I've probably seen that posted 100 times since I started here, and I don't believe it for a minute.

You can always start your own threads if you don't want to post on an existing thread. Surely you have some travel experience to share, a trip report that might interest others, or a recent hotel stay you'd like to report on? Maybe you can answer a question about award travel or a good restaurant, or join in all the speculation about airline mergers? Complaint about a call center or flight attendant?

FT wouldn't be here without posts about travel. You can't have a frequent flyer forum if posters start making their home forum OMNI. You need posters to talk about travel.

I just realized that you registered on FT at the same time that Omni started going down the drain with the OWOT threads and ridiculous subjects such as you mention here. As a matter of fact, you just gained entrance to Omni only recently, when the OWOT situation had become awful. You are basing your opinion on the worst case scenario, not the way it was as little as 7 months ago.


If you search before the summer of 2007 you will see a far different Omni.

FT isn't my first time on the choo-choo, so to speak. Off-topic forums tend to be just that: off-topic. Sometimes slightly off-topic, and other times WAY off-topic.

I stumbled upon FT because I was looking for travel information, not because I was searching for a new place to make e-friends. I doubt I'm in the minority there. That's where the focus should remain.

I did not say it was. However, FT is pretty unlike most of the other places on the internet.

You would be amazed at how many real friends, and a few weddings, have been made through meetings off-line that were arranged online.

What I do know is that from your first post in Omni when you were first qualified, you started complaining about the subject matter in Omni, and quite frequently.

Now, your totally against something you don't know a whole heck of alot about.

Your entitlted to your opinion, and if you came to FT for travel related information and aren't interested in any other aspect, why does it even matter to you?

Your notion that FT is unlike other forums, having generated real friends, etc., is off the mark.

I posted what I thought was a very reasonable solution, to allow some counting, some non-counting, and both OWOT and FT-related posts. I may not have years of OMNI experience, but I think that qualifies me to base my opinion on what ONMI is, not what it was.

As for my posts in OMNI, can you point out a few links to support your claim that those posts were "quite frequently" complainin abou the subject matter? The majority of my OMNI posts were in threads that were sent to OMNI after I posted.

Who said I wasn't interested? I just don't think my post count there matters.

It would make a lot of sense if this was the way things actually worked. However, it has been my experience that "food fighting" threads are closed/locked and not moved to Omni or any OT post is deleted without letting the offending poster know.

Regardless of how this vote goes is the matter of post counts ever going to go away? While I would prefer to keep post counts in general and on OMNI specifically I and no doubt many others are growing tired of the constant infighting the issue causes so would almost welcome a TB motion to permanently do away with post counts altogether.

tom911 writes:

The idea behind the motion, as I understood it, Tom, was to just back up, maintain the previous status quo, and give the TalkBoard a chance to put our heads together, with Randy, to think the problem through, get more feedback from you all, and come up with a more workable solution. That is what I am still hoping we will be able to do.

Thank you very much, Randy, for allowing this discussion to continue and give folks an opportunity to express their feelings and opinions.

I, personally, went into this discussion with no feelings one way or the other about OMNI post counts. It is this discussion that has driven me to look at OMNI and, quite surprisingly, I found that IMHO has tremendous value to FT. It is vibrant, funny, usually intelligent, and informative. Moreover, it has a wonderful sense of joy and freedom that I just don't see anywhere else on FlyerTalk these days. (Maybe I should also check out the Delta Lounge forum. )

I am hearing from the people who want OMNI posts to count that they believe they should count because OMNI is an important venue for building community on FT, and I tend to agree with them.

I am hearing from the people who don't want OMNI posts to count, either that they "think it would be better for FlyerTalk", or that "since Randy says so", they agree. What I haven't heard from anyone is why, and exactly how they think that removing post counts will benefit FT.

It would be most edifying for me to hear very specific answers to these questions. Thank you.

There seems to be a lot of unanswered questions from the anti-OMNI post count folks, Punki. I, too, would like to hear their specific answers.

Try reading this thread. Several people have either put that logic out there or linked to at least one proposal that did.

http://flyertalk.com/forum/showpost....0&postcount=17

http://flyertalk.com/forum/showpost....0&postcount=20

http://flyertalk.com/forum/showpost....4&postcount=95

http://flyertalk.com/forum/showpost....&postcount=131

http://flyertalk.com/forum/showpost....&postcount=133

http://flyertalk.com/forum/showpost....&postcount=140

And if that's not enough, you could've used the search function (or clicking on the link in a very early post in this thread) and read 100+ posts on the subject when it came up before.

Let's talk, for a second, about what has come up before. You wrote in the current thread:

Less than a year ago, you wrote:

So which is it?

In this thread, you said:

Last year, you said:

So which is it? Post counts and titles either mean something to you or they don't, but you have been of at least two different minds in the last year (or so your words indicate). But wait:

That's when you had it right.

Read. Search. Untrue hyperbole won't help the cause. That you don't like the answers does not beget that they are not out there already.

Fare sales and the like should be in mileage running. Other Community threads have nothing to do at all with earning miles and points. Your argument is like saying threads about golf should count because some people travel to play golf and they earn points doing so.

You might not realize it, but a lot of threads in OMNI are about points, miles, and travel in general. This is particularly true if we're going to use the litmus test you're applying to CommunityBuzz: if something is tangentially related to miles and points, it should count.

Some examples in OMNI that should be counting according to your logic:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=793839

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=793732

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=792227

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=747950

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=793595

I could go on and on.

No, they really aren't there. Most of the responses don't resolve the inconsistency issue in the slightest, they just bracket it.

In your opinion, with someone at 19k+ posts in OMNI, the inconsistency is not resolved. For those of us with a lesser stake (and attachment) to it, it's been resolved since "A modest proposal" was made some time ago.

And it's moot, of course.

Heh "a modest proposal" was nothing more than anti-OMNI, IMHO (and obviously lots of people agreed with me, given what happened to it).