Flyertalk is basically everything that was ever good about HN, Reddit, Slashdot, without the negatives. I don't understand how it has remained so awesome for so long.
FT has a huge and very strong mod team. Anything off-topic gets killed or moved to Omni pretty fast. Some of the individual forums are more heavily modded than others (United Airlines forum compared to Travelbuzz).
Flyertalkers also talk in code. "(23 Feb) UA 574 ord to ewr upgraded to 767 3 class" is a pretty typical thread title. The barrier to joining the conversation is high. That's nothing to compared to this gem from the trick-it thread (up to 31,000 posts):
> Were you guys aware that you can FD half by C1-C2 via northern star and then returning on the neutral longhorns that are the wholly owned sub of the airline named after me? Just discovered that today by accident. Pretty cool at times.
The trick it folks intentionally talk in vague terms to avoid anything being spread around. Most of the easy FD deals have been killed over the last few years because of this. The time/value tradeoff for those is now above my threshhold, but back in 2009 when they were much easier I flew SFO-SYD for ~$570.
