Buy, what do you mean? When someone ask's a honest question from us only to get slammed by people we don't know from Father Adam, were losing Barron's ideals of creating a informative site where newbies can get information from people that might be doing things better than they are. What is achieved by allowing Bashing Bob free access to the forums, its like listening to Alex Jones go crazy when asked anything. If the goal is to create a Gray Market Forum vs Nasdaq or NYSE style Exchange of Ideas, their doing a great job of leading us there! What value are Trolls bringing here, they don't help newbies, they don't answer posts in respectful manners(99% of their posts don't answer, their just agitation machines!),often Trolls act like their being put upon a heavy burden by someone asking a basic question. Why, they think they are the "Wolf of Wall Street" except how do we know their not hanging by a thread, ready to crumble in to financial oblivion? The "Ignore Button" has helped me but I see others trying to answer trolls on forums, I think the poor Trader not hitting the "Ignore Button" is in hope the Troll might hand him the proverbial carrot he dangles before the tired old mule.
Just bypass the postings and posters that you aren't interested in. As a percentage of overall content, the actual troll content is minute. However, with a block feature, you will see "perceived" troll content rise substantially.
RabidTrader, No sweat now and apology accepted. Others that have done the same...they continue and then follow you around to troll you or pretend they're having a conversation with you via replying to your messages when you're talking to someone else and have them on ignore. I just hope we don't have to wait several years for the new "self-moderating" feature like we had to wait many years for a good ignore feature that we now have. Also, don't forget, if you meet others that you like...you can always keep your content in the private messaging section so that those you do not like will not have access to any of your content. For example, one of the best TA discussions currently is in the private messaging section...the trolls do not have access to it. Unfortunately, others that are not trolling...do not have access to the content because its only being shared between a handful of members. My point is this, if you see a discussion of value at this forum and you want to reply to someone but don't want the trolls having access to your information...just click on the ET member profile and reply to the member via private messaging. The other great feature about the private message section...Baron has set it up so that up to 50 members can participate in the conversation. That's plenty to have a good troll free talk.
lol ur so not an attention whore. And with such awesome color as your, " I bought oil stocks at the absolute low!"
How unfortunate. I gotta say, I have always supported ET in the past as I find it to be the best trading forum out there, but I realize more and more every day that those days have passed. The best traders unfortunately are the ones who keep the quietest, and are basically mostly on here just to mine for info. And if the best discussions are now being moved to PM's, well, that certainly negates the idea behind a public trading forum.
True and that's exactly what ET is slowly becoming... Its a public trading forum and due to traders not having the ability to moderate one's own thread, members are entering the private message section for discussions that can not be penetrated by the trolls. Yet, I don't think top traders are here to mine for info...maybe you meant to say newbies come here to mine for info ? I think there are traders out there that truly want to share but at the same time...they don't want trolls having access to that content. The only solution is to have private conversation.
I'll tell you why I think this. Every now and then, I see a post by a member whose name I don't recognize, but the post is so incredibly involved, that it can only mean that the poster does truly know what he is talking about. The posts are usually about something very complicated, like some convoluted platform issue, or perhaps something to do with arbitrage or difficult stuff with option chains, etc. (I'm even making some of this stuff up because I didn't even know what it was at the time so not understanding it made difficult to remember and hence provide a concrete example now.) But my point is that it would be by a poster who had registered years ago, had less than 100 posts, and yet showed a great deal of technical or theoretical mastery with his answer. Perhaps its someone who doesn't log in often, or perhaps, as is my hunch, they just sit quietly in the background waiting for something of value to come along. By the way, you did see Baron's reply to the issue of self moderation here, right? Given that its such an important issue now, I would figure that he could have started a thread himself about it to keep us all better informed. http://www.elitetrader.com/et/index.php?threads/ignored-members.294783/page-2#post-4190141
...your conspiracy theories are funny. it's just a silly forum. -- don't become obsessed with it, or think too hard about it.