I'd venture to guess that Randy might be overruled by IB on this matter since it's all about the clicks, and as of this morning a whole lot of folks are p'd off at FlyerTalk and lost their incentive to post, which translates to lower traffic, which translates to less revenue for IB.

(then again all the traffic generated by this and the Revolution thread might make up for the decline in traffic)

Sorry, no gold stars... PPM

Points previously made.....

???

I regret to inform you but my post citing the November 10, 2004 Technical Issues thread http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=370358 where post 3 has a member of WebFlyer stating that the OMNI post counting was deliberately enabled again was not a point that anyone previously made.

We have on the record, a member of the WebFlyer staff three months after the change in policy Randy is citing, stating that the reenabling of OMNI post counting was a deliberate act.

This runs contrary to Randy's assertion that it was a four year oversite.

Also, and I'm editing this post so I don't pad my posts.

magiciansampras posts on December 14, 2007 a request to update the OMNI FAQ where he states that one of the errors that is in the FAQ is relating to OMNI post counting.

The following is a link to that thread http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=768116

Randy is the only person to respond to the thread. We can only presume that he read the original question and would have known about OMNI posts counting towards a post total in December of last year.

Why wait another two months and then say it was a recently discovered configuration error?

Once upon a time, I think I made a suggestion either here or in ORP that we have a "thumbs-up" system for good threads/posts. You can only nudge a thread up, not down. The big problem with the previous reputation system was that some twits decided to be tools and give 0-1 ratings to birthday threads in communityBuzz (among other things).

In my day job, one of the challenges I have to work with is the development of meaningful metrics for production facilities at my company. The first rule is that to make a metric meaningful, it has to be visible. We've assigned great meaning to post counts because it's the only metric we've got visible in thread view. Develop a good metric that's resistant to gaming (hey, there's an actual productive thing TB could do since they seem to be struggling to find actual issues!), and the world will beat a path to your door.

Here's an idea:

All posts count. The "reputation" score is calculated on a forum basis - a ratio of "thumbs-up" posts to total posts in that forum (along with some scaling factors to account for number of participants, forum size, etc). This probably wouldn't be a real-time metric, but could be crunched at 2a on Sunday or something. I might be considered to be a good source of info in Travel Photography and have a great rep score there. I'd probably have a decent score on UA. I'd have no score on CO.

This seems fair to me because it doesn't disenfranchise people. OMNI serves a valuable purpose around here - it's got its own community (hence the significant traffic devoted to this issue) even if it isn't strictly germane to the subject of miles and points. People like to talk with people they've got something in common with, even if it's to count by prime numbers, guess who's going to post next, or make fun of people who think lanyards are a good idea. At the same time, it preserves the ability to recognize valuable contributions in each forum.

Personally, I don't care if I ever get to be an FT Evangelist. I'll have fun in OMNI regardless of whether my posts count or not, but Randy's unilateral decision (and the sketchy "oops" explanation that doesn't seem to be substantiated by the record) rubs me the wrong way, hence my comment over on ORP that with respect to him, I'll vote with my wallet and not renew my InsideFlyer subscription next time it comes due this fall. Unless IB got InsideFlyer as part of the deal, that still hits Randy's bottom line. I'll also probably look disfavorably on TB members who rubber-stamp Randy on this.

^ Wow. Brilliant. ^

Well, either you find InsideFlyer useful and you subscribe or you don't and then there is no point in subscribing. Linking one's subscription to IF to what happens here would strike me as rather petty but, hey, that's your money and you do what you want with it.

<Evil grin on>

Press it, Randy! Teach them who is boss. Looks like you've had about 5 people say that they'll stop getting Inside Flyer because of this. I'll up it to 10, and buy that many subscriptions. Seriously.

I recall scenes like this from earlier in my life. The hardest part was cleaning all the paint off my hands, in preschool.

I'd bet against that. FT is much better with Randy involved in it, than without. This reminds me of adults who refuse to talk to their parents, because they didn't get a birthday card one year.

That's odd. It reminds me of adults having a disagreement over a policy decision.

Just a thought, and I'm not certain if what I'm suggesting is a serous solution or a facetious one, but here goes:

A. Count all posts, including OMNI
B. At 10k posts, instead of becoming "Evangelist", the member's post count gets reset to Zero. At that point they can't access OMNI until they once again achieve 180 posts.

The 180 days will not be a requirement the second (or third...) time around, since they already have 180 days, unless they are less than that time from their original join date. (not likely, but possible). The 180 days will remain a requirement the first time around, of course.

This will have several effects. People who post massive amounts in OMNI will have to take a short break and catch their breath. People who love having high post counts will slow down after 8k and make every post count, and not post meaningless posts for a few weeks. People who say post count doesn't count will see a more even playing field. People who feel the lack of counting OMNI posts makes them second class citizens or devalues their contribs will no longer have to feel that way.

I don't post in OMNI, but I see it does fill a very interesting, valuable role. Where else on the 'net can you find such active debate from opposite viewpoints without one side driving the other away? (not on blogs, for example, they are very one sided). I'm concerned that, if the current shift causes dedicated OMNIvores to leave, that will diminish the unique place which it has become.

Jaimito: I think you misunderstood my comment: I'm hardly suggesting Randy not be involved in FT, rather that this one, single issue (OMNI posts = clicks = ad revenue) might be over-ruled by IB.

And just to be crystal-clear, let me rephrase it again for you: just because Randy made one mistake (that led to a bad decision) does not mean we don't love & respect him.

Randy, Could you please repeatable questions for me about someone who boost up their post count. Because it was too much post count to reachable around 20,000 or 30,000 posts. I think it should be reset their post count to zero. I could tell you about specific problems by OMNI forums. I will have certainly agreeable with you guys will be reset the post count to zero. It wasn't simply problems by the original thread onto FTs for a long time. I'm sure you will have more logical. I think the rules must to be changeable to do followed the policies by entire FTs.

Thirded

Interesting.