Comments: Don't Count OMNI Posts In Member Post Counts (Motion Failed)
 

Moved by Dovster and seconded by Cholula:

1. Posts in the OMNI forum will not count toward any member's post tally and this shall be made retroactive to the beginning of Omni.

2. Any person Omni-enabled when and if this vote is passed will be allowed to continue to post on Omni even if this motion reduces his post count to below the 180-post minimum.

This poll will close on Apr 19, 07 at 5:01 pm

Those proposals seem reasonable to me, with the caveat that if there were long-term members who would be adversely impacted by those changes on other sections of the site where they have periodically participated in the past (such as Coupon Connection), that consideration be given to keeping them eligible for those sections if they so request. Not so much for the person with an average of 1000 OMNI and 10 Coupon Connection posts per year for the last 2 years, but for the hypothetical person with 10 OMNI, 20 travel, and 5 Coupon Connection posts per annum of the last 5 years. And I realize that OMNI may not count for Coupon Connection eligibility, so that I am using it only as an example for any areas of the site which may be restricted based in part on post counts.

I would also be in favor of the proposals if the second one grandfathered in people only for a limited period, say 1 year.

I don't care if they count or not, but retroactive is a bit dumb IMO.

Set the rules going forward, going backward, why?

Playing devil's advocate here...

Why do you believe retroactive is a bit dumb? If they count, they count past & present - if they don't count, they don't count past & present.

Why not have them retroactively removed?

Well done. ^

Is there a way to tell what percent of your posts are in OMNI? I'm guessing less than 10-15% of mine, so go ahead and take the posts away.

I saw a post this week that someone got 10,000 posts by playing an OMNI game. I'm fine with taking away posts from someone whose primary forum is playing games in OMNI, and not one that deals with points and miles. I don't think we should have FT Evangelists who get the majority of their posts playing games in OMNI (and short of not counting those posts, don't know how else you would deal with that).

Do we actually have posters that have OMNI access that don't have 180 other posts somewhere else on FT (even before the 180 post access was enacted a few years back)?

MapleLeaf, those who asked to have this motion passed had only one real argument: that counting Omni posts is misleading as regards the travel-knowledge of the posters. Maybe that is right, maybe that is wrong, but if it right it certainly makes absolutely no sense to give credit for a "Joe will be the next person" post made yesterday but not one made tomorrow.

I really don't know how many Omni posts I have but I would not be in the least surprised to see that over half my post count disappears if this passes. I will not be bothered by that in the least.



Yes, there are 652 people who are currently Omni-enabled who would have less than 180 posts if their Omni posts aren't counted. The second paragraph of this motion guarantees that they will have the right to continue posting on Omni.

TRRed, it is my understanding that if this passes it will not remove eligibility for any person who is currently allowed to post on any forum. If I am wrong about that, I will immediately introduce a new motion restoring their eligibility.

I think extraordinarily clever posts on OMNI should count, however.

I'm all for having Omni posts not count at all. Not today, not yesterday. This is just an off the cuff assessment, but I find that some of the Evangelists who have only a year or two of time in on FT, continuously put up filler posts. I'm all for quality over quantity.

While I do post some inane Omni posts myself, I wouldn't mind in the least to having these taken out of my post count. This is, after all, FlyerTalk, and not OmniTalk.

Surely some of those are inactive screen names though, from before the changeover requiring the 180 posts?

Some yes, but actually a surprisingly low number. Of those 652, nearly 600 have posted within the past two years and most of those 600 have posted since January 07.

But the number is not really the point. Many FTers get great pleasure from posting in Omni. I don't want to take that away from even one of them simply because we decided not to count Omni posts.

I would like to see this change.

Overall I am not sure. Initially I was 98% non-OMNI, now I tend to be more OMNI than not... the forums I frequent don't need as much input so I don't need to comment as much. If OMNI posts were taken away, I would probably lose 20% of my overall posts; not a huge deal since this is only an IBB.

I can't help but wonder why this is coming up now? Before the posts in OMNI were counted partly to help FT in its IBB standings, from that one can deduce that now FT has been sold, standings matter not so why not start stripping away stuff.

If you were to have said 2 years ago, or 5 years ago OMNI posts don't count, big deal... them were the rules. If you say today they don't count going forward, big deal... them are the rules. To now say we are changing things back to the beginning of time, that makes no sense.

Either way I will contribute, or not, based on what is needed in any forum I check.

Oh yeah, I want to comment that I agree that it is a misleading moniker to have someone an FT Evangelist who has been on 1 year and has the overwhelming majority of their posts in OMNI. They aren't FT at all, they are OMNI. How many people does this actually apply to?

I concur since this is, after all, FlyerTalk, not OmniTalk.

I can guarantee you this had nothing to do with F/T being sold. Randy did not ask us not to take this action before the sale nor did he ask to take the action after the sale.

To the best of my knowledge Randy has no position on this issue one way or the other.

It actually has come up in the past but recently the situation has become more and more acute, with a tremendous number of posts being made in various Omni games and threads such as "Countdown from 100,000".

(One poster has 10,032 posts in that thread alone -- more than half of all his FT posts -- and posts there consist only of entering a single number.)

Did the Talkboard talk about whether they would consider other "non-travel" forums to not count? I know that Coupon Connection posts do not count... what about others?

I think this is a great start.... and I totally agree with being retroactive. Otherwise, post counts will still be "over inflated" and send the wrong message to certain members.

Good Work!

I would have actually not "grandfathered" people in. Seems like those 600+ people could do with contributing on other parts of Flyertalk. :)

Now, I do not want to see people just post padding to get access back... but seems like - if the board truly agrees with Randy that OMNI is an earned benefit - we should not be "giving" it away to people who have not qualified.

Just a thought!

How about a different solution?

I seem to remember a few years ago it was necessary to remove the game threads because it was thought they were slowing down or causing some issue with the way the site was running.

The act of pulling the thread immediately dropped everyone's post count who posted there. I guess it was the equivalent of deleting the thread.

When it was put back the post counts did not return.

Wouldn't it be just as easy to simply pull those threads in where people have thousands of posts and then put them back?

This might be easier than having to deal with exceptions and grandfathering.

Or, better yet, the easiest of all would be to remove the evangelist title all together.

Early on in the discussions, I posted the following on the private forum: "If we are going to remove them, I would go a step further and remove all Omni, Newstand, and TS&S posts."

However, as Cholula noted in the other TalkBoard Topics thread:

"Dov would prefer to include a lot more non-travel forums than just OMNI.

However, there is scant support for this among the current TB Members."




If I recall correctly, the posts were not re-credited because the original game thread was never put back. Instead, it was started up again. Besides, it as cblaisd posted on the other thread, "There was one poster today who, in the previous 22 hours, had posted more than 500 times, often once a minute, in one of the OMNI "count" threads." It seems to me that at that rate HOM would be doing nothing but pulling threads and putting them back.

Grandfathering is not a problem according to HOM and as far as the "Evangelist" title is concerned, that is not the only issue. The contention of many posters (and, as I said, I really don't know if it is right) is that seeing a high post count under a member's name lends credence to the belief that he is more familiar with travel, points, and miles than another poster would be.

If that is the case, then it holds true with or without the "Evangelist" title.

There are top-tier members of frequent flyer programs who know very little -- or even incorrect things -- about the programs which they heavily use. If people can't discern between a well-informed frequent flyer and a not-so-well-informed frequent flyer of even that sort, I doubt this is going to "help" them either.

Personally I think this motion -- and the votes on it -- has less to do with "helping" FTers understand the meat and potatos of travel than it has to do with other, more personal things.

[For example, ego, opinions about other FTers, relative appearance, etc.]

Please be kind enough to inform me what those "far more personal things" are.

I really do not know but I think the odds are very good that considerably more than half of my posts are in Omni. My TalkBoard term is up in November and I probably will have no title under my name if this is approved.

Is there going to be a vote about which threads in OMNI such motions/procedures apply?

See prior post, where the answer to your question is now more explicit (by way of an edit).

Sorry, but even with that edit it makes little sense to me. You posted "[For example, ego, opinions about other FTers, relative appearance, etc.]"

Again, I will be one of the members whose post count will drop heavily (even though I do not generally post in any of the Omni game threads). So how would that help my ego or my relative appearance? As far as my opinion of other FTers is concerned, that is based on what they post, not how many times.

Bingo.

I fly one airline and stay with one hotel chain. I'd come here 10% as often as I do without "fun" places to go like TS&S, TravelBuzz, OMNI, and CommunityBuzz. But since OMNI exists, I always look in on the Northwest forum every time I come. It keeps me coming back.

But OMNI is definitely looked down upon officially and unofficially and there is a significant subset of FT (my opinion only) that look down upon those that post in and enjoy OMNI.

I applied to be a moderator in the airline forum I frequent. I was told I was not a good candidate because more than a certain percentage of my posts are in OMNI, regardless of the tone or content of those posts.

So I'm sorry to see members of the current TalkBoard, especially Dov, line up with this line of thinking. I still think that a post in Omni giving Rachel career advice is more valuable than the 400th thread complaining about children in an aircraft or the 6,000th thread complaining about people pulling on a seat.

But hey, just keep picking on OMNI. It is an easy target, after all.

Your agenda is your own, were you to vote in favor of this motion (besides advancing it as a motion).

I don't claim to read your mind about what motivates your opinion on this matter, but I think a lot of the opinions on this matter are a product of what I noted earlier.

I do not look down upon those whose post in and enjoy Omni (assuming, of course, that they always share my opinion on every possible subject). In fact, I think you are very well aware that I am one of those who post in and enjoy Omni (and I have the advantage of agreeing with myself on every possible subject).

I do, however, accept that Omni contributes almost nothing to the travel knowledge of FT.

Personally, I think the same is true of TS&S (which is basically a "Let's dump on the TSA today" forum); Newstand (an Omni-in-Training); Community Buzz (really a "happy birthday" and "let's meet" forum); and the Lounge threads (social clubs).

This doesn't mean that they are all worthless. I post in all of them regularly -- but they are not contributing much to travel knowledge. If we are not going to count Omni posts, I would prefer not counting posts in any of those either -- but that would guarantee TB's failure to pass this motion.

(BTW, I think the odds are somewhat against TB passing it anyhow, but that is just a guess.)

Picking on OMNI and people who post on OMNI seems to never get old. :D

I haven't accessed OMNI in a couple of years (i.e., since then just have some posts there from when the threads get "banished"), and yet without OMNI being around for my earlier days, I'd never have gotten around to contributing 10,000+ posts to the travel forums either. And a lot of people "from OMNI", including those with whom I routinely disagree/disagreed there, have contributed substantially to maximizing my travel experiences -- so that angle of OMNI-bashing won't come from me.

I strongly disagree with the above item. OMNI is the "sugar" (or "feces") that attracted/retained certain travel bugs (or flies) enough to keep them around to help improve my travel experiences and maximize the miles & points game. Much the same can be said for the other threads you noted above too.

No matter what, posts in prison diary threads should always count. Maybe count double.

There has been a dearth of prison diary posts lately. :(

Omniscent
 

Omni is fine as a place to zone out, but I just don't see any reason to count it in your post counts. Honestly, I wouldn't mind if most other forums were included, other than more of the core FT forums.

I mean, if people really want to rant and rave about Alberto Gonzales, the price of tires, or ANS, go for it. Just don't encourage the people who want the Evangelist title under their name to do it in a disruptive manner.

I would agree with that comment; but that is a separate issue not having OMNI type forums versus having post's count.

That is what I think as well. Maybe that is why I have never been made a mod, I post in OMNI. :D Couldn't be my opinions on subjects could it ;) nah...

See also this thread, which may not be all that relevant, but is still mildly amusing.

I'd also like to see the evangelist title eliminated. I don't see any point to it, and it seems to be the goal that encourages excessive posting in Omni games.

How about a limit about how many posts in a thread count? This is my third post in this thread, and I've yet to say anything constructive, so that should count as 1.

I suspect most of us that have reached the 10,000 post plateau have done so without playing the OMNI games (I've never played one of them).

Evangelist? Heck, I'm still trying to get that "Commander Catcop" title.

Seriously. To the TalkBoard... what issue does this motion solve?