Broker and software ratings

I think there should be a limit of no more than 2 ratings per user per broker. Looking at TransactFutures for example, you'll see maybe 1/3 or more of the ratings, over 20 of them, by ML Quant and trader123. I think it distorts the ratings.

 

Good point.

 

Just went through the IB reviews (first 60-70 or so)... guys like kiwi trader, moarla, dave74, etc have 4-5 reviews each, maybe 10 each if I read all 390 reviews... which really skews any kind of impartial reviews. What's the point of having the section if one can vote as many times as he wants? How difficult is it to implement a cap on ratings? Say 2 per person

 

there needs to be an allowance if the provider goes thru a bad patch and a user
posts a new review, then after a fix, the user posts again or goes away and returns
for instance or a new and improved version comes out and users want to post

 

Yeah, this is a tricky one. It's not like reviewing a book that remains unchanged once it has been published.

Times change, companies change, their software/platform changes.

eBay and other services have mechanisms for weighting more recent reviews higher than older ones. That's one option.

Grouping the ratings by year is another option. People can then see how companies have improved/declined over the years. The headline ratings displayed to the user could be for the most recent year.

In any case, the whole ColdFusion application could be ported to PHP and at the same time take the opportunity to improve the functionality.

Symfony or Code Igniter are good choices for the PHP framework to make the job easier. If you have to support PHP4 and/or MySQL 4, then CakePHP.

Coincidentally, I've recently ported a bunch of ColdFusion fusebox applications running on MS Access no less over to PHP/MySQL using the afore mentioned CakePHP. It's not that painful and you then no longer have to worry about running a ColdFusion server which is a big plus.

 

Yeah, maybe someone should talk to Tim Zagat about doing something here.

 

Start with kiwi_trader's multiple reviews of IB - every time some posts a negative review he has to counter with a positive and brings into question the accuracy of the positive reviews if they are only used to counter negative ones.

 

LOL, the last FIVE bad reviews for ThinkorSwim done by a guy named elevometer or something...grudge? Really now, worthless to have that section, its misleading to anyone that reads it...