mrredskin

would be awesome if someone would chime in on whether or not they got points/hit for a certain purchase.

beltway

Several people have done so in http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/2011-...er-thread.html and the How Many Hits? thread.

mrredskin

1200 posts about 15 different hits compared to this thread about one different hit.

people should post specific info on this thread if it relates to Vinesse

beltway

The relevant Vinesse info is in one concise section of post #1 of http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/2011-...er-thread.html, including the latest Vinesse cheap hit info (updated as of ~8am today).

HikerT

While it is in the other thread, nobody needed to bump this one after weeks of inactivity only to confuse others looking for the most recent info. Next year I hope there will either be 1 thread for each partner OR an a mod will merge splinter threads to minimize confusion.

beltway

As I've said before, this is a wonderful idea in theory that completely falls apart in practice:

• That means literally dozens of partner threads, plus assorted other threads (How Many Hits?, etc).
• Those threads will be spread across several pages of the forum home, making it harder to find the right one even if a user makes an effort to do so.
• Experience here and now -- both in this subforum and elsewhere on FT -- is that there is, alas, no shortage of users too stupid or too lazy to bother finding (and then posting in) the right thread.
• The result will be many more duplicative/overlapping threads. My impression is that our mods are overworked as it is, and would likely not be able to police this effectively. (I don't mean to discuss specific moderator actions when I point out that there are now 3 separate "foul ball" threads, two of which have absolutely no independent justification IMO.)
• Most importantly, the likelihood that any given user will read/understand what's going on in the typical thread declines exponentially according to thread length. The result is an endless series of repeated questions, and consequently a negative feedback cycle in which the latest noise further drowns out useful signal.
  
  
• Many of these ill effects can be reduced or eliminated by having each thread's OP diligently maintain a clear, concise summary of the relevant info about hit status, posting cycle, cheap items, known problem issues, etc.
  • A few brave souls -- lowfareair and rob_flies_ua -- have stepped up to the plate for the hotel transfers and stays threads. However, other threads (points.com & car rentals leap to mind) have only partial summaries (done by me as a stopgap because I happened to own a post on the first page of each of those threads).
  • Still other threads -- like the one you are reading right now, and the ballyhooed breakaway OfficeMax thread -- have absolutely no running summary at all, let alone one that's short and coherent.
  • As there aren't enough dedicated people to manage the few "splinter" threads we have this year, I see no reason whatsoever to believe that such people would come forward in a one-thread-per-partner regime next year.

Anyone who claims that "one thread per partner" is a better approach is, IMO, simply ignoring a mountain of empirical evidence to the contrary. I'd even go further and say that anyone who isn't curating a thread right now is plainly not part of the solution.

dwcatty

McFly, hello, anyone home?

pinniped

For what it's worth, I bought the wine book on Oct 4 and miles posted Oct 7. It posted after this week's GS bonus sweep but I have no reason to believe it won't be a hit.

hobo13

Ditto. And the book is actually nice looking. I can see us giving these as gifts!

Not sure why it came in a giant box though....

bobby21

pinniped,

please post if you get a hit. I have been scanning all the posts and have not seen any conclusive evidence. Only one poster said he might have got a vinesse hit only if US Air had not made a mistake with another transaction that was done before the GS began.

HikerT

Beltway, according to your logic we might as well just have one thread for everything. Heck, why even have a GS forum? Why not just have one huge thread in milesbuzz or the DM forum. A better solution in the absence of FT bringing the forum software to 2011 and providing a wiki post for anyone to edit, is to give you or whomever is volunteering to summarize info moderator access for the GS forum. Then there would be no reason why a separate thread for each hit wouldn't work. The problem with your approach right now is there is no way to control splinter threads. It would work far better if the mods merged splinter threads. That would solve the problem of splinter threads that are inevitable for either approach.

beltway

Actually, we did have one gargantuan thread in past years. It was unwieldy and insanely hard to keep up with, given the amount of traffic. However, it also had an OP who made a good-faith effort to compile certain key info (cheap hits) in the first post, which made a big difference.

As it happens, I think it's better on balance to have more than one thread. The Hotel Stays, Hotel Transfers, and (yes, I'll say it immodestly) the Other Partners threads have carved up a lot of difficult territory and managed to put useful, current information into the hands of anybody capable of finding post #1. (As an aside, though, I do wonder where the sub-forum is going to be moved once GS2011 is over. A single thread just drops down the list, but a sub-forum is structural.)

I think you're missing the point when you suggest that it would be nothing but ponies and rainbows if only the mods, or volunteer citizen mods, could better police the random idiots who start new threads to announce their latest hits (or ask questions already within the scope of other threads). To recap my earlier post, we face a known set of problems:

1. thread over-proliferation (sprawl)
2. volume and variety of the information, both as to GS rules and as to various partners (complexity)
3. a certain amount of baseline human stupidity/laziness (dimwit factor), which leads in turn to
4. pointless/repetitive posts that lower the signal/noise ratio (static)

These are, of course, closely interrelated. Complexity provokes more static, as does the dimwit factor, and so on. But even if we could entirely eliminate the dimwit factor and sprawl via superhuman feats of moderation, complexity is the root of the problems, which is why you need curators, summarizers, rapporteurs -- call them what you will -- to digest and organize the raw data.

Doing that requires the curator to

• follow the discussion closely
• be able to weigh the relative weight of various data points (which will invariably conflict, either because GS partners are erratic or because FT posters are sometimes just plain dolts who have no idea what they're talking about)
• organize and distill the essential info
• into a short, readable reference work

Without such a curator, a thread is just a linear jumble. So dimwit factor aside, even clueful posters will be constantly asking (and re-asking) questions because there's no easy way to find answers. That static produces more static, and eventually we wind up with the heat death of the universe. (Case in point: the uncurated OfficeMax thread now has 160+ posts, far more than the typical reader will bother to wade through. And it's a train wreck.)

Right now, with only mild thread sprawl, there aren't enough people willing to curate threads. Unless a cadre of magic unicorns steps in to do that job, creating one thread next year for each of literally dozens of partners is pretty much a lock to produce a perfect storm of static, dimwitted and otherwise. Why would you want that?

RTW1

It's perfectly workable now.... so keep up the good work.

travelpye

I had decided to go for a set of wine glasses. Three times I made it through the final submit button at checkout only to get a message that there was an error in processing and to try later. Just wondering if anyone else was experiencing issues today.

(Wine glasses are 5 more than the tasting notebook, but thought they would be something I could use.)

hobo13

Clearly, we need a thread to discuss what should be in other threads.....

I,for one, think this the sub-forum is a significant improvement over the past, and would like to thank all the thread owners / maintainers and of course the mods for making this happen.