also running in this Forum.

What about a technological solution. Omni clearly takes a large portion of the FT server load. Put it on it's own server (or just a virtual server), for sake of discussion I'll call it "flyertalkO.com". Then store post counts separately on the two servers, so, when you're on flyertalk.com it shows your flyertalk post count, and on flyertalkO.com it shows your combined total.

Right now, when you log onto a forum, at the bottom of the forum page it shows every user who is logged on to that forum; so individual real time data is logged for each forum. It shouldn't be hard to implement separate post counts for the two servers/virtual servers. By a small adjustment to the links in the menus (which are probably CSS, so it will take 5 minutes of coding to redirect all the links) it can be made almost invisible to users when they move back and forth between flyertalk.com and flyertalkO.com. I'd suspect ScottC could implement all of this before a single cup of coffee got cold.

Since there is code in place to keep non-omni enabled people from seeing omni, the basic tech structure is already in place separate the two parts of FT and to implement this system.

They could be titled "Devangelists". :)

No - enough with losing features because they're being abused by a few people.

How about another suggestion? Disallow any of the post padding game threads.

The original thread (wwbtnftp) was just that, a game, and it turned into a social activity for many. There some good info in there. It's been out there for years and no one has ever abused it that I can tell.

However, in the last 6 or so months, there have been other ridiculous threads started, such as the count to 100,000 thread which exist only to pad post count. I think this thread and others like it should be deleted.

Isn't post padding covered in the TOS? Shouldn't it be applied to a thread with no meaning or reason to exist except to increase a members post count?

Just as many times as a certain person refers to GWB as "Dear Leader," I suppose. :rolleyes:

Why isn't there a motion on the table to eliminate those threads or post counts for those threads? If TB wants to get at any perceived problem, they ought to attack the "problem," if it is one. It would be really easy to eliminate those threads and the associated post counts would disappear.....just like that.

I think it's because, again, some officially and unofficially have it out for OMNI. Otherwise the other non-points and miles fora would be on the post count chopping block, too.

Were some of those post-padding "games" in OMNI motivated by wanting to eliminate OMNI post counts from post count totals or to "devalue" the "Evangelist" title (perhaps with the intention of getting "Evangelist" eliminated)? I really wouldn't be surprised if some would troll to do that.

No, the original thread was started as a game and had prizes.

There's a couple of others that actually are scavenger-hunt type games and people are actually enjoying them.

The rest were started to post pad.

I don't believe it was as a reaction to discussions about Omni post counts.

So does anyone know if the issue of Evengalist is part of this motion? Would someone who has 17K posts, 16K of which are in OMNI be stripped of Evenagalist or still keep it? I believe typically if you hit 10,000 and one post is deleted you are at 9,999 and still Evangalist, but I am not sure how this would work.