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Bob already does this:
He does? Where?
I like the idea quite a bit. And it'd work nicely with our plan to have the text of deleted posts (and reason) PM'd directly to the author when the deletion is done. Options buttons when reading such posts would be "Reply", "Accept", "Appeal", and "EGADS!".
Reply would reply privately to the person who deleted it, Accept would just archive the message, Appeal would reply to me privately, and EGADS! would post the contents into a new message in the EGADS! board. The EGADS! button would only show up for a subset of the deletion-reasons so that it can't be used to repost a privacy invasion or threat, for example.
All: Something pretty important about the site's rules came to my attention for the first time last night.
Apparently, it's been understood that if your thread is not stock-specific, you can have any rules you want. In the words of Johnny Carson, "I did not know this." And it's been at the core of some recent disagreements.
I'd been discussing a variation of this with a few people as something I want to implement, but I (and I'm sure most people, who are as new to the site as I am) didn't know it was already in place as a kind of unwritten understanding. My thinking was that it's something I wanted to do but that wasn't currently being done.
So Matt and I are working on getting the Terms of Use revised to reflect this and to spell out the details of it, and are also working on the Board-Manager How-To at the same time.
The short version is this: If your thread is specific to a particular stock, you cannot delete a post unless it is in clear violation of the Terms of Use. Period.
If you want to run a "personal" thread (VOICES is an example) that isn't about a company, then you can delete any post for any reason (as it's apparently always been).
I'm modifying this a bit, though, and it'll be reflected in the new Terms of Use/How-To documents: If you will be using rules not included in the Terms of Use, spell them out in the iBox.
This can be as detailed or as broad as you want.
For example, if you want every post in your personal (non-stock) thread to include the phrase "I like apples", and will delete all that don't, you need to add a section to your iBox that says "Rules" and includes "You must always post that you like apples". If you have a specific rule like that, enforce it consistently.
And if you want to be able to delete any post for any reason you might think of, just be sure to include something like "I will delete any post I want just because I feel like it." The important thing is to let thread participants know what post-deletion risk there is for participating in your thread so they can take that into account before posting on your personal thread.
We'll also be modifying the deletion-reasons dropdown to make "My Rules" an available choice when dealing with a personal thread.
So, for personal threads, any rules you want so long as you specify the rules. The site's rules (Terms of Use) still apply to such threads as well (this part is subject to change at our discretion). You still must delete profanity, invasions of privacy, etc. If it's a stock thread, only the site's rules apply.
That leaves a rather large gray area (for example, a thread about technology plays in general rather than a specific tech company) that we're still figuring out (we've got a pretty good idea how we want to address them) and that area will be covered in the revised written rules.
Bob
In the case of SI you had at one time Bob being the single policeman acting to govern the entire SI community, a task that even Bob will likely admit was near impossible to do. I’m sure his workload was huge.
That's part of the issue that CoB addresses for me, but not all of it.
To continue with your government analogy, on SI I was the King rather than the Fed Government. It was, as I'd described it before publicly, a "benign dictatorship".
It's automatically assumed by nearly everyone on the planet that anybody in a role of dictatorship likes being in that role and jealously guards it.
Not the case. I filled that role because that was the model for the site (we hadn't thought of this model) and if I wanted to benefit the site, that was the role that was available. Arguably fine, since it was a benign dictatorship.
But I wasn't happy with it.
Revisit the 3D-world dictatorship analogy. Or even the old monarchies. I suspect the King's life wasn't all featherbeds and caviar. As the only legal authority in the land, he had to decide the outcome of every disagreement. One minute he's deciding the sentence for an accused murderer and the next he's deciding what to do about someone's sheep trampling someone else's flowers. And every morning, there's a long line of these cases waiting for his personal attention.
Yuck!
And the 2D version doesn't even get a featherbed and can't afford caviar. And the concubines *still* haven't shown up.
The iHub model is more like our own government except that the citizens don't get to vote. Someone *owns* this particular country and decides who's the president. But there are no immigration/emigration laws aside from the Terms of Use. The citizens vote with their citizenship.
In this model, I don't have to deal with sheep treading on flowers. I just handle the bigger things. Each township has people who deal with trampling tups.
I like this model not only because it should *dramatically* reduce my workload (eventually), but because I don't have to be the only person making every single judgment call.
I could make sure that I get it, but I'd have to boot myself for using a script to spam the site.
Yes, it's possible. They're on the same sequence.
Would your asking have something to do with the fact that we're fewer than 50 posts away?
Note to self: Caught up verifying stock-related posts up to this point. Feeling sad. Chastised by Director for not following thread rules. Pouting. Depressed. Director seems to be doing fine without my interference. Feeling useless. And relieved.
<g>
Oh, and post 1
You're too fast! I did that test and deleted it in the span of about 5 seconds! LOL
Something really weird. I clicked your link, got to message 4 (in a new Netscape window) which said it had been removed
by the Chairman. Fine. The Next button was activated. So I clicked on Next and -- voila -- I got taken to message number 1
of 9!!!
That's the way it's supposed to work. Might change that in the future, though. Typically, you won't run across a deleting post while browsing a thread.
If you want to get to subsequent messages in that thread, key in the message number in the box (replace the 4 with a 5, for example) and hit Enter.
first unseen message
Yes, that's in the plans.
Bob
I should clarify something in my previous post. When I say "won't sell out to a corporation", it would've been more correct to omit the word "out".
Brad and Jeff didn't "sell out" to Go2Net. They "sold" to them because it was at a juncture where it needed the backing of a larger company to really move on to the next level. They stayed with the site for as long as they were able to handle the fact that it was no longer really their baby.
Same happened to me when I had been position-trading SYCR for a long time and dared get a copy of one of their software products, wrote software to benchmark it, pasted the output into a post, and the output showed that the program actually slowed down nearly all operations rather than giving the promised multi-fold speed increases.
I was labeled *such* a basher.
I didn't get out of the stock and change my overall opinion of their chances for success until I had put countless hours into beta-testing their disk-spanning software, reported MANY bugs (most of which were immediately fixed) but saw that they published the commercial version of it complete with some of the more destructive bugs intact.
Little annoying bugs, like destruction of the FAT on the primary partition about 1 out of every 4 times it was uninstalled.
One of the funnier things about that one is that they later were selling their software with 100% mail-in rebates and people weren't entirely sure that was a bad thing. Of course, the rebates weren't honored.
I wasn't looking for a job Bob ... you're safe ...
Couldn't resist replying to this part now.
Whether or not I'm "safe" isn't really an issue for me.
I'm 42 years old and (barely) have the drive and energy left in me for one more of these startups, and I think I've teamed up with precisely the folks (especially Matt) who can make it work this time and won't sell out to a corporation who sees the community only as an insignificant upward blip on their deep red bottom line.
But many days I have to admit I do get tired of the struggle and wonder why I'm in it again. I have to constantly remind myself that the current struggle is a necessary part of turning this into a successful venture that runs essentially on autopilot and won't continue to drain my finite remaining life-force. (Matt, at your age you're immortal, so you won't understand this part yet. <g>)
If it weren't for that long-term vision, I'd really rather be puttering around in the garage or finishing the workshop and doing *major* puttering in it.
I'm my own worst enemy on that, though. I could just kick back and relax and enjoy the years I've got left, but I'm stubborn. The whole "message board" thing hasn't really been done yet the way I think it can be done, so I hang in there because I want it to and I want to be a part of that happening.
Which leads into a partial answer of your question. I'm heavily into message boards and the communities that use them because, in addition to being a programmer and consultant for many years, I was the SysOp of one of the larger BBSes in the country for about a decade and carried the entire FidoNet backbone on my site and moderated some of the echos. I shut it down about 8 months after I joined SI and I could see that message boards as I knew them were not long for this world and I wanted to be involved in what was going to replace them.
Now, what kind of salary are you going to offer me? <g>
***WARNING: On-Topic Post Follows***
Thanks for bringing that up. I think I completely spaced out telling anyone.
Everyone, we implemented a change last night to the way message deletion works.
Now, when you delete a message, you are presented with a drop-down list of reasons to select for the deletion. When you select one of these reasons and hit the Continue button, the post is removed.
The aspect of this that's visible from my side is that when I am looking through deleted posts, I now see them in reverse order of when they were deleted (so I don't miss recent deletions of older posts) and the deletion reason is shown.
Not only does this help ensure that chairmen are thinking about their deletion reason before doing the deletion, it also makes it easier for me because I don't have to investigate ones I see labeled as "Spam" or "Dupe".
The list of deletion reasons is not all-inclusive yet. It will be eventually. If you come across a post that you really feel you should be deleting, but we forgot to include the violation in the reasons list, please PM me to let me know. If we disagree on whether or not a particular reason should be added to the list, then we'll open it for public discussion.
Regards,
iHub Admin (Bob)
Quick note to grubbers: 100k coming up tonight. Please, do us all proud by making it a quality grub. On-topic somewhere (preferably stock-related) and at least give the appearance of making the post for reasons other than the grub.
How quickly does the timeout seem to be happening?
Matt? You out there? If so, let's crank it up several notches.
On the first one, I can't say for certain, but am reasonably sure that what's happening is the number of posts being displayed (9) includes deleted posts. And posts 4 through 9 have been deleted.
Ah. Confirmation. http://www.investorshub.com/beta/read_msg.asp?message_id=42147 That's number 4.
On the second one, whether or not a link acts like it's been "visited" before is determined solely by your browser, so if you go to a link somewhere and later look at it and it's purple, but look at it with a different browser on your machine or go to another machine, it will be blue because that browser/machine combination hasn't been to that link before.
Bob
It won't roll over onto this one. It's been Naz-proof for ages. Been staying dead money just fine while the Naz does its gyrations.
Didn't sell, but did enter a somewhat optimistic GTC that I think will fill tomorrow and give me a chance to reload on a pullback.
post 1
This is really about my suitability for the position, so I replied over here: http://www.investorshub.com/beta/read_msg.asp?message_id=99653
Let's move it there to stay on-topic here.
Too bad, though. I picked up a bunch of July OTM calls a couple of days ago on a favorite little sleeper (read: "been dead money in the stock for a long time") and it sprouted legs toward the close. One of the top 20 % gainers for the day.
post 5
I stand corrected. It's a statement (rather than a query) with a question mark on the end of it, so I should've considered it a question.
A fair answer. Not the nicest one necessarily but definitely fair.
I can do "nice", but choose not to in certain situations. And when I'm constantly under fire, "nice" is a bit difficult to conjure up. I'm doing good to supress "really, really hostile" at times, or at least redirect it.
post 3
In reply to: http://www.investorshub.com/beta/read_msg.asp?message_id=99595
Fine. We have checks for the spammers. We have checks for the Chairman.
Now, How de we trust you and have checks for you?
And your suggestion for a way to make the checks and balances go full circle? I'm curious about this one.
I have been following this for a little while, and lurking on a few other threads, and you seem to allow certain people more liberty and I find you are not consistent.
Do you have any examples of this? I strive not to let that happen, and believe I'm not letting it happen, but I'm not perfect.
I do know of a recent example that could give the appearance of inconsistency. I recently booted someone for, among other things, being continually disruptive in this thread, but later when someone else came in here who was upset about that booting, and posted about 30 or so far more disruptive posts to the thread in a few hours' span, I did nothing. Well, I did something, but I didn't boot them.
Had I not been too swamped to notice what'd happened, I would've given them a warning and then a suspension if it continued. However, they got away with it.
Inconsistent? Arguably so.
However, there are factors that aren't discussed publicly that also came into play. Things like that person having no prior suspensions. That person not doing it just a couple of days after I'd reduced their 7-day suspension to about 2 1/2. My having publicly warned everyone about it and everyone, including the especially disruptive one, complying with my request and stopping the disruption.
If someone goes over the line, I warn them about it, and they back off, I don't go back and suspend them for going over the line if I later realize they'd done it to a greater extent than I'd realized. I'm consistent about that.
But since the things like warnings and suspensions aren't a matter of public record, people like to assume that only the thngs they saw with their own eyes are the things that really happened. As a Missourian, I can't blame them for wanting to see something before accepting it as reality, but I also don't automatically assume that things I didn't see never happened and devote tons of energy to bemoaning the unfairness of it.
An important (to me) of the philosophy of doing this job is that suspensions aren't used as punishment for every misdeed. They're used when it seems apparent that future conduct won't improve without them. Quite different from the real world.
Yet, whomever you convinced to get the position must either be very naive or trust you very much? Which was it?
I think it was the latter.
If the young fellow named Matt made the decision, what did he base his judgment on to hire you?
I'm not Matt so I don't know the answer to that question, and even if I knew, I'd consider it nobody's business but his own.
You seem to have more detesting your style than supporting it,
"seem" to? I haven't really tallied up the numbers, but it seems to be more in favor than against. It's not like there are hundreds on one side and thousands on the other. I'm thinking it's closer to about 10 for and 5 against.
But that's immaterial. It's Matt's site, so it's his call. He can fire me if he wants. His site; his call.
Personally, I do care what the majority of people think of the job I'm doing, but more important to me is that this site (or any site with which I'm associated) is a level playing field for the participants and not a scammers' haven.
and that maybe skewed because my understanding is that this Frank gentleman was suspended because of his past rather than what he was doing here.
I can't get into any specifics, but can assure you it was for current conduct on this site; not past conduct on another site.
In my time here so far, I have suspended people I know full well I never suspended on SI, some of whom were members there and some who I don't know to have been, and in no case was their history on another site ever a factor.
In fact, we've got one person here who has never been suspended here (to my knowledge) but who I never would've allowed back on SI after terminating them there long ago. I even suspended someone else here (who I don't recall ever suspending on SI) for having broken a rule in a post targeting the one I'd never let back on SI.
I'm sure some of the people I've suspended here would be considered "cronies" of mine by another poster, though I disagree with the assertion that they are.
The assertion that I suspend people based on their conduct on another site is patently false, no matter how loudly it's shouted or how frequently the same few people shout it.
If we have someone that executes very strong controls over this new concept, well my personal opinion is...This won't
last!!!
And my opinion is that if we don't, this won't last.
I'm inclined to think that the ownership of the site is in agreement with me on this or they wouldn't have hired me to help the site grow and to change its reputation and the aspects of it that'd caused that reputation.
.
If, in reality, the intention was to let the status quo continue, including deletion of posts that shouldn't be deleted, and my hiring was simply as a figurehead to add credibility to such a scheme, I shall be very put out.
I firmly believe that in a stock discussion, you simply cannot have the whim of a person invested in the stock be all the reason necessary to remove a post.
I can see the attraction of a site in which each person who starts a thread has 100% discretion over the contents of the thread but to apply this model, without real oversite, to market discussions is to give Trouble a nicely-engraved invitation on gold leaf and I would never be willingly associated with such an endeavor.
Edit: post 2
Oh. You didn't express it as a question and if I remember right, you weren't directing it to me anyway.
The particulars of my resume or why I was hired are of no consequence to anyone but the owners of the site.
Post #2
There's always going to be a subjective element. If it were possible for all calls to be made objectively, a software program could do the whole job. Even objective calls often defy easy, machine-like handling.
The best a site can do is find someone who can be trusted to make those calls, and in this case, have oversite of those calls that're being made by others.
I do understand that you can not please everyone, but if those that do not agree with you get removed, well you always have the upper hand.
This is true. If I or a chairman remove every person who disagrees with us, we always have the upper hand. And that's wrong.
Part of my role here is to ensure that that doesn't happen. And part of that is accomplished by setting an example.
It's a part of human nature (an unsavory part of it, IMO) to want to silence a critic, but that part of human nature has no place in a venue where we're supposed to be collectively figuring out the stock market and specific companies.
Sorry. I don't think they're currently taking applications. But you're more than welcome to apply, although I'm not sure what the minimum qualifications or past job experience requirements are. At first blush, one would think playground monitor would look best on the resume, but it's not on mine.
Actually, not really a bug. It's some code that was purposely written to filter out certain naughty words. But it's toast as soon as the programmer gets to it.
I copied a novella-sized public post onto my clipboard and pasted it into a PM to Matt while he watched the CPU utilization of our backend server, and it spiked from the 15% it usually hums along at to about 70%. Really vicious overhead, as I suspected since it was parsing every word in a memo field (for non-geeks, what I mean is "working really hard")
The feature was doomed before our little test, though. Profanity's against the Terms of Use, we've got people who're conscientious about stopping it, and really don't have the problem with inarticulate buffoons that a couple of other sites have, so we don't need it. Besides, I don't like software meddling with user-provided content anyway. Seems just real wrong.
Some things have to be handled by humans. Software not only is incapable of handling the subjective calls, it's darned tough to even remotely approach infallibility on the objective calls. And somehow, I've got a real problem with a machine telling me I can't mention how nice the *****-willow trees are looking around here right now.
Yes, there's a filter and yes, it carries a LOT of overhead when you submit a manifesto-sized post. Everyone feels the pinch when someone submits War and Peace.
We're going to remove it.
I'm not sure. We cranked it up a bit when we were trying to solve a problem that turned out to be subsequent hits not coming back to the same IIS box (of course, that didn't fix it), but I PM'd Matt this afternoon asking him to crank it way up and just back it off gradually later if we saw any new problems.
Vinny, I know one of those reasons is that I didn't email you explaining that you were suspended and why. For that, I sincerely apologize, and while I can't promise it'll never happen again, I will try to be more conscientious about letting people know details like that there's a reason they're suddenly unable to login. Not letting people know these things immediately is a very bad thing.
Welcome back to the flock, Brother Vinny.
Fryer Bob
expletives deleted
Good question. I'd forgotten that it does that (got real busy the past few days) and haven't asked Matt about it. Do you know if it also does it in public messages? I'd wager that it does.
Edit: Yes, it does. Mixed feelings about this one. Doesn't catch them all, and I'm not keen on it filtering in PM's. Not sure I'm keen on it filtering in public messages either, since it'll just result in different ways to say the same thing with identical intent, ala RB. Almost like "It's okay to use profanity here just so long as you find clever ways to say any words in this list..."
If it causes measurable overhead (I'd suspect it does), I'm all for losing it. Regardless of overhead, I lean heavily toward losing it.
Thoughts anyone?
Intriguing?
I read the thing about 3 times and each time loved it more and more. Spammers stopped dead in their tracks most of the time and all I have to do is let the spam-bot send me a PM of the possible spammer's profile for me to review and sweep his non-deleted posts off the site.
It has the potential for abuse, but anyone who abuses it can just be locked up in a small room with 5 spammers for an hour. It also has the potential to nab people who weren't spamming, but that should be relatively rare. And in most cases in which it did, it would've been deserved for another reason anyway.
Pulls me a bit further out of the picture and more into the eventual role of dealing almost exclusively with chairmen and technology.
Thanks, Prey! Additional upsides and downsides that were missed, anyone?
Chairmen already have the power to deal with spammers or rather they did have so I have to ask is the chairman concept now totally undermined?
You misunderstood the nature of my suggestion, and I'm struggling to figure out how that happened.
What I was suggesting (seeking feedback on, actually) was something that would give the chairmen *more* control; not less.
But a lot of people have given their feedback and I'm going to have to agree with Bird of Prey on this one at second blush, especially the part about establishing an exclusive cadre. So for now I'm tabling the idea and likely won't revisit it.
The original iHub concept is what drew me here to begin with and was an important part of why I accepted this position rather than any of the several others that'd been offered.. I am a big fan of the CoB concept. It's very unique and I think it can be very beneficial to the site, if not abused.
Again, the Chairmen already have the power to delete posts
Chairmen can delete posts in their own threads. What I was looking into was giving chairmen the ability to halt the spammer's ability to post, too, since the spam is rarely of the 100 copies in just one thread variety.
But it was a bad idea.
I'm still busy trying to catch up with PM's, so I haven't read any of the latest posts to this thread, but want to ask everyone a favor: Let's lose the "playground" atmosphere so we don't dilute this thread needlessly in the same way I didn't want the Q&A thread diluted. I'll also do my part.
Post 6, I think.
I've got a question: are you considering a limit on the number of threads a person can be a Chairperson and director on?
Actually, this'd be a good post for the Q&A thread. But I guess here's fine since I, in my typical sinister manner, gave a link to this thread that automatically added it to one's bookmarks.
The Terms of Use do specify a limit (4 boards), but it's not currently enforced and I'm not in any hurry to enforce it. I don't see it as something of consequence yet and possibly never will.
the info is flowing fast and furious, but for the most part, the posts are just a waste of time.
Only 11 steps to go. :)
Post number 5, I think.
Awfully good points.
What you wrote was just fine. I really think "stock-related on a stock board" is a pretty easy concept to grasp and doesn't require mind-reading to find out what I mean.
Just a note to myself that I've checked through the posts up to this point and everyone's been making the requisite stock-related posts, and then some.
Post number 4?
From one "ump" to another:
Have you had to deal with a group of kids wanting to play football on the same field on which you're trying to officiate a baseball game? If so, how've you handled it? :)
Post number 3.
1. I don't know the details of how that works internally, but would strongly suspect that only the last revision is physically saved. Whether potentially a problem or not, it's reality and I wouldn't bet money on that changing. From a programming and storage perspective, it'd be a really major deal to store all edits.
2. Actually, I deleted that post before I came back to this thread and just sent a PM.
3. The first two sentences are irrelevant from my perspective. I agree with your 3rd sentence and am working on that.
Post Number 2.
this thread is not about stocks. why do you keep telling me I have to post about stocks here?
You don't have to post about stocks "here" as in "this thread". If you post to that other thread, you must also post about stocks on stock threads.
Very simple rule and to put the appropriate fine point on it, if someone's unable to do that, I really don't care what they've got to say about me or this site in much the same way I don't care what someone who's never been on a racetrack thinks of my racing line.
If you can't discuss stocks or the market at all, but can post tons of "info" that's geared only at discrediting or criticizing me or other people, I don't want you here. Clear enough?
The requirement I imposed on that other thread amounts to a minimum of 10% stock discussion for anyone who chooses to use that thread. A ludicrously low number, in my opinion, but my intention is for people to make themselves aware of just how much stock talk they're involved in. And, as a corollary, just how much I should care about what they have to say about my involvement with a stock discussion site.
I don't know. from my viewpoint, this site has been invaded by the si stalkers and harassers that contribute nothing to a discussion except reposting old posts
Consider this a warning. Your post was nothing more than an attempt to continue to use this thread to rail against others, prefaced by a question that you wouldn't have had to ask if you'd really read the rule about stock-related posts in that other thread. Don't persist in this. I'm not feeling terribly generous about such things today.