Are bloggers ruining Milepoint????

Why should Flyertalk have all the fun?

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/milesbuzz/1344231-bloggers-ruining-flyertalk.html

Ready. Set. Go!

Didn't the "bloggers" create milepoint along with Randy? I'm happy...

Yeah, some of those bloggers are real monsters!

Oops. Sorry guys. Our bad.

Sounds like the same whining that you can hear around here too, that all non-"special" people know the tricks now too and how that's unfair to those that remember the good ol' times. Welcome to information age, where everyone can access it.

Like it or not, information wants to be free.

just cite the sources of info and I'm happy! and that doesn't mean one blogger referencing another when info has been on here or FT for a day or three, first

This brings me back to the thread we had here this spring about the posts that are nothing more than advertisements for blogs, including the large signature lines with redirects to the blogger's website.

It's kind of funny to see people posting on public bulletin boards like MP and FT which can be accessed by anyone with internet and English proficiency around the world (only a billion people or so ) and then complaining that the info they have is being spread too widely.

But then again, some of those people are complaining quite a bit about anything being shared on the actual message board rather than just via private message with other "worthy" members.

Golly! I had no idea that James Worthy was into this stuff. I gotta do a better job of keeping up with my fellow Carolinians.

Anyone can be a Shill with a Broadband connection and a computer these days sheesh.

I think that's a different issue entirely and a more real one.

I agree. I mostly want to be able to ignore some blogs without ignoring posts.

As the Water Boy's mammmma said, "Bloggers are the devil!".

Excellent post overall, but this is I believe the most important part. I'm not a fan of the 8,300 different blogs hosted under the BoardingArea banner -- might be more actually -- primarily because they tend to rehash a lot of the information available here plus having a proper discussion about the topic is basically impossible.

But with that said, I do appreciate that at times you can get a solid trip review or a good breakdown of a promo/offer/whatever dissected from a somewhat-objective POV -- case in point the recent US Travel / Daily Getaways deals and their breakdown by cpm, redemption opportunities for the different programs, etc.

My philosophy is ....if you don't like blogs....just don't read them.

Simple enough, but the actual complaint is about their existence, not about reading them. Need to keep our "precious" secrets of mile/points/sleep deprivation accumulation hidden from the world!

That is why some private websites exist.....away from the masses. I am specifically thinking about mistake in fares etc.

This common complaint reminds me of the scientific literature. A lot of research is locked up in expensive publishing databases, which is why there is always a push to make sure that federally funded work (most of it) remains freely accessible. And yet, it can still be hard to find, which is why people write review articles summarizing lots of other papers. The review articles are helpful and let you get the information you want quickly without going directly to the source. Sometimes reviews even alert you to papers you never knew existed.

FlyerTalk is like the giant masses of primary literature that are publicly listed, sometimes free, but always hard to sift through. As long as the blogger cites the original source (and I try), I don't see a problem. That's the blogger's job, to collect and disseminate information. Not all of it is new, but some is, and I think that's just an added bonus.

You can create private sites if you wish, but then it will be harder to share with other people.

One of my posts was quoted in a blog, but the blogger asked permission first. I was OK with this since it was acknowledged, although I did stipulate that the blogger check that doing this would not violate any MP rules. It wasn't any sort of a secret, just a heads-up reminder about the deadline for something with some details about the choices and a brief discussion of whether next year's choice should be made early or late. It must have been about 200 words. Not a big deal, but I would have been furious if the material had been quoted verbatim without permission and an acknowledgement.

Randy, to play devil's advocate here, how many blogs under BoardingArea were there from 2Q 2011 thru present day? Or what percentage increase?

Also, MP really got underway around that same time frame, yes? Wouldn't that be a small reason for decreased FT traffic?

I look at it like this: I have over 300 channels on my TV. I'll some times see a commercial for for example Bravo while watching Seinfeld on TBS. I'm not switching to Bravo in a million years.

Same thing with bloggers. Sure I'll take a peek at new bloggers, but in most cases, there'll be only one peek and if I see a signature or a shameless plug in a post, I just ignore it and keep doing what I'm doing on milepoint.

The bloggers I love (Gary, Brian, Pizza, Seth and more) I read every day on my own, don't need a plug to check them out. They are bookmarked because they deserve attention.

Thanks for the link, original poster of this thread and welcome to milepoint. A better add for milepoint would be hard to find

I would say that bloggers complement a forum. The point is to disseminate information at a faster pace than say a search engine would.(search engine spiders a forum and takes a while before gets up the SERPS ladder, whereas a blog post RSS feed gets indexed at a faster rate and they tend to be weighted more higher than a forum post) Some folks are not too keen to get out of their comfort zone so to speak, but things evolve.