100% agree. Elite is a great example of the fact that those who are least suited for trading have the greatest attraction to it. Heck, there are clowns stalking the "surf report" just waiting for a typo or non- real time entry post. Mental!! Only real babies and the weak use ignore.
I actually do have one request. There should be a post minimum for someone to enter chat. I don't know what the number should be, but you are going to have guys creating new aliases simply to enter chat and harass people. I know we shouldn't "have" to do this but we all know it's going to happen. There really is no reason why a poster with a zero post count should be in chat anyway since the whole idea behind chat is talking to people you know and by definition someone with a zero post count shouldn't know anyone. Make the number 100 or something reasonable or maybe even do an either or, post count or join date. Just don't let someone get angry at another poster and leave and come back in the room with 10 fake aliases to attack someone. And yes, that actually happened under the old chat and it was quite childish.
We all know ET ignore feature sucks...I've been complaining about it for several months now about how it garbles the messages via making it look like someone is talking to someone else when in reality they are talking to a different person... I've showed images of such as proof that correlates a little to what you're saying. Simply, ignore feature works if properly designed but its not properly designed here and it makes conversation less fluid as you've described. Further, I specifically remember about 15 members going to chat and then soon leaving to never return because of the poor designed ignore feature when they saw the crap occurring in the chat room along with the poor moderating. So yeah, communication is great, but not with trolls. If we had good moderating...ignore feature wouldn't even be needed. Therefore, if the moderating is like it was before via allowing it to be more like a PR or Chit Chat thread...it'll be a quick visit for me. P.S. If Baron setup the ability to make sub chat rooms or private chat rooms while logged into the main chat room...this ignore feature or better moderating conversation isn't needed because a user could just have private conversations in the chat room while the trolls don't have access to such conversations. Seriously, I would love to be able to share girlfriend nude pics without the trolls having access to it.
I learned a lot in trade rooms in the past but more power to you guys if you can actually trade amid the distraction of one.
OK, so like I said before, and maybe you were not around then, but we had all these features. We had a moderator in the room most of the time "Magna" and we had the ability to create private chats although I think that feature only allowed me and you to talk and not more then two. You always had the option of creating a separate room and you could even make that room private. We had all this. I'm assuming all this could be done again. So you can be in the main room and chat privately with other people while remaining in the main room. I believe we had a moderator that was either there full time or perhaps at random times, can't remember. The old chat we had was actually OK. It peaked when ET peaked in terms of web visits and kind of died out with the market. So I expect it to be very cyclical. One of the positive aspects of having chat is people can kind of exchange the useless banter in chat vs on threads so in a way, it kind of cleans up the forum by taking the fluff to chat.
Sounds cool, but it's not something that I'd really use...I don't feel the need to have an up-to-second chat with someone. This feature seems more practical for people who are into the teaching/guru trading side of the business. I myself am a relatively private recluse in talking about my trading. nor do I like or enjoy teaching. (You can only teach so much, but it's up to the student...to discover the trader deep within himself ...and if they inevitably fuck up, they will accuse you of being full of shit)
There is NO teaching in chat. It's like a bar. Do you go out to the bar and sit down next to someone and teach them how to trade? It's more of a fun place to let your hair down. If you could read some of the old chats we had in there you would fall out of your chair. For awhile it was actually a really good time.