Looking forward to the continual updates on OMAAT!
Could you share what platform you're using for comments? I'd like to start one up (for something totally unrelated to travel and points). Thanks!
Positive overall but I don't like this particular change: "Most recent comments: You’ll now see the most recent comments in blog posts rather than featured posts." I like seeing the top comments (most helpful) at a glance on the first page, instead of now having to go in and sort by most helpful.
I also liked the old system to see the highest rated comments in the summary. The hope is that they add more value- even if sometimes not the most useful comments bubble up. Maybe make the preference configurable?
I had been getting repeated errors “you are not authorized to continue “ from Wordpress when attempting to log in using Safari on padOS. Only by deleting all my browser history I was able to log in again.
wohoo! to me the most annoying thing is being logged out after a couple days, then having to log back in everytime i want to like a comment, ugh. just leave me logged in forever!!! hahah
Wow, so many of these changes have addressed my problems with your site. Thank you, I appreciate your work!
Any chance of a “laugh” button in the future? You have a lot of witty commenters. I may not agree with their comment, but they make me laugh.
For now, maybe it’s just me, but I think of “Yowzers!” as a combo of everything (wow/haha/yikes).
Also, the notifications are really helpful; before, I was just minesweeper-ing it. Checking back, manually to see if anyone replied to my stuff…
I can't find anywhere to ask for help on creating an account, since you need to have an account to post in the forums. So I'll try here.
Long-time reader and very-occasional commenter here. I tried to create an account, but I'm stuck in an invalid-login/reset-password/that's-invalid-but-also-success loop.
I'm not sure how I got into this - my intended user name is below (and I'm assuming Ben/admins can see the email address I'm including).
Help? 🙂
Woah, there's a ton of new stuff starting today on the Profile section of the site. Well done!
The site’s ad load has made it increasingly unreadable. Not sure why I’d start paying to deshittify it rather than visit less.
Everyone is talking about Ads. Do you realize there are over 150 trackers tied to the site? I get notified about this every time I visit.
it is not completely the quantity of ads (sure, we all want less, but understand the bills need to be paid for) but rather the types of ads - the pop-ups, the ones that mess up reading continuity, hard to close, basically the crap that gets in the way of the experience in a manner that, by definition, you go out of your way to avoiding buying anything from the company advertising because their ads are so horrible.
Basically, more and more the ads are getting so invasive (especially on my iPhone) that I am just asking myself how badly do I want to read the article and since this is a hobby, not that badly.
sounds like we are on the path to "enshitification" .... can't wait
Hey Michael,
This is constructive feedback. The number of ads we display on a page is well within the industry standard (under, actually), but let me see what I can do about the ad types showing up at any one time. That should be solvable.
The 'new membership page' is quite nice. (And, kudos to Samar on his trip reports!)
Looks like the newsletter is 1,500 points, not 1,000 points as noted in this article? May want to fix.
Also been enjoying @Samar's trip report!
Q: Will the weekly / monthly / yearly stats page include points purchases?
Gotcha - so basically community points are organically earned (and what the leaderboard is reflective of) and membership points are purchased? Makes sense... I'll just view through an AA base / bonus lens.
Did OMAAT just devalue but spin-zone it off of customer feedback? 😉
I, for one, look forward to the forthcoming 'OMAAT Diamond Reserve'... requires a minimum score of 18,000 points (and 80 nights or 40 stays at Hilton properties in a calendar year... huh). /s
The quantity of ads here and other travel blogs have gotten out of control and cannot read effectively or easily. You lose the reader if its just too hard.....
I would also say its not just about ads but more relevent and honest reporting. This site has many CC and other airline financial relationships that you are effectively asking us to pay to be the audience. I think you cant have it both ways.
Through this year its been quantity over quality. It shows on the blog posts as its generally about Bens travel life and CC upsells. I get he has a family but you cant be a travel blogger and still be home all the time.....i feel the relevancy is getting lower and there is obivous unknown bias towards unknown financial relationships (i.e. Atmos for example, there has been no coverage of the blunders of AS IT and the roll out...all rosy things....not to mention obvious recent errors in the reporting that a quick check would have been corrected....so why follow ben when we can read the site on alaskaair.com).
For a membership to work...there has to be some real value for the reader.....right now...i am not so sure thats the case.....a simple 100 dollar raffle isnt gonna cut it....how about exclusive airfare discounts (say 5%) etc. This is where you will get the money.
Meh. We all know that news sources have bias and follow revenue streams. It's a business, so what, plenty of great and relevant travel content and tips. Clearly BofA / Atmos is paying more bills right now than Citi / AA, no big deal. If Citi wants to pay Ben, I'm sure we'll read all about the 125k AA executive card offer.
Ever watch something like LA Flights on youtube? Guy livestreams his plane spotting for half the day and there's an audience of thousands that sends in a lot of money in tips. Twitch etc. have similar models. Ben's run a site for decades and pumped out a lot of content - I think he's earned the right to put out a tip jar, which is effectively what this is.
Would I gameify the tip jar differently? Sure. I'd do a "drop me $5" tip jar for bonus points and if you give X number of tips per month you get an additional Y bonus points, and tip for X number of months in a row and get Z bonus points plus an OMAAT luggage tag. Something like that. But hey, not my site!
But, Peter, why would Citi ever need to pay anyone for anything? Citi Nights, 6x ThankYou points on dining, after 6PM EST, only on Fridays and Saturdays, using your Strata Elite, sells itself! /s
I have to agree. There has been an avalanche of ads on Boarding Area blogs. And, in spite of a representation of unbiased coverage, I've seen the bias here & on another very popular hobby blog. If there's news about a change to a loyalty program, fine. But, I feel I can't trust reviews & recommendations any longer. Some reports seem sloppy & error-prone. Commentary seems willing to go to the mat in defense of certain card issuers.
Is there a way to filter/sort trip reports by date instead of just search or the borad categories at the top? I was looking for an Emirates post from 2011 but there are quite a few Emirates posts to go through. On mobile, so not sure if that changes the options.
This looks doable with our set-up. I should be able to get this feature out in the next week or so.
Is this a joke? Why would I pay for features that make a travel-blog site vaguely functional when that should be the base experience?
Dear OMAAT,
Bye!
Sincerely,
Same thoughts, it was already made impossible to comment without an email address. Thanks Ben for the years of content, I hope there will still be free content, otherwise farewell
Hey Ken - everything continues to be free. The paid option removes ads from the site; this can also be achieved by earning status without paying a membership fee at all. https://onemileatatime.com/omaat-community-rewards/
I like your site, But, I am not sure you are traveling enough to request fees. When you do travel, reports seem to target Germany for family travel reasons. I think we have seen enough Lufthansa First Class reports. Your incessant pandering of Atmos benefits is becoming obvious. What is Alaska paying you for your loyalty?
And, a guy who doesn't have Senator status books Swiss Air first class ON POINTS via a "friend." Count how any LH Group articles there are over time. I've seen it for some time now and I'm glad others are speaking up.
Wait, did I miss a post? Who is Jeremy?!
He's the helpful man Ben hired to help with the website, fix bugs, add enhancements, moderate, etc. etc. etc. Do a search and you should find some results.
He actually posted a great Reader Story. Folks, check out the Community section of the site. There’s goodies there!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/zafiros
"Head of Growth & Partnerships | Scaling Affiliate Revenue in Financial Services"
The guy selling all your info to Chase, B of A, and Bilt
I was open about my background in my intro story, which is here:
https://onemileatatime.com/community-stories/finagled-ultimate-rewards-stolen-luggage-and-a-p2-left-behind/
We're not selling member data (we collect almost nothing), and there are no plans to, fwiw.
Oof. If Ankur is wasting its dwindling VC money on OMAAT member data… BILT is in even worse shape than I imagined… bah!