Brain Drain

Having posted here very occasionally I've become somewhat frustrated by elements of the culture.

While the 'wild west' attitude can be attractive to some - and it has it's place - I think it would be nice to have a forum where people can engage in adult conversation without continually being interrupted by people shooting their mouth off. Looking at the history of posts on this site, it appears that in the past there was a greater percentage of high quality participants who were engaged in more of a collaborative effort. Whereas currently there are several people who generate a lot of noise - over posting and entering into conversations where they contribute no value.

I propose a system to help keep preserve the 'wild west' culture that attracts some people but which also makes it more attractive for people who can add value to contribute here.

1) Rating system: Allow people to be rated based on prior year tax return with cutoffs like: 20K, 50K, 100K, 300K, 500K, 1M of trading profits. And note if they trade their own account or OPM. I suspect that most people here are <20K and many people who are moderately successful would decline to be subject to review so I don't anticipate this would be much of an administrative burden. Cutoff could be verified just by a note from their accountant. Maybe the person's handle could be assigned a different color.

2) Create a forum with just 2 threads. One where only people with 100K annual profits could create a thread. The other where both thread creation AND comments would be limited to the 100K+ crowd.

This way the higher quality content could be more easily located and, with less harassment, your high quality participants would be more likely to stick around.

 

1) There are several of them. And there's several types of 'noise'. Gradations between 'constantly contrary' to 'endlessly repetitive'. Again, I'm not a super frequent poster on this site so I don't know all of them in advance.

2) No, I don't think that this would solve the problem for me. I hate to be a complainer and it doesn't raise the overall level of conversation.

3) The worst of them, yes. But this seems like a heavy handed approach.

I'm just giving a suggestion that would make me feel more comfortable posting on this site. But it could very well be that I'm not your target user. I'm not interested in anything offered by your sponsors. I'm interested in engaging in respectful adult conversation about my chosen profession and I find that this can occasionally happen on this site but more often than not conversations become co-opted by noisy people who hide behind their anonymity. With what I propose I think that the $0 pseudo-traders would be less comfortable interjecting nonsense into a conversation if it is visible to everyone that they are $0 traders or 'unverified'.

I feel that the signal to noise ratio here has been much higher in the past and would like to see it improved.

 

I'd like it if on a page that showed stats on a poster that I could see such data. Net worth, historical returns. It's about the money. But if you hang out enough it can be easier to separate the wheat from the chaff and see good stuff from bad.

 

Something like net worth would be extremely difficult to verify and I doubt anyone would volunteer.

But I think a dozen or two people would opt to have a single year of trading income verified - at least put into a bucket.

I have no problem telling who is worth listening to. A big clue is that they can write in complete sentences. I just find it frustrating that when I post I'll get 10% replies from real people who are on the same page and the other 90% divided between nonsense, insults, repetitive requests and phonies. While this creates a fun, playground atmosphere for some people I think it greatly inhibits honest dialogue for others. If people had a place to post where the only people allowed to respond are verified legit I think it would make a lot of sense. You'd think it would be a pretty premium place for a sponsor to advertise too.

 

You are making a logical fallacy by assuming that very profitable people can not be assholes.

By the way BMT is that way. >>>>>>>>>>>>>

 

Go start your own forum then.

 

I'd still prefer being able to distinguish a profitable asshole from an unprofitable one.

The biggest asshole I ever met was the owner of a fund I used to work at. When I quit he had his lawyers come after me for stealing client lists which he knew full well I never had access to.

Personality isn't so much the problem I have. It's all the inane gibberish.

 

By the same logic: if I don't like my car I should build my own or if I have a problem with my kid's teacher I should start my own school.

Maybe I should create my own country while I'm at it.

Totally up to the owner if he wants to take my suggestion. And, since I think it would be an extremely attractive place for a sponsor to advertise I would think it deserves consideration.

Whatever. It's just a suggestion. I'm sure he knows this market better than I do so if he thinks it's a bad idea he's probably right.

 

Well, what is the point or the difference really?

But I tell you what, the owner of this site has clearly expressed recently that he prefers quantity instead of quality, so there is your answer....