Let me start off by saying I’m undecided on how to vote at this point, so all I can explain is where I’m coming from and hopefully I can be enlightened within the next two weeks. I’ll vote based on the issue, and not because of the timing of the proposal compared to Randy making his decision. After all we’re just an advisory committee, so we just tell Randy how we feel and he chooses what to do.

Last year when there was a motion to remove post counts from OMNI it was a very close vote, which, while having a majority, didn’t have a super majority, so ultimately failed. Now we’re at it again, this time with a twist from the other end, as we all know. I don’t have a problem with posts in OMNI counting, per se, but I do have a problem with the violation of TOS that people get away with in OMNI. I’m not talking about mild violations like a post that’s relatively worthless, but rather those that post dozens of times in a row (often just a five digit number), seemingly just trying to pad posts. I think there’s a problem with the system when the TOS prohibit that, yet nothing is done about it because Randy is the only mod in OMNI, and as we know he’s a busy guy. I’m also not a fan of punishing a whole group (those that enjoy OMNI and don’t abuse it) because of the actions of a few.

While this proposal may temporarily solve the complaints in this forum, ORP, and OMNI, it doesn’t solve the bigger issue, which is that FT seems to be split as to whether or not OMNI posts should count. Personally I’m not particularly passionate about this either way. I do think that if OMNI posts count that Coupon Connection posts should count too, and also that there needs to be consequences for blatant violations of the TOS, which there currently don’t seem to be in OMNI. If posts don’t count, OTOH, I can see that we should also eliminate posts from other non-essential forums, but that would get very complicated.

Tom911 raises a good point, one which has been discussed in the private forum. While I think it’s a good idea in general, we once again run into the issue of enforcement. How do you define a game thread? What if someone posts a game thread in the “other OMNI?” Would there have to be mod for this? (and of course this is totally outside the purview of the TB, which adds complexity to the suggestion).

As of now I’m somewhat inclined to vote against it just because I don’t think it’s a permanent solution. While I’m not sure what long term solution is best, I think it’s something we can work on and hopefully come up with.
Just my two cents.

Here is what CB4 posted in the linked thread(I'll assume you are referring to his post):

I'll go along with all those he has listed not counting. I will not go along with posts in TS&S not counting as I think there is much useful information to be gained as it applies to travel. I know there are lots of rants there but there are in all the hotel and airline, credit card, etc. forums as well.

I also think Community should count as lots of points and miles are earned attending the events posted and lots spur from fare sales and the like. Birthday threads really don't generate enough posts so I feel they can be overlooked. Post club threads should be moved to OMNI ... just really don't see their purpose anyway.

I pretty much share tom911's view on what post counts should reflect. Knowledge about points, miles and travel in general.

And again, I still think changes should be retroactive

I think it's east to start with the two threads that have FTers counting up and down to 100,000, and another one that says "An Omni Game". Any thread with over 1,000 posts, which includes repetitive numbers or one line of text (like "good morning" "I'm going to bed"), repeated throughout the thread, would be my criteria.

But then the games/WOT subforum is moot: no Omni posts count and Ignore Thread allows those not interested not to see the WOT posts

This motion is already on the floor. You would have to get the sponsors to agree to this suggestion. I'm just the liaison.

Without knowing the reason why Randy suddenly decided to change his mind again and reverse his reversal of Nov 2004, there's no way I can form an opinion.

On one hand, I honestly believe that it was the large number of counting threads that bothered him. I know that they started bothering me and I missed some topics (such as a sick child of another poster) because I was wading through all those posts. If I noticed, I can only imagine what people using the "new posts" function thought.

I said it in the other thread, and I'll say it again in this one, IMHO and with limited information, instead of dealing with users he is simply stopped allowing posts in Omni to count. I don't blame him. He's a busy man and is the only mod for Omni.

That said, it really doesn't matter to me one way or the other if they count or not. However, if they are NOT to count, there are plenty of other forums that have OT posts as well as entire forums that are not part of the core Miles & Points forums. They should not count as well.

I know I value the legal advice I received in Omni just as much as the point earning advice I received in the Hyatt forum.

There are a ton of issues with regard to creating an OMNI Games forum. So many that I really do think it deserves to be talked about in its own thread.

- What is a game? (how about the fantasy football threads)
- How about threads talking about and cooperating in the playing of a game (eg, the Airline Mogul thread)?
- What about threads that start as 'regular' omni posts but end up as games (eg, the 'how do you folks get so many posts' thread)?

There are many others. Please, this is not an invitation to engage debate on these questions. It is an argument that this is a completely separate issue deserving to be discussed in a totally separate thread.

The question here is whether the TB wants to advise Randy to un-do the recent implementation of the decision made in 2004 to not count OMNI posts toward the post count total.

I agree with the motion to include OMNI posts in post counts that was made by kokonutz and seconded by Punki.

Well it comes down to a couple of reasons.

There has been arguments in past debates, and I am sure they will occur again, that people use the post count as a measure of how much experience they have on a given topic.

I have been a member of too many different forums to count on a wide variety of topics since I first logged onto the Internet many years ago. It has been my experience, is that if you spend any time at all on any forum you quickly learn who are the knowledgable people on that topic, and which ones are full of themselves, regardless of how many posts they actually have.

FlyerTalk is a very diverse community, full of a wide array of people each of which have different opinions and positions on just about everything. We have some people who post a lot on the USAir forum, others on the Delta forum, others on the CommunityBuzz, and believe it or not we even have people who post alot on OMNI

Part of being a community is to help ensure that there is a thread that binds us all together. For many of this, it is the love of travel. Others, it might be a good debate on the merits or faults of the TSA or it might involve the "Lost" 2008 season and the affect of the writer's strike will have on it.

The post count helps unify the community as a whole because it provides a record of how active you have been in the community. It means nothing else, well it might mean that you have a lot of time to spare if it is really high, but it doesn't mean anything truely important. A community that the only thing that I am reasonably certain about its members is our collective obsession about counting miles and points.

Like it or not, OMNI is part of the FT Community. It is like the bar in some back alley on the wrong side of the tracks. Everyone knows it is there, and some people would bulldoze the entire area to get rid of it if they could. Since it is part of the FT Community, why should someone's contribution there not count towards the total?

Well, it has been said that OMNI doesn't advance FT primary mission. Well, maybe that is true, but at the same time you can say that about Only Randy Petersen, Technical Issues, & Suggestions. Their primary focus is not travel related. Their primary focus is something else, in this case helping to improve FT, yet we count those posts because we recognize that there is a benefit to having them and to recognize a member's participation in those areas.

OMNI serves a purpose as well, it is the escape valve for everything else. In the time I have been a member of FT, I have met a number of different people at FT. As much as I hate to admit it, neither them or I can talk about travel 100% of the time. Does that mean I should go somewhere else to talk about the new Star Trek movie?

No, I take the conversation to OMNI where I can talk about it with the people I have meet in the travel forums on FT, so you can see it does serve a purpose and we should continue to recognize their participation in the community.

There is what is known as OMNI Waste of Time games. You know the ones, count down from 100,000, Who Will Be The Next FlyerTalk Member To Post? An OMNI Game...the ones that can be downright annoying at times, but incredibly useful when you are sitting in an airport trying to kill some time. Again, they serve a purpose. Should these posts counts?

I look at these posts as being the OMNI equivalent of the The 6969 post club! and the various Happy Birthday threads in CommunityBuzz. Are they annoying? I think both these type of threads in CommunityBuzz and in OMNI are annoying at times. Do I think that should count towards the post total? I think it would be hypocritical of me to suggest otherwise. Just because I don't like a certain aspect of it, doesn't mean we should through the baby out with the bathwater.

Now that all of that has been said, lets look at this from another stand point. FT is a community whose members can be obsessive about collecting miles and points in a number of different programs. This community is full of people obsessed with counting things. Why wouldn't they transfer this obsession to posts?

I would be interested in understanding why the motion maker and seconder want OMNI posts to count... but did not include Coupon Connection posts to count? IF the argument is that posts in OMNI are as important as any other post, why not the same for Coupon Connection?

I second and second.

I know for sure this is not the 1st (see a recent example from 12/31/07: here) nor the last time TB goes against Randy's decision/desire/wishes. That's a beauty of democracy. If everybody thinks alike, there will be no fun in our FT world.

However, doesn't our new TB have better proposals or motions to consider, so our FTers' post counts can REALLY carry a meaning (or be improved), instead of focusing on one specific item/forum? Since we already knew where Randy stands on this subject, why not giving him a better thought-through advice from this TB?

I am quoting the above example from Randy's response with some revisions (replacing VX) :

"if this Board wanted to really make an impact, why focus on OMNI post count, why not for the sake of the future of FT, take the time and examine what measures might be implemented for actually determining what post counts in FT fora should be or mean?"

I expect our TB to be less tunnel-visioned. I urge this TB to take a bolder move: table this current proposal/voting/motion.

If our TB insists putting post counts on the table, what about a better put-together proposal/motion, such as the following one? Can this TB put things in a broader perspective on post counts per se?
Come on! I know you guys can do better than your current one.

Hi:

Is there enough room on the "Post Count" line to change the count so it shows up in two parts?

Instead of ...
Oldandslow
Post Count 200 ...

could it be ...
Oldandslow
Post Count (M/P) 199
Post Count (all else) 1

If the Miles and Points count is high, I might believe the person knows what he's talking about (not necessarily, of course, but possibly.)
If the All Else count is high, I might believe the person has a lot of free time on their hands.

Does this accomplish what everyone wants? Post count totals are visible, signal-to-noise ratios are visible, and that transparency might cut down on some of the WOT threads.

Just curious if discssion of this approach has come up before ...

Thanks for listening.

If this passes, I am thinking of starting (and doing my best to monopolize) a "count down from 1,000,000,000" thread in Omni.

you might have some stiff competition from a member down in Argentina!

I actually nearly mistakenly did include CC as I was making this motion in the private TB forum. But since my intent was simply to put things back to the way they were on February 12, before this 'implementation,' I actually made ANOTHER motion (that Punki eventually seconded) that is now under consideration.

I think there IS a case to be made for counting CC posts in the overall post count. But the point of my motion was that things weren't broken, so why try to fix them. The purpose of my motion was to restore status quo ante. To me, THAT ought to be the jumping-off point for talking about making improvements such as a games subforum or a ignore thread feature or, for that matter, how CC posts should be treated.

Now, let me add BEFORE I start enjoying this large Grey Goose Martini sitting in front of me so I can be at least a little coherent : This is Randy's house. He does as he sees fit. And he's done a marvelous job. But I think part of the reason he's done a marvelous job is because he created and entrusted the TalkBoard with the job of representing his community/customers desires to him. And prior TBs have done a terrific job of earning that trust.

The last TB waded through hundreds of posts last year when the proposal was made to not count OMNI posts. In the end a majority but not a super-majority decided that posts should not count. But since by the (imho very wise) rules the TB operates under it takes a super-majority to change the status quo (because, well, if it ain't broke etc. etc. and God knows the last thing we want is a slim majority of radicals on the TB changing things around when things are working just fine), the TB did not advise Randy to NOT count OMNI posts in the post count totals.

So when Randy implemented this policy change from 2004 he did so without the advice of that TB which, to be clear, is ENTIRELY his prerogative. And in a few weeks when TB voting closes on this motion he will have the advice of this TB. Except now the burden has shifted. (Pay attention Clubee )Now a super-majority of the TB will be required to advise Randy to go BACK to counting OMNI posts. @:-)

But, again, at the end of the day it's Randy's house and in the end (or even today!) he can restore status quo ante or not. With or without our advice. Completely his call. But at least at that point he will have the advice of the current elected TB. Which is, as I say above as I see it, our job.

Just curious. When was the last time you posted in OMNI?

First I would like to say thank you to wr_schwab for her/his most intelligent and thoughtful responses. I have never seen you post before and must say that I am impressed both by your insight, and with the restraint that holds you to contain your posts to 1/2 post per day. Even restraining myself, I am almost at three posts a day.

Will you all please note that the actual motion reads:

I seconded the motion because, to me, the wording of the motion invited Randy to enter into dialogue with the TalkBoard to help us better understand his thinking behind the sudden elimination of OMNI post counts right in the middle of our internal debate on the subject.

IMHO, dialogue, interaction, communication and understanding, all the way around (including with and by the TalkBoard, Randy, and the general membership), are crucial to the efficacy of any decisions made by either the TalkBoard, or unilaterally by Randy.

I am not particularly passionate one way or the other about counting post counts, but I am very passionate about the health, growth and development of the FlyerTalk Community. I have been here for a long, long time and witnessed a lot of changes, some good, and some not so very good (even bad), over the years.

As others have mentioned, a knee jerk reaction of eliminating privileges, features, and post counts for everyone, in response to the actions of a few, is not to my mind, the very best solution to any of the problems we encounter as we grow and develop into a serious force for good throughout the world.

I also really try to think in the long term, maybe another 10, 20, 30 or 50 years out, and try to imagine what effects the actions we take today will have on the TalkBoard of the future, and imagine how we can lay a ground work that will well serve FlyerTalk long after Randy and all of the rest of us (except, of course, Lucky9876coins) are gone and forgotten.

Are the actions we take today setting good precedent? Are the actions that Randy takes today setting good precedent? None of us really has a decisive answer to those questions, but as leaders of a very vibrant, exciting and very real international community, these are questions we need to carefully consider before we jump in and make any decisions.

So I personally would very much appreciate any comments that moved beyond post count and politics, and gave feedback on what steps we can take to build a stronger, healthier woldwide community.