SURF REPORT censored for its published views on the economy and oil prices. Moderator Magna arbritrarily and capriciously censored and removed a legitimate economic opinion from the Surf Report. No violation of TOS took place,as the journal section is a place to post OPINIONS and THOUGHTS on the market/economy. This is an abuse of moderator power. Regards, Surf
Marketsurfer posted a YouTube video with strong political statements (it was not, as he claims above, simply "views on the economy and oil prices"). The link was removed and he was privately sent this note: These are moderated forums and marketsurfer can call that censorship if it suits his melodramatic purpose. Or he is welcome to take his journal to another website where he feels more comfortable and can post whatever he likes.
You guys are over-moderating this board. It would be more appropriate for those delicate and sensitive souls who are offended by comments remotely political to just stay the fuq out of Surf's journal. Surf's a contributor here, he deserves more respect than that.
Journals should only be used for documentary of trades or commentary associated with a particular trade. If not...lets no longer call it Journal Forum and let the wild west decide on the content. They should not be used for political nor religious statements regardless if the words came from the OP or came from someone else the OP is sharing about. Further, there's a designated area for such and its not like he's being prevented from speaking his mind. He's just being encourage to go express himself elsewhere at ET. Another problem is that many individuals are KNOWN (won't mention any names) via their posting history to abuse the situation when they are given an inch... They take a mile. Mark
"Journals should only be used for documentary of trades or commentary associated with a particular trade. " Did you just make that up? Because that is not the definition of a journal. I don't read Surfer's journal - but seriously, that was a little out of line. It is his journal, after all. I am finding that the moderation here is a complete farce. This isn't directed at Magna specifically, but I had a legitimate post deleted by Ivanovich a few weeks ago - it didn't violate TOS, and was on topic. What baffles me is the huge amount of bullshit that goes unmoderated here. The hate, the destroying of threads by posters who get off topic and live to start fights with everyone else, the people that have multiple aliases and everyone knows it, but they do nothing about it. You guys are focused on the wrong stuff, and the state of ET is really, really, really sad. It is not worth the time it takes to wade through all the crap anymore. But at least I know if I ever read Surfer's journal, I will not be exposed to that YouTube video.
Here's the definition of Journal by ET management...there own words. The place for keeping a daily journal of wins, losses, and anything else related to your quest of becoming a better trader. I don't see Political & Religious commentary as part of the above definition although I'm sure someone more clever than me can show that such can be applied. Thus, if we are going to change the definition...others should be allowed to do the same in their journals without others complaining about the views being expressed in that journal (political, religious, racist and many other stuff we see in chat chat itself). Other than that...I strongly agree with every thing else you say and I'm on record here in feedback about such too. In fact, I just sent Joe (ET management) a pm about such involving other threads here in feedback. Yet, to be fair, many are complaining NOTHING is being done while many are complaining there's too much CENSORING. The above implies that moderating isn't the same across the different sections at ET and that's mainly due to how Baron has such organized. Mark
In sports, the best referees/umpires are usually considered as those who are invisible. They don't overly affect the game or draw attention to themselves. That does not seem to be the case with some of the moderation here. I saw a moderator who absolutely abused their role, deleting posts from others or even threatening to ban posters who constantly contradicted their own opinions. A moderator threatened to ban a poster if the poster continued criticizing another poster (who himself was rather clueless). A few moderators constantly draw attention to themselves by their actions (as evidenced by some of the reactionary threads). Moderation should be done with a light hand, not done every time a moderator decides they know better than the OP.
If we remove foul language some cry "over-moderating". If we remove off-topic posts some cry "over-moderating". If we remove personal attacks some cry "over-moderating". If we re-locate a post to the proper forum some cry "over-moderating". Of course if it's your thread and people are abusive or off-topic and we don't attend to it within the first 60 seconds then we are "under-moderating" and not doing our jobs. Over the years Marketsurfer has asked me to remove many, many posts from his journal and I guess in those cases I wasn't over-moderating or censoring... While everything may affect trading (from politics to religion to sex to love to family to climate to race to age to gender to geography etc. etc.) there are 2 particular areas that hold the most passion and partisanship, those being Politics and Religion. Years ago we had no separate forum for those discussions which often turned extremely vitriolic and regularly polluted trading threads. Then after running a separate Politics and Religion forum for awhile we tried eliminating it because many complained about the level of discourse there and the type of people it attacted to ET. That experiment failed because without those forums the same toxic, rancorous discussions transferred over to trading threads ruining countless in the process. People feel very strongly about their Politics and their Religion, and that's why those discussions are best kept in designated forums. Marketsurfer was asked to keep such posts in the proper location that was setup for just that. No one was stopping him from posting in the Politics and Religion forum. Nevertheless he cried fowl, he cried censorship. Hughb cries over-moderation. Regardless, the Journals Forum is not going to turn into political (or religious) discussions as they always get out of hand due to the passion of the parties involved. We've tried it multiple times, that approach fails, simple as that. Post your Politics or Religion in the proper forum or it will be over-moderated...