[AirlineComplaints.org]

Originally Posted by AADFW

Judge, I've been an observer of (and occasional poster to) this board for quite some time now. Over the past two years, I have noticed a distinct pattern among certain "non-airline employee" posters who seem relentless in their defense of increasingly outrageous behavior on the part of domestic U.S. commercial airline employees. It seems reasonable to assume that these few but extremely active posters are motivated by factors that most members of the flying public do not - and should not - share with them. I think what the moderator did here was an effective and appropriate means of mitigating the resulting ongoing imbalance.

I fully understand the moderator's motives, and I applaud his actions. In fact, I'd offer him a standing ovation.

Thank you AADFW. You touch on a very important point regarding the imbalance in the forum, and here is a private message we sent to one of our members a few days ago regarding just that:

The problem we are seeing is that the debate is never balanced because the core members (those that normally reply to complaints from new members) is disproportionately Pro-Airlines. That's probably never going to change since it's the Airline Industry that has an economic incentive to defend their industry.

However, this is a forum for real people with real problems to post real complaints, and if you put yourself in their shoes after a distressing situation, going through the trouble of joining a forum just to express your complaint, only to have other people immediately jump on you and question your credibility, belittle your complaint, attempt to pick holes in it, and ultimately discredit it, then it defeats the whole purpose of this forum which is to give travelers a comfortable area where they can make their complaints public to keep the airlines under public scrutiny. If new members are attacked the moment they post their complaint, then they will not return, and that's a problem for us.

Open debates are fine but not if they question the credibility of new members based purely on "opinion". If a hole can be poked based on fact, then that is not a problem as it ultimately helps the traveler understand where they went wrong. But when Pro-Airline members (which we all know Silent Bob is, for example) pretend to know the OP's situation better than the OP even though they were not there, then that crosses the line and becomes completely unhelpful and counter-productive to the discussion.

The point of this forum is to help each other out, not tear each other apart.

We hope that clarifies things for everyone.