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My policy for my own conduct about stocks is as follows.
I'm into stocks. Unlike at my previous position, I'm going to talk about them now and then. But I will never recommend buying or selling. And if I mention my own buys or sells (which won't be very often), I'll include the disclaimer about my position not even remotely making me the sharpest spoon in the knife drawer when it comes to the market.
Now to the part that addresses appropriate buys and sells for a person who arguably can exert some control over discussions if I were so inclined:
1. I will not buy or sell OTCBB stocks. Only Listed or Nasdaq. Not only have BB's not been my style for a few years, it is in the BB arena where allegations of "He's allowing negative opinions because he's short the stock" are most likely to happen. I won't comment on why that is, but I'll say that I've heard that allegation frequently and it's always been regarding BB stocks. Often with statements about there being "proof", which would be impossible. You can't have something that doesn't exist. Let me also go on record here saying that I have never shorted a BB stock intentionally and never will.
2. I will, from time to time, buy or sell (even short) Listed and Nasdaq stocks that are discussed here. For a while, I had to trade only non-tech stocks, which resulted in me spending the better part of a year alternating between being long and short Sempra Energy. If you want to check out boring trading, try only trading SRE sometime. <yawn> I actually got really good at it, but it's still boring.
3. If I find that I am dealing with a deletion from a thread about a stock I currently have a long or short position in, I'm emailing it to Matt and making it his call. That shouldn't happen very often, if ever.
4. The only stocks I've intentionally shorted in the past year have been SRE and THDO. I'm currently long a bit of THDO, btw. Note how it's been dead money for a while. <g>
My unintentional short happened a few years ago with a BB stock. It's a long story I might tell sometime, but suffice it to say I tried to sell my position, couldn't get a reported fill, canceled the order, re-entered it at a different price later, and found at the end of the day both sells had filled, leaving me short the stock and forced to cover at market the next day at the highest price it ever reached. It was also the last trade I did at that brokerage.
So, basically, I'm keenly aware of and diligent about ensuring there can be no appearance of conflict of interest should my trading records ever become public.
And nobody wants to see them for the past couple of years. Too depressing.
As Ops Manager, this isn't all my call, but I'm going to express my opinion and see if you agree or disagree.
If the call were all mine, the minute we go with a subscription model, no subscribers (including everyone who is "grandfathered in" prior to that) will see ads unless they click a very small "ads" link we keep on the Favorites and Discussion pages. That link would take them to an organized page of ads. Brokers, newsletters, retailers, all grouped together. But aside from that, they never see an ad. Never. And even an acquiring company can't change that. It's a condition of acquisition (although, for some odd reason, I'm not overly keen on the notion of acquisition, either).
Until that time, everyone sees whatever ads non-subscribers will be seeing under the subscription model. But they go "poof" if/when we start charging for the extra features or ad-free viewing.
And, personally, for the version of the site that will display ads, I prefer the text within messages (different font and color) rather than banners. I despise banners. I never look at them. They also take up too much bandwidth, and if they're being served up by another site, they expose us to outages when the ad-sites' servers crash.
I know you gotta come up with the money to pay my exhorbitant salary, so I know ads or subscriptions are inevitable. Just be gentle.
Agree or disagree?
Bob
I'll withhold my opinion on the idea of 5 deletes and you're out because it's not something I've worked with in the past, and I'd rather see what others think. I have an opinion, but I'll reserve it for now.
I'll withhold my opinion on the idea of 5 deletes and you're out because it's not something I've worked with in the past, and I'd rather see what others think. I have an opinion, but I'll reserve it for now.
It was off-topic, as were posts of mine that were removed the same day from the same thread. I haven't read a lot of the thread, so if off-topic is the norm there, I'd say the deletion is questionable. Otherwise, I agree with it. Nothing offensive in it. Just off-topic, same as mine.
Bob
I have an idea. Instead of deleting posts, when a person clics on that message it pops up but quickly a
star ship shows up, launches a volley of photon torpedos at it, and the message explodes.
Sounds like a job for cOUSIN SHORTY.
Who, btw, has one of the most hilarious websites out there. I strongly recommend not drinking anything while reading. I believe the count stands at 3 right now. 3 times that I've sprayed coffee at my monitor while reading something he wrote. As a matter of fact, the cover still isn't on my keyboard from the last time I had to take it apart to dry out all the little bits and pieces.
If I can ever edit my profile, I'll include a link to his site in it. I think it should be required reading.
It's on the top-3 list I just sent to the main (and only -- until we can all get at the database) programmer and I expect he'll be letting me know shortly whether that needs to be put off for a bit or if he can give me an expected completion date.
4 posts were just deleted from this thread within the past few minutes.
Just as an FYI thing, I want everyone to know that I personally reviewed each of those posts and agree with their deletions.
Regards,
iHub Admin (Bob)
Well stated, Matt, on a number of counts, which I'll reply to individually.
Chairs temporarily, instantly removing those "bad posts" for Admin review.
Exactly. Being a devout Missourian, though, I have no problem with people not taking your or my word for it. I'll prove it by actions, like a good Missourian.
And if a Chairman is being unfair about deletions, he can be replaced. This has happened already here.
Just happened for the first time for me today. And until we're all on the same page about the deletions, I'll be pretty quick on that trigger. It's a temporary thing anyway.
There is no way, one Admin can manage a site with 200,000+ posters.
Lemme tell everyone a little story.
Back in 98/99 when the posting activity on Silicon Investor was well over 20k posts per day, Jill and I, who are both extremely fast typists and very efficient workers, were each literally working in excess of 80 hours per week. We were working 7 days a week, days and evenings, and the best we could do was try not to fall further than 2 days behind.
The load finally eased to a tolerable level (60-70 hours per week by myself when she moved to doing PR work) and we stayed caught up when a complete customer support department started shouldering much of the burden.
I can do 60 hours a week standing on my head. It's nothing. I have no desire to get back to the bad ol' days of 80+ hours though. Homey ain't playin' that.
So, to me, if we all make sure the CoB concept works, it accomplishes the following for the community:
1. Posts that should be deleted are deleted immediately, so if your home phone number is posted, it's not likely going to be read by a few thousand people.
2. As the concept and its implementation evolve, threads (especially non-stock ones) will be able to have a lot more control over the style of content they have. One thread could require lace doilies on the arms of the couch and white gloves while another thread just warns you not to step on the broken beer bottles on the floor. Extreme examples, but my point is made...
3. IH Admin (Bob) gets plenty of time for much-needed beauty sleep and R&R and is, as a result, a kindler, gentler Bob. If I don't get my 5 hours per night and lots of time to go play, I get a bit surly.
4. I have a lot more time available to screw up the database and interface so everyone will know I'm thinking about them.
And there is no way that if you hired 10 Admins that everything would be done fairly, because of varying opinons of each Admin.
I'm a bit surprised you know that, but I guess it's intuitive. And correct. Jill and I are clones. There was no "different person" problem with us. That isn't always the case though. It's definitely best to only have one person making those final calls in the interest of some semblance of consistency.
He just has to stay on top of the posts that get deleted (roughly 2% of all posts) and monitor Chairman.
2.8% right now, which I consider too high, but I also know that a lot of them recently have been because of dupes, and my own off-topic conversation with someone in another thread. My goal is 0.5%. And if we can get the timeout/duping problem solved, that'll go a long ways. We've been below 1% on the deletions since Thursday, even counting the dupes.
With that, I'll now slowly fade away and leave this ship up to Captain Bob...
Yes, it's time for your baby to get out on its own. We'll take good care of 'er, and you're welcome to look in from time to time. We might even call you on your birthdays and Father's Day. <g>
Hi, Dr. Bluzak.
I saw which board you just started up here. If you're the person with whom I spoke on another site about doing just that, all I need say is "Show us how it's done."
Even if you're not that person, welcome aboard and I'm looking forward to pointing to your board whenever I have to say "This is how it needs to be done."
And did Vendit's answer on the email question help?
Bob
I just restored your most recent post that was deleted. Can you steer me to the other?
Also, I am temporarily chairman of that board until the previous chairman and I have a little talk about what should and shouldn't be deleted.
Unfair/inappropriate deletions not only reflect poorly on the site and the thread, they reflect *very* poorly on the stock because it tarnishes the reputation of the company and the shareholders if negatives are to be "buried".
It's my hope that I'll be able to deal with chairpeople on a one-on-one basis as needed rather than make them all do a bunch of reading about the guidelines. One thing that would really help is for experienced moderators from other sites to set good examples.
Thanks for bringing this one to my attention, and if you have the link handy to the other post, I'll check into it as well.
Regards,
IH Admin (Bob)
Thanks, Island.
A part of me will always be "SI Bob". I have issues with InfoSpace that I'd best keep my mouth shut about, but I don't have a problem with Silicon Investor itself. Management, yes. But not the site and what it stands/stood for.
One of the things I told Riva the other day (but it didn't make print -- she had to get pretty selective in the interest of space) is that I still consider Silicon Investor "my baby" just as much as I'm sure Brad and Jeff Dryer and Jill McKinney still do. And that it really breaks my heart to see what's been happening for a couple of years. I don't wear any of my many SI t-shirts anymore mostly because it really depresses me.
3 years ago, the 4 of us had the world by the tail. Through Jeff's vision and Brad's coding and understanding of community, and mine and Jill's involvement with our community, we really had something. We had a real world-beater.
Geez, those were heady days!
The excitement I feel about this place right now is the first time I've felt this kind of excitement in a couple of years. Fun times again. :)
I definitely recognize a lot of the names I'm seeing here. Levy's definitely familiar to me. As is Wayne R, and many others.
Matt and I both know the last thing we want to do is let you guys down. Sooooo..... Let's not.
Does anyone have any questions about the future direction of the site or what you do or don't want to see on it?
I still think we need a nice greenish/brownish online brokerage ad taking up some space at the top of the screen. With flashing yellow letters.
I don't want to give any timelines for anything until I've got enough of a handle on everything to give meaningful and realistic estimates. However, I was very pleased with how quickly I got real boot abilities. A lot of the initial changes will be to make my job easier, and there won't be a LOT of changes of any kind until *all* of us (Matt, myself, and the programmers) have access to the database and source code, which should be early May. Until then our access is limited; just not widely so.
But if you see anything that you think is even more urgent than my tools, definitely let me know.
Hey, Sarkie! You've been off-planet a long time!
Profiles: Yes, we can do them, but the code for that is really buggy right now. It won't be until May that more than one of us can get at the system to make changes, so that problem will have to wait until then as we focus right now on the biggies.
Speaking of biggies, some of you will get a kick out of this:
I found out rather suddenly last night that when you boot someone, it has absolutely no impact until they log out. They can keep posting, as long as they don't log out.
I'd booted one person (temporarily) and they were still posting.
So..... McGeeker came up with a solution.
I wrote this person a PM with a link that said "Here's what I think of you". And gave an innocuous link that included "heresyou.htm" in it.
When they went there, there was another link that said "Here's your picture", and behind it was an href to IH's logout URL so when they clicked it, they'd be logged out. Worked like a charm.
I'm happy to say that booting works realtime as of about an hour ago.
Actually, that would've been the case if a particular stock hadn't driven off the cliff without leaving skidmarks.
Do you think Florida is ready for a "Boogerville"?
BTW, even though most of the people out here don't know what in tarnation that internet thing is, enough of them do that I'm hearing them refer to our town as "Boogerville" now and then.
Thanks, levy!
BTW, you're off the hook on the boat bet. I know you were sweating bullets worried that stock would get to $500 and you'd have to make good on it. <g>
"Based on my experiences trying to fill Bob's shoes, I have learned that I am not up to par in handling user issues."
What? Did you think I wore clown shoes because they look funny?
That satire link is a riot!!!
First, full disclosure: I have INTC in my wife's IRA at $33.06. Like I've said before, I'm not the sharpest knife in the investing drawer.
Speaking from the perspective of a "power geek", and one who tends to keep the bleeding edge of technology in his office, and who is old enough to have learned the hard way to run away from anything that smacked even slightly of "incompatibility", I was a diehard INTC CPU man until my latest upgrade.
AMD smoked what was available from INTC at the time in performance and especially price, so I finally went with AMD. And I haven't regretted it. My personal machine is still INTC, but my daughter's AMD (700, if I remember right) with IBM 100mhz 70-gig hard drive absolutely TROUNCES my Pentium 500 with 33mhz hard drive. She's only got 256M of ram (to my 512M) but the machine is a screamer. Of course, the hard drive is a huge factor in that. But even when the hard drive isn't a factor, she's much faster.
I don't doubt that a lot of similar geeks have finally started to consider AMD not only a viable option, but a very desirable one.
I used to think there would always be an INTC but not always an AMD. Now I think they're both here to stay.
As it currently stands, you need to manually go back to the first unread message. If the new message count is greater than 50, you'll need to click the "Previous 50" link and scroll that one. I just look for the first one that my browser shows in the color that means I haven't clicked it yet.
This isn't a permanent condition, but I'm not going to put a timeline on the change. It's one of a handful I consider first-level priorities, though, since there are already some very active threads here. It's not so bad if a thread only has a dozen or fewer new posts, but it's a pain if there're many more.
LOL!
Yep. That was the question. I figured Stockwell would be along anytime to provide an answer.
Bob was hired to oversee the 'enforcement" of the site and he claims that he will be impartial,
And to see to it that this is a quality site, among other things.
And it got very lacking in that regard after the close today.
That's quite enough. It's obvious your intent here is nothing more than disruption. Take it elsewhere.
Did you look at the post to which he was replying? I left it there so you could.
Thanks. Got it.
Bob
Correct. Provided the header and the resulting thread aren't just for advertising.
that Id was not created by janice shell. i know her IP and that one was not made by here.
Would you mind telling me how it is that you can see the IP address from which that account was created?
Please send it to me at mailto:bobz@investorshub.com since your ability to reply to me here won't be working for a few days.
Regards,
IH Admin (Bob)
PS. As an aside to the people out there who I've heard had some pool going, I know most of you just lost.
Okay, that's enough Joe. I don't appreciate you using this thread as a place to launch into pre-emptive personal attacks on someone you're afraid might show up here.
If she shows up, deal with her then. If she breaks the rules, I'll deal with her.
But I have no intention of blocking anyone's access solely based on what other people tell me they're like on other sites. If they come here, it's a clean slate.
Spam? Where?
Also, would someone volunteer to start a thread for pointing out the spammers? I'll bookmark it and check it. While the CoB concept works great for getting rid of spam in individual threads, I really need to know who's spamming, as their posts sometimes won't get deleted otherwise.
Yes, but not as quickly yet. First, we have to come out of beta so we can get better positioned to implement good ideas quickly.
There might be some more confusion in terminology.
When I say I'm not going to allow those kinds of posts in this thread (or "on this board"), I'm referring to this thread and only this thread. If someone wants to speak negatively of other sites on other threads, that's their call. I want to give a certain amount of latitude along those lines (see my comments about stock vs. non-stock threads earlier) in threads that aren't specific to a particular stock.
First let's make sure we're clear on the terminology since it's a bit different here than it was on SI:
Are we in agreement on the distinction between "post" and "header"?
Just so I can be clear on what we're all talking about, would you please define "basher"? I have a few definitions myself, but I want to know what you mean when you use the word.
Also....
hope you help to keep the negativity out of this place
I most certainly will not. All points of view regarding stocks should be accounted for in discussions, both positive and negative. If you keep out the negative, you're hiding part of the information and doing a great disservice to people who want to make informed decisions about their investments.
Bob
no, but she is a basher at RB. she lives in Italy, and if you look up "janice shell" on a search engine you will
find a lot of articles about her. she should not be allowed at IH. she will ruin it, and if she ever made her way
here i would close down my boards and send my members else where. eom
Wow!
Are you talking about the same Janice Shell who has been featured in a bunch of articles in very well-known magazines and other media? The same one who has been cited as an integral part of busting a number of scams and saving people lots of money by digging up and presenting the info the companies and their most vociferous shareholders didn't want seen?
That one?
Why shouldn't she be allowed at IH?
How will she ruin the site?
And why would you close down your boards and send your members elsewhere.
Is there something about her that I don't know?
please don't delete this message. it's called constructive criticism.
LOL!
That's the first really good laugh I've had today. A post talking about "bashers" then attempting to educate me on what's "constructive criticism".
Keep in mind that "favoritism" comes in many flavors. Part of my role here is to ensure that chairpeople aren't showing favoritism to people who have bought the stock they own. Negative opinions aren't always "bashing".
But I really don't "favorite" "bashers". I tend to like most people until I have a reason not to. And I especially like people who can see that every coin has two sides to it and won't try to convince others otherwise by making sure only one side of the coin gets seen.
I was going to ask about this first, then it dawned on me that I'm the Operations Manager here and can make these decisions for myself now. Refreshing!
So, http://www.investorshub.com/beta/board.asp?board_id=514
That's a thread for newsletters and is just a trial run. I may delete the thread if it proves to be a mistake. For now, I'll just watch and see how it works out.
Bob
Nope.
Actually, that's kind of in the gray area between spam and advertising. But whether it's free or not doesn't matter. Either way isn't allowed.
Bob
PS. Just got an idea. Might have more to post on this matter later.
Maybe not so much who the person is as whether or not it's just joking amongst friends.
Still, to avoid any confusion, and to avoid setting a precedent that will jump up and bite me in the future, if you want to talk about his or anyone else's particular brand of Animal Husbandry, the Parking Lot is the perfect place for it.
http://www.investorshub.com/beta/board.asp?board_id=37
Busting my chops already, eh?
Keep in mind that if a post is deleted from a thread and stays deleted, for all intents and purposes, I did the deletion. I check the deleted posts very frequently throughout the day. In the past couple of days, there have been about 15 deletions, many of which were done by me and some of which were dupes caused by the system. In every case, I agree with the deletions.
So, I don't want there to be multiple SEVU threads yet to give me and the chairpeople of such boards an opportunity first to prove that deletion of negative information simply because it's negative is not happening.
But let's revisit this one in a couple of weeks.
Links to one's site in a thread header are acceptable if the purpose of the thread and header
isn't strictly to advertise the site.