"High signal-to-noise ratio" is a moot point, just ignore the noise. What you might think is noise someone else might find useful.
I think a great feature would be the ability of the thread starter to have the ability to ban people from his thread. That way these threads would not be invaded by people who have agendas. What happened in the past was there were some great discussions that got invaded by idiots and people lost interest. Eventually people like myself stopped posting because of all the bs on here. It gets old real fast. I think it's a lot asking mods to go through every thread looking for these idiots. But the thread starter could keep things in order. I would guarantee you would have a lot more trading related threads with numerous pages. I know myself and other experienced traders would have stuck around if the problem posters in here were limited to their own threads that nobody would take part in. It's pretty sad when the top threads as far as pages are about people selling phones. Speaks volumes about the content currently on here and who posts.
Brother Baron...There's a lot of old/stagnant thinking around here. A short while back you made a giant step forward, then you listened to the whiners and went against your own better judgement. Big mistake. Move forward, improve, grow, and don't look back. BTW...I voted for "ET should get rid of features like Books/Brokers/Software Ratings and stick to forums only."
I got another idea... Hire one or maybe two moderators who are paid to moderate the board. This could cut way down on the complaints of trolls in the trading forums. And when I say troll, I mean way off topic and with continuous intent to disrupt a thread. Chit Chat, etc., isn't so important.
Chat room definitely sound cool. But it should be a really good one! Tough policy on trolling, ability to speak on the mic, maybe a feature that tracks the results of all the trades each poster calls next to the traders screen-name in the chatroom etc.
If you can't even explain your own ideas how is Baron supposed to implement them? What is "old/stagnant thinking" ?