"If someone questions your advertisers' integrity or value, can I assume that you will delete those posts?" Perhaps an amendment to the terms of service agreement is in order." I think it's safe to assume that those posts and threads critical of advertisers will all be removed. A thread was started last night comparing Terranova and IB and it was PROMPTLY removed. 99
I believe def handled himself well here at ET and never tried to promote IB as some other people have done for their firm. It was wrong to just freeze him without any warning. However, that action was probably caused by some of you dumb posters for starting numerous threads titled "def, why is this not working" "question for def" Because of that, you are turning ET into a support site which caused Baron to take the appropriate action. It would've been better to limit your posts to one thread. Or e-mail def or IB directly instead of posting it publicly. If you had your own stock message board, you would not want any brokerage to use it as their own support site. I believe Baron took appropriate action except for the fact that he froze def without a warning. I'm sure def would've listened to any suggestions Baron had.
I think it is very unfortunate that def is not being allowed to contribute. It is also unfortunate that IB has not seen fit to throw a few dollars Baron's way. It is his board, however, and he writes the rules. As I pay nothing to use his facility I have no right to complain about any decision he makes. All I ask for is consistency. I sincerly hope that all non-advertising vendors whose posts draw attention to their commercial ventures will be similarly restricted. I find posts that volunteer help while drawing attention to the vendor's site infinitely more offensive that def's contributions that merely responded to issues raised by other users of the board.
I would like to see IB support this board too. But, I didn't realize that advertisers had a different user agreement than members. I think Baron should post what the rules are for advertisers (we know the rules for members) including rules for deleting posts. These rules can obviously be whatever he wants, but I believe they should be public knowledge.
Very well put DufferDon - couldn't have said it better myself. It looks like it is time to start writing letters to IB's management telling them to offer board support on this board or some other board.
Regarding censorship: "From now on, I will be skeptical of Nassar, TerraNova, Bright, Weissman and others who appear to be protected from criticism" Problem solved