Perhaps it's because for some on this thread this site seems to be their L-I-F-E Did you notice that most of the posts in this thread are put up by the low hanging fruit TA crowd? Nicely correlates with my belief of their life quality.
So...now I am a troll and followed you here? Or perhaps I read different threads, came across your post and simply think you are being paranoid. You like the ignore feature ...that is awesome...why did you then waste many lines of writing just to let us know? It is posts like this that attract others to take the piss out on you when they have a bit of leasure time. You TA people really are a wining gay bunch. Seriously...grow some nuts.
I don't think thread starters will be too happy if readers had more control of the thread than the thread starter if that's what you meant. Such would push content into the private messaging section. The key to remember is that this forum belongs to Baron...its driven by sponsorship. Its income to him. Something that threatens that income level...Baron makes changes. Essentially he's a one person tyrant and there's many things he does that we like and don't like...nothing is perfect. He's not a stupid person. He knows whom are problematic and when he doesn't know...he soon finds out via the level of complaints sent his way via the "report" button, emails or private messaging. I've seen many times in the past, trouble makers and trolls gets a few warnings before they get that infamous BAN. Simply, Baron in many ways manipulates the information flow at his forum by warnings, BANs, deletions, editing and such through the moderators actions or his own actions. That's the way it has been since this forum started...tyranny of the minority. It doesn't matter what content is posted at this forum. In theory, this forum owns the content regardless where its posted. Baron the tyrant can choose to keep the content, archive it or delete it. I remember when he once did a prune process and some content was deleted because of the age of the content. Some members complained about certain content and he undid the deletion. Yet other content there was no complaints although the content was useful...they remained deleted. The journal threads are a very clever section of this forum. It gets special policing. Its where members can post without fear of trolling. Trolls that enter someone's journal for the purpose to disrupt, harass and such...they are removed from the journal and BANNED. Its really that simple in the journal section. My point is this, I've seen members intentionally start threads in the journal section to journal their thoughts about trading while at the same time to sucker in the trolls for removal. I only say such because I saw a discussion by members about doing such down in the Chit Chat section because they feel when trolls show up elsewhere...moderators are too hesitant to get involved whereas the journal threads are different...the hammer quickly comes down in the journal section when the trolls get lost and find themselves in the journals. That tactic I don't like (suckering the trolls out of their caves so that they can be killed with an arrow like some mystical beast) but that's what some members did in the past and probably will do again without doubt. Simply, look at the ES Journal by TA traders posting trades in real-time. There's no trolling there in that journal about real-time trading of the Emini ES futures...traders that use TA. Just imagine if those same users of that journal decided to express their TA experience, opinions with their real-time trades in that ES Journal instead of debating with trolls in other threads... The trolls can not go there in the journal thread and do what they've been doing in the other TA debated threads outside of the journal threads. If they did start the crap in the ES Journal...they're banned...no warnings. Another example of off-limit areas that trolls can't enter...take a look at the longest TA discussion, biggest TA thread called The ACD Method. Its in the TA section and not in the journal section. Its a TA thread with +1 million views and +10 thousand TA replies with a ton of useful content. Yet, it behaves like a journal by the readers (not the thread starter). More importantly, one of the readers that seems to control the direction of that thread is a well respected ET member that personally knows Baron... You don't see any trolling in that thread too. Trolls just know for some reason not to take their TA crap into the most well known TA discussion at this forum. That tells me that some trolls with memberships a few years here are actually members from years before that have created a new identity or been banned in the past because only an old time member will know about the relationship of Maverick (reader and user of The ACD Method thread) with Baron (ET owner). Even marketsurfer himself doesn't enter The ACD Method thread with his debates about TA nor do other trolls. Seriously, think about this carefully, that is the biggest and most viewed TA thread at this forum and its virtually troll free. I just love the irony involving that thread. Instead of members stop posting, I would rather see them just put trouble makers and trolls on their ignore list instead of engaging in further conversation with those people. The primary purpose of a troll is to disrupt even if the conversation race cars in another thread...the trolls will show up and try to hijack the thread and change the topic to a controversial topic that seem to have trigger their psychotic posting behavior. Thus, the ignore feature allows the member to continue using the forum and allows the trolls to continue using the forum...one doesn't see the other but everybody is happy because they still have a voice. Its not a perfect solution but it does keep the noise level down and shows without a doubt whom are the problematic members based via their continue behavior regardless if the behavior bothers others or doesn't bother others. I'm curious to see if the new private messaging system here push members more into the private messaging system if they rather use such instead of using the ignore button. That in itself can become problematic for Baron because of the sponsorship. Baron wants to see active members be active in the public area of the forum instead of the private area of the forum. Simply, its possible he could create a situation where useful content, viewership, bandwidth begins to decrease resulting in being less attractive to the sponsors while useful content, viewership increases in the private messaging area. Like I said before, Baron (the minority tyrant) will do something if money in his wallet is being taken out by a select few problematic members behavior. In fact, I've never seen him not do something about it.
Another user mentioned it was desirable to have multiple selectable filters but I can't find the post to quote it. Essentially it would enable following and reading the posts of someone who had demonstrated skill in a specific area where we wouldn't want to include their name in the list of trolls we're blocking but yet that same member has a strong tendency to rant and rave in other sections of the forum where we're not interested in reading their opinions. Volpunter is a good model that demonstrates how this type of selectable filter would enable engaging him in the threads where he posts productive content while simultaneously ignoring him within other sections of the forum. I'm aware the extra switches required to implement something like this tend to slow down processing and complicate the code base to where it's difficult to track down bugs and add other new features but I believe this is an important enough enhancement that it's worth considering because it increases intelligent discussion that otherwise is unlikely to occur due to the workarounds required to peek at for instance Volpunter's posts in other areas of the forum. Essentially I have to log out to do it and then I'm reading everyone's posts which I don't want to do or I have to remember which users to temporarily unblock when I'm reading a thread where I don't want to miss their contributions to the discussion.
If it causes a decrease in public posting it's a problem but it could be mitigated by charging an outrageous membership fee to access that feature. If the quality of public posting increases to the point it can attract members willing to pay dearly for group based private threads along the lines of what Bloomberg might already offer then someday Baron would have an extremely profitable business and we would have a community which constantly supplemented our trading efforts with new thoughts, ideas and news.
Yeah...some sites like Bloomberg uses that private threads and chat feature. I didn't even know they had such until one day several institutional trading firms and hedge funds banned their employees from using that private section of bloomberg because trading tactics were being discussed in real-time and acted upon in real-time and many other conversations with other institutional traders around the world. Last year, I remember once on CNBC, the journalist was on the floor and notice a trader communicating to someone on his hand held mobile device...the journalist said... Is that a chat room ? The trader responded...Yes, its bloomberg. I think its funny because many here say chat rooms are useless while many professional traders use them but privately with others. Later, many institutions were looking into how their traders were communicating with others on twitter. Some have even banned their traders from using twitter during trading hours. Seems useful. Yet, Baron took in some considerations by members and ignored others when he recreated ET website forum and added new features. I do know the selection filter was mentioned by other members to him several times prior to the new website. Maybe the reason why he didn't implement it was that it was to difficult to code in to this forum current format. I'm now curious if any other trading forum or non trading forum uses such a feature.
I'm not aware of any but multiple selectable ignore lists for different sections of the forum would increase both the quality and quantity of postings. Using heypa as an example. I would love to follow his posts and participate in discussions with him but I would have to manually filter out his posts in the politics and religion sections and this is an impossible task for me to manage because I've tried this with multiple similarly valuable posters and the volume of their P&R posts that don't interest me dilute the Alert feature which tells me when something I'm interested in has been posted.
You know though, I have to also state that what I see in the ES thread is that certain posts aren't replied to. I specifically remember some comments addressed to Eddiemora that he had no interest in replying to and so he didn't. And what was the result? There was no follow up.. the comment and the poster to said it went away. I'm a bit with @i960 in that letting the viewer do their own self moderating is the best. In every single thread that explodes, the trolls are always fed, they are always responded to. Not once have I seen a member who is calling someone else a troll not engage that troll. In the ES thread, you see a few individuals who communicate with each other and completely disregard comments from others. So I do believe that all the complaints from those who want to share and cannot because of trolls are just being a little too thin skinned. Its so much faster to skip over a marketsurfer post than to reply to him. His mind is made up... why bother to engage him about TA? Someone who tries to convince MS of something has exactly the same issues as MS himself when he invades every TA thread. Now I do hope this self moderating thread feature is enacted because I want to see what sorts of good threads can be started by those who claim to want to share but cannot because of the troll issue, but I can't help but think that any expert trader, who has the right mindset, wouldn't get so hot and bothered about some jackass in his thread.
Yes, if someone bothers you and you have "no interest" in replying to them...the result is that there's no follow up because the person that posted the comment then knows you have "no interest" in a conversation. Simply, you're ignoring that person even if you don't have that person on your ignore list. Essentially, there are two ways to ignore someone...put them on your ignore list or don't reply back to them...same result as you noted...they eventually go away. The problem is that I don't think folks have the intentions of being a troll. I think that's why some folks are responded to. Yet, after some replies you start noticing the personal attacks, name calling...its time to either stop replying to that person or put them on ignore. Not replying or using the ignore button are the same in my opinion. Yet, not replying implies you still see their messages whereas the ignore button takes away that noise. Also, there's no need to try to convince or prove anything to anyone because as you noted...it won't make a difference. The issue is that not everybody knows that about some members and its a ton of noise until they discover that about someone. Just the same, not everybody knows whom are trolling...takes a lot of reading through the noise or crap to discover that too. That's the problem, many are engaging the trolls in many conversations until they too discover this is a problematic member...by that time...threads have been hijack, some folks harassed and so on. I myself will engage anyone until the noise level gets too high...that's when I then just put them on ignore to take that noise away. Baron (ET owner) made a ignore button to help take the noise away in hopes that members will not leave and not encourage the noise via responding to anyone the view as problematic. I see folks say why put them on ignore when you can just "not reply" or you can just "skip over their message posts". I really do not see any difference...both are ignoring while one you obviously can view the messages (the noise) while not replying. Why put yourself in the position where you can just "skip over their message posts" when you can just put them on your "ignore list". Anyways, every person I have seen say such at this forum...they are themselves engaging someone else that's causing them problems that's not the same person that's causing you problems. Therefore, they themselves are not as cool headed while telling others to be cool headed about someone else. The other issue about self-moderating threads...my perspective its not to prevent those on my ignore list from bothering me considering I no longer have any interaction with them. The issue is to prevent the trolls from harassing others participating in your thread because I guarantee you that not everyone is "cool headed". Trolls will bother others in your thread because those other members may not know someone is problematic. As for sharing...people share...don't misunderstand that. I see it being done in the public and private area of this forum. The issue is that "some" people have decided to spend most of their time in the private messaging while ignoring the trolls in the public area by not replying as you noted or by using the ignore button or by having conversations outside of ET. That's a shame because that's lost content that others may want to have access too and have not been a problematic member. The sooner Baron setup the self-moderating feature...I'm confident there will be more sharing and that's more money in Baron's pocket because sponsors will be more attracted to Elitetrader.com P.S. Here's an example, there's a recent thread that caught my interest here in the feedback section @ http://www.elitetrader.com/et/index.php?threads/interesting-messenger-app-for-traders.294995/ involving the CME messenger app. There's currently no trolling. Now just imagine if I started posting more in that thread and some troll shows up to hijack and turn it into a TA debate. That's why I have trolls on ignore so that I take away their power to hijack a thread via not responding to them. As you stated yourself, they'll just eventually go away.