[name] [number] post (No) Prize up for grabs

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thadocta

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Ummm, who really cares?

This is supposed to be a board about frequent flyers, for discussion about how we can maximise the benefits, minimise the inconveniences and reduce the strain of constant travelling.

It seems like one or two members are seeking to do nothing more than to maximise their post counts, without actually contributing. And, please tell me, what do threads dealing with nothing more than when a certain member will get to a certian post count ACTUALLY contribute?

Sorry for venting, but this was actually an incredibly useful board, until the recent round of dribble posts started appearing.

Dave
 
Agree entirely.
Also, the board is discussing credit card (non frequent flyer) stuff more and more.
 
I can easily wade through those "[name] [number] post (No) Prize up for grabs" posts. I have also contributed sometimes to them so a little bit mea culpa. I think this board is still very useful though, and have noticed more activity (excluding those types of posts) in questions and answers.

The best solution I think is as follows:

Create a new forum (Community or Social or Lounge - or something similar)

Restrict those types of threads to that forum.

Maybe even modify the code on the front page which sucks back the last forum posts to ignore the ones in that forum.

Maybe those meeting with Admin for drinks soon can debate it out.

//edited to make my view clearer!
 
I have to plead guilty to contributing to some of those threads, but I also think that some of this banter does contribute to the feeling of community (notwithstanding that it has gone a bit overboard of late). In this regard, I think Mal's suggestion of a social/community/lounge type area has merit, especially if the posts are confined to that area.

As for credit cards, I find this board a useful place to discuss the Australian programs and it does have an area set up for them. Not that this always helps Kiwi Flyer!
 
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thadocta,

I must admit that I’ve been thinking similar thoughts although I wouldn’t have put it quite so bluntly because as usual there are several ways to look at this.

The primary reason for this forum is to enhance knowledge about FF issues, to raise the general awareness for all of us and particularly those who travel a moderate + amount and have (through no fault of their own) very limited knowledge of the FF world. There's always something to learn in this game.

I do however find it incongruous that the spleen vent has been posted by someone who comes up with gems such as

1. “Greetings from the MEL T1 QP, btw. The chardonnay is excellent tonight.”
2. “Did someone say 'bus'? Someone did, but I think they got away with it....”
3. “Is the Untied States the same as the United States? ”
4. LOTFAP - Land Of The Free And Paranoid (sometimes referred to as the Untied States)
5. POT USA - President Of The Untied States of America (perhaps the cannabis use explains some of his decisions)....

and many more.

As the saying goes: people in glass houses etc…….

Personally I find that getting up before 6am for work and then getting home from work again around 6pm, that a bit of light hearted humour on a friendly forum is great however maybe it’s time we ALL put some perspective back into the forum!

Apologies Dave… just my humble thoughts. :oops: :oops:

re Mal's comments about Credit Cards I'm afraid I don't agree :!: As per the comments from oz_mark these are quite useful to MOST of us.
 
thadocta said:
Sorry for venting, but this was actually an incredibly useful board, until the recent round of dribble posts started appearing.

Sorry to side... But I am totally with Dave on this one...

I find this site incredibly useful, and the threads about X getting to Y posts are great, but have very little useful content in them for the Frequent Flyer community...

Sometimes when I go to the website 6 out of 10 topics on the homepage are about X getting to Y. I look at it and think, not much else must be going on...

I don't know what the solution is, but I really do feel that patronage of this site can not benefit from these posts...

You don't see threads like these on FT or Airliners.net...

Sorry if I have put anyone of side...

D P G
 
straitman said:
re Mal's comments about Credit Cards I'm afraid I don't agree :!: As per the comments from oz_mark these are quite useful to MOST of us.


Huh?

I never discussed the Credit Cards area - in fact support that area.

It was odoherty who brought up Credit Cards, and I think I've been misquoted by association.

I've edited my first post to make things clearer.
 
DPG said:
thadocta said:
Sorry for venting, but this was actually an incredibly useful board, until the recent round of dribble posts started appearing.

Sorry to side... But I am totally with Dave on this one...

I don't think you need to apologise for taking sides

DPG said:
I find this site incredibly useful, and the threads about X getting to Y posts are great, but have very little useful content in them for the Frequent Flyer community...

Sometimes when I go to the website 6 out of 10 topics on the homepage are about X getting to Y. I look at it and think, not much else must be going on...

I found it interesting when the first couple of people were making it to 1000 posts, but I do think that this particular style of message has run its course, at least for the time being. It does lose its ooomph after a while.


DPG said:
I don't know what the solution is, but I really do feel that patronage of this site can not benefit from these posts...

There is a group of people who obviously have an interest in these things, and I guess an allowance needs to be made for them, perhaps in a special area set aside for it.

DPG said:
You don't see threads like these on FT or Airliners.net...

Airliners.net might not have threads such as these, but I would say that Airliners.net suffers from much more drivel than this board.
 
Mal said:
straitman said:
re Mal's comments about Credit Cards I'm afraid I don't agree :!: As per the comments from oz_mark these are quite useful to MOST of us.


Huh?

I never discussed the Credit Cards area - in fact support that area.

It was odoherty who brought up Credit Cards, and I think I've been misquoted by association.

I've edited my first post to make things clearer.

Sorry Mal my sincere apologies. :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops:

Should have read "re odoherty's comments about Credit Cards I'm afraid I don't agree Exclamation As per the comments from oz_mark these are quite useful to MOST of us."
 
I think this is a great site.

I hardly ever go over to FT any more.

I agree, an Off Topic thread would be good.

I belong to a couple of car forums where ther is an OT section and it does keep things tidy.

Having said that, I enjoy the banter and humour in the OT subjects as much as I do the On T threads.

I think it would be sad (and pretty boring) if we all went back to being deadly serious about nothing other than flying - even though that is what the forum is for.
 
Now some of us are guilty of posting to these "other" threads (heh, I'll put my hand up as being one :oops: )

Because of the prevalence of these threads you mention, MetroAir, that's why I created the Off Topic thread, to try and keep the newsworthy threads on topic for those who wanted to follow them.

I haven't been posting as much lately and probably won't be able to for a while.
 
I am as guilty as well. Why all the fuss? Not getting any lately. Deal with it. No one said that you must read what goes on the OffT threads.

Hands up anyone who hasn't posted anything OffT? Don't see too many hands.....

Nuff said.
 
thadocta said:
Ummm, who really cares?

This is supposed to be a board about frequent flyers, for discussion about how we can maximise the benefits, minimise the inconveniences and reduce the strain of constant travelling.

It seems like one or two members are seeking to do nothing more than to maximise their post counts, without actually contributing. And, please tell me, what do threads dealing with nothing more than when a certain member will get to a certian post count ACTUALLY contribute?

Sorry for venting, but this was actually an incredibly useful board, until the recent round of dribble posts started appearing.

Dave
C'mon Dave, most of it is a bit of fun.

When I first found this site, I posted quite quite a bit of (relevent) stuff here; unfortunately breaking a rule I did not know of in relation to awaking old threads.

You responded with a PM to me.

My response was the following:
serfty said:
As you stated, I am new to this site. In fact I am quite new to forums such as AFF. The only similar experience I have is with the notgoodenough.org where I found the link to this site. There are some in AFF who post there as well.

Apologies if you feel I wasted some of your time. This was not my intention. I do have a lot of experience with Travel, more than most but definitely not as much as some, especially many of those who post here.

I am happy to share my knowledge, even inject a little humor if appropriate and certainly do not intend to annoy anyone. However, I will keep your advice in mind,

As far as my postings go. I was looking thru the topics and felt some info would be benificial; it was only after I had made quite a few that I released I was responding to some very old stuff.

In fact I noticed the topics are listed with those most recently updated first. As I got further down the lists, the older they became.

You will find that my more recent posts tended to either add more to a topic or were resposes to a recent posting.
An example of the former is BNE CL being the OLD Dom QC, that almost all QF domestic pre-allocation is done by software rather than people or that the CX F lounge at Chek Lap Kok does indeed have baths.

I have already found this site extremely useful. I did not know of "Check myTrip". Thanx for the info about the class seat availability. (I guess the 9's indicate 9+. i.e. Y9 means there are at least 9 seats available in pricey economy class.)

I look forward to participating in AFF in the future, but if I ever look like becoming a "posting freak", feel free to shoot me.

Best Regards,

Ross.
Now I look at that, especially the last reference to "posting freak", and I humbly request that you Dave (, or anyone else) do not shoot me.

Looking back at the PM from November 19th 2004, I feel the great irony is that I have stuck to my guns; I feel the majority of my post have been of benifit, although, some may have "injected a little humor".

I'm not worried about getting to 1K posts, it'll probably happen and I hope those additional 250 or so posts help some..

Simple! :shock:
 
straitman said:
I do however find it incongruous that the spleen vent has been posted by someone who comes up with gems such as

1. “Greetings from the MEL T1 QP, btw. The chardonnay is excellent tonight.”
2. “Did someone say 'bus'? Someone did, but I think they got away with it....”
3. “Is the Untied States the same as the United States? ”
4. LOTFAP - Land Of The Free And Paranoid (sometimes referred to as the Untied States)
5. POT USA - President Of The Untied States of America (perhaps the cannabis use explains some of his decisions)....

and many more.

As the saying goes: people in glass houses etc…….

Agreed - but looking at when I said what I said, those quotes were entirely within the context of what was being discussed at the time, so were not totally inappropriate. As a long-time denizen of the QF board on FlyerTalk, I am not averse to going off-topic from time-to-time.

It just seems to me that the "[Insert a nick] gets to [Insert a number] post" trend has got a little bit out of hand, and detracts from the main purpose of this board, which is, as I said, to maximise benefits, minimise inconveniences and reduce the stress and strain of being road warriors.

Having said that, the above comments you quoted, IN THE CONTEXT of when I said them, were entirely appropriate at the time.

Personally I find that getting up before 6am for work and then getting home from work again around 6pm, that a bit of light hearted humour on a friendly forum is great however maybe it’s time we ALL put some perspective back into the forum!

I know where you are coming from. A little bit of light humour does not go astray. But we need to establish where it becomes relevant, and then there is the issue of post-padding. (We had a similar discussion on FlyerTalk a while back). A certain amount of credibility exists because of somebody's post counts. But continued postings to "rubbish" threads will add to a posters count without adding to their credibility - and a newbie will have no way of knowing this.

I would venture that I have more credibility than JohnK (due to the fact that I have worked for Qantas, and in retail traveller, and fly very often, enough to be a Gold FF, but not up there with Dave Noble, Lindsay and NM, who are Platinum, but still a hell of a lot), yet his post-count is higher than mine (due to his post-padding activities).

The threads about "Who is going to get to the next level" and so on just add to this spread of dis-information amongst new-comers to the board.

Apologies Dave… just my humble thoughts. :oops: :oops:

Always welcome, it is always a good thing tohave someone approach waht you are saying from a different POV. It makes you look at things differently and re-evaluate, which I have done. Sometimes re-evaluation makes you even firmer in your opinion (as in this case).

Dave
 
serfty, you are indeed an invaluable member of AFF (and FT, for that matter), but you have mis-interpreted what I wrote you you before.

As I posted to another (closed) forum, this style of forum is much better than an email list because it:

What this forum succeeds in doing (which a mailing list fails in doing) is allowing those who come in late to see the arguments which have already been made, arguments which have been shot down, strawmen thrown up (and have yet to be shot down), and so on and so forth (PROVIDING of course that a newcomer reads an entire thread before responding, something I often fail to do myself in the other fora I frequent, and I am a moderator in some of them) :)

So the PM I sent to you was not so much about what you were saying, more about the timing and how and when it was placed.

Does this make sense?

Dave
 
Dave, thanks for starting this thread. I find your posts valuable, and improve the signal-to-noise ratio of this forum. Many fora do not reveal post counts to discourage the type of threads that we seem to get here.

MD
 
I think I started it all with my thread about AFF approaching 10,000 posts. That was a real milestone and an interesting point at the time. Since then things have been a little more hectic around here :roll: .

Perhaps an option is to create something similar to what has been done on FlyerTalk, where there is an Omni forum where people can discuss all sorts of off-topic thoughts, and posts in that forum do not increase the member's posting count. Sort of caters for the main issues. Then people can just ignore that entire forum is they do not wish to participate.

Like some others, I found the initial discussion about this were interesting. But it does mean some people check the forum more regularly which also means real on-topic questions are being answered quickly and completely, which is the real benefit of AFF.
 
I do agree with Thadocta

The number of inane threads on "Open Discussion" is high imo. One offs, such as the 1st 1000 post thread can be amusing but then after that , to me it becomes a post padding activity. Looking at OD , there (excluding this one ) are 15 threads active since saturday, which include

NM's 2,000th post?? (No) Prize up for grabs
serfty's 1,000 post?? (No) Prize up for grabs
oz_mark's 1,000th post?? (No) Prize up for grabs
The totally off-topic thread
Famous people met/seen while flying v2
AFF's 20,000th post? Prize up for grabs

6 out of 15 threads being threads hardly of any actual benefit imo.

There's nothing wrong with humour, but when a forum starts becoming a place full of noise , then it starts losing relevence imo. If a noise forum is wanted, then having an addittional forum for that activity sounds good to me ( ideally with them not adding to post counts for reason mentioned in previous post )

Dave
 
I'll admit that I have been feeling the same way as thadocta lately regarding all the posts about "number of posts".

I do enjoy the banter here and join in when I have time, but I think it is starting to get to the level where it is dominating the forum. So I agree with the suggestion that we have a dedicated off-topic section. Most forums have this.

Hey, let's have a competition to name the proposed off-topic section! :p :roll: Sorry, just kidding! Maybe we can call it "The Golden Wing Lounge". :( RIP.

Regarding post counts, one forum that I used to frequent in the past had their software (Invision Power Board) set up so that posts in "the lounge" section did not actually add to the user's official post count. Only posts in the main sections (i.e. the on-topic posts) accrued to post count, hence solving the problem of members posting thousands of posts about nothing looking like forum gurus.

One other thing - it looks like there are newer versions of this forum software out there. I wonder if admin would consider an upgrade... upgrade the software, provide some new styles (skins), revitalise the forum sections, etc. A change is as good as a holiday! 8)
 
Dave Noble said:
6 out of 15 threads being threads hardly of any actual benefit imo.
Apart from this thread, I found 6 others worthy of posting, so there is still considerable activity making its way through the noise - well at least a 50% signal to noise ratio :D . I've heard airport public address systems with worth S/N ratios :D .
 
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