Yes..... I do notice the high number of Arab/Israeli; Dem/Repub; Black/White childish, racial, vulgar arguments and attacks that go on there. Since there are so many of them, it must mean that it is a good thing and worthwhile on a trading site lol... Doesn't it bother you that you notice that a majority of the visitors to EliteTRADER want a forum to discuss those kind of topics (which are not trade related).? . Isn't it true that if you accidently banned 7 or 8 people, chit chat postings would drop by over 50%? I love ET and you do a great job but you got to see the humor in defending Chit Chat because the "majority" want it (what majority lol). It seems you are implying that if you got rid of chit chat, most of the people here would leave? Now I do not mind chit chat because I can choose to ignore it, but it is still puzzling why it even exists on a site dedicated to trading? Anyway, ignore me, I am killing time waiting for options to expire tomorrow..... lol
It has been pointed out before that chit chat exists for a reason. It wasn't there to start with. Trading threads can easily deteriorate into OT discussions without a dedicated chit chat section for those that are desperate to get to know their ET peers better in a non-trading context. From a commercial point of view, it is desireable to make ET as "sticky" as possible and therefore having an outlet for intermittent non-trading banter right on ET makes financial sense rather than encouraging ET members to go elsewhere for that purpose. On the matter of whether the majority want chit chat or not, it might behoove you to review the recently conducted poll and discussions on the matter. Moooo.
This has been discussed before and Chit Chat was closed for sometime in 2004. The result was all the discussion spilled over in to other forums. Some Chit Chat regulars had major withdrawal symptoms. You can go back and search for the heated discussion on it. Then after a huge hue and cry. After few weeks it was again opened and the inhabitants of Chit Chat had agreed that they will no more have these kind of racist and vipurative discussions and police themselves. Some agreed to moderate it. Looks like that system broke down. Personally I have always believed it should be closed.
The diseased content of the chit-chat forum is much like nuclear waste, because of its extreme toxicity and because it cannot be contained. It leaks into other forums and undermines serious attempts to discuss topics of interest to traders. I recently started a Feedback forum thread about ET policies which encourage and reward abusive behavour, and tend to undermine serious discussion of topics of interest to traders. The thread was immediately overwhelmed by a stream of abusive postings. This escalated to the point of a criminally harassing threat of physical violence and incitement of others to physical violence, which was deleted. The moderators deleted only a few of the worst postings, over an over again, but they were always replaced by more abuse from the same people, much of which was never deleted. The mods and Baron did nothing of consequence to protect the discussion from a deliberate campaign of disruption. Baron waited until the thread was buried under a mountain of abuse, and then used the abusive behavour as a reason for closing the thread. The fact that it was not even possible to have a serious discussion, about the problem of abusive behavour undermining serious discussions, is an indicator of the depths to which ET is sinking. If a majority of site visitors don't want to talk about trading, but do want to focus on hatreds and abusive behavour instead, will Baron adhere to his democratic ideals, and transform the site from a trader's website into a hater's website? This isn't outlandish as it sounds. This transformation is, in fact, gradually taking place. People who are truly elite traders, like acrary, want less and less to do with ET.
I did not engage in flaming, vulgarity, or threats. I am complaining about those and other behavours which interfere with serious discussions of interest to traders. I posted examples of those behavours, but this was not the same thing as engaging in them.