If the website owner is held liable for the veracity of posts, then you are in a no win situation. It would at the least require you seek proof that the poster has an account with the broker, possibly also proof of any adverse comments being genuine on the face of it. The crux of the TripAdvisor complaint seems to be the site promoting reviews as "authentic and genuine", which is a bold claim given that it is impossible to verify every posting on such a scale. Perhaps a disclaimer on that might work. Also, America has not quite caught up with the EU on the nanny state race.
There are some legal systems in Europe where the situation is arguably worse. The libel laws in England and Wales are notoriously plaintiff friendly with the potential for substantial costs awards against the unsuccessful party. There have been several prominent cases of "forum shopping" - seeking to raise an action in E&W to benefit from this asymmetry when the claim could properly be heard in another jurisdiction - and the USA has introduced legislation restricting the recognition of foreign defamation judgements where the speech in question would have been protected by the first amendment. http://legislink.org/us/pl-111-223 Adversarial legal systems (e.g. in UK and USA) generally require a party to the action to make submissions that the action is frivolous/should be dismissed before a judge will consider whether this is so. This obviously requires that the defending party bear the costs of professional representation to make such submissions, and these costs may not be fully recoverable even if the court concurs that the action was brought without merit. (most common law jurisdictions have provisions for sanctions against a party who has conducted litigation incompetently or unreasonably, this is typically a high test to overcome and not often used in practice). Perhaps your reference to Europe concerned countries with inquisitorial / civil law systems (e.g. France) where judges have greater initiative and can intervene to halt obviously abusive or ill founded litigation - so perhaps one can then confidently ignore an ill founded or abusive lawsuit. I have studied only commonwealth countries so am not informed enough to give an opinion. We're up against the human need for recognition / significance again. Somebody with apparently no legal education or professional experience is determined to give their opinion in order to support a proposition that would not be good for Baron or ET. People really ought not to speak with authority outside of their field, and if they cannot be silent at least qualify their statements as being based on other than direct knowledge or experience. Or perhaps indicate their level of experience when writing. For example, I have a British legal education and have done some work for (trial) lawyers in UK many years ago but I do not practice. I agree with Baron's observations regarding the difficulties of publishing reviews submitted by anonymous third parties which could conceivably harm the reputation of others. And I understand the practicalities and nuances where a lay commentator might simply say "if it is not illegal then you have nothing to worry about". So the better question is perhaps "How come there is no poster ranking on EliteTrader". Again, I think the best improvement to ET would be a prominent place to verify and display the credentials of the poster. As not everyone is able to discern from the content itself. Although most who are worth talking to can and do. Then we could see at a glance which ET members have legal qualifications or experience, expertise setting up low latency trading systems, are profitable independent traders, etc.
. that would be a good idea. Members who want to be verified could send in personal details along with trading statements to a trusted moderator..
I did not know ET was based in the US, for some reason I always thought ET was from Europe. Well ok, that s a whole different ball game there, common law that is. We Europeans always get amazed at the crazy settlements we hear about from the US, like some bum getting millions for getting burned at its local food joint... Ok for the complications coming out of WRITTEN text-y reviews, rant-y, aggressive and stuff... from a competitor or a poor chump having burned his account super fast (or not...). My point is to make just a rating system, 1 to 10 or 1 to 5, whatever, on several criteria and then a global one weighing the different criteria (maybe the ET user could enter the weighing according to its own preference). Can someone sue someone because based on hundreds of reviews he got a 1 on "spread". I don t think so, not even in the US. Well am no legal expert... but I don t think so... Then in worst case, you would get one lawyer letter per broker who has some bad ranking, instead of one letter per bad review, which is a huge difference, and could be seen as a cost of business (depending on how much you can gain from the traffic increase from the rankings). Traders (and esp. newbies) need a site with this service. As far as I know does not exist anywhere so far. Could be a great asset for ET.
Oh i see.. it was moved to the "Feedback" section.. well I think it should also appear in some way in the "Brokers" sections as this is a natural question that will come to most people s mind on that section...
Well, I don't know if I am "authorised" to say this... but I have discovered EXACTLY what I was looking for and talking about on this thread and proposing ET to be done... So, to avoid to other ET members the hassle of checking themselves one by one several brokers like I did when you feel like a change or seeing if the grass is greener: it's called ForexPeaceArmy, really funny name , nonetheless a great site, with ratings weighted by each user, some brokers have hundreds of reviews, and spam is being checked for (i.e. brokers trying to prop up their own ranking...) Don't know how they cope with the trial-your-ass issue, but seems they are coping very well. It has been going on for a while to gather all these reviews.. so I guess it is easier said than done to start such a feature on a website like ET...
I understand the removal of the broker rankings by the site creators. It was fairly useless anyway given the varying experience level and reporting ability of us reviewers, along with the brokers themselves changing. Finding the right brokerage is a potentially long journey of trial and error, trading experience and frequently changing value of the brokerages themselves. A general rule I use now after years of hard knocks is to use 2 or 3 brokerages that each have a strong financial position (ie they are big and service mostly big, longer term accounts) and are not filled with overly active and leveraged day traders. You do not want to be in the same boat crammed with them during a major market disruption. So, sacrifice the very best commissions for a financially sturdy brokerage and maybe scale down the trading frequency a bit .... you can still be active.