I think a good starting point is zero tolerance for personal insult, obvious disrespect, spam, or flaming. This will weed out the lowest level of detritus for starters, and we can work up from there into generally agreed upon content standards. Start by deleting posts without even thinking about it, and then move on to deleting accounts if certain members persist with invective, no matter how long they've been here or how often they post. A real reform has to be thorough and unwavering. Maybe it's time to put a strong policy statement at the top of the site for everyone to see.
no those standards are too harsh. only posts that flame without content should be deleted. posts with insults AND content should stand.agreed?
good point. Otherwise it would impinge on our Constitutional First Amendment right of Freedom of Speech.
negative IMHO, you dish out insults, you're out. That would be my policy. It's inconsistent to tolerate rudeness from some and not others. We don't need your content so bad we're willing to tolerate your rudeness.... that should be the message.
the reason i say this is i don't want to feel as though i am sitting down with grandma's sunday pinochle club every time i login. :eek:
I'm not going to advertise it here, but there is a new site very much like et with just such standards, and as a result you have a huge proportion of money managers and outstanding traders engaged in a friendly, outstanding exchange of knowledge with beginners. The requirements for posting are respect and staying reasonably on topic, and it works. They will actually track IPs to keep booted users from coming back on with a different ID. It's zero tolerance, and it works beautifully. Regarding Grandma's sunday pinochle club, what do you really come here for? It doesn't sound like you want to do business, it sounds like you want to play with the internet.
I would call direct discourse with a handful of Schwager's Market Wizards and their proteges "working", yes. Maybe this level of professionalism is shooting too high for a sponsored board with 18,000 members.