is happily being the wheel rather than a rusty old spoke
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You need to figure out what your objectives are. If you're trying to make money on IHub (and the amount of money IHub makes is probably the best indication of how much value the site has), then you should decide how micro-managed you want this site to be.
Huh?
You probably don't realize we've been in business 7 years, I was the Admin at SI for 3 years prior to that, and operated one of the country's largest BBS's for a decade prior to that. Think I've got a pretty good handle on our objectives.
If we lose an entire board here and there because of our aggressiveness in enforcing rules of civility, so be it. It's far from the first and won't be the last.
And our aggressiveness about our rules is a key thing that differentiates us from the likes of RB and Yahoo. And you know what? A lot of people LIKE that! I know I don't like to be called stupid and am above doing the same to others. I'm not alone.
On a stock board where money is at stake, some conflict is normal.
Of course. And conflict and controversy are money in our pockets. If everyone agreed with everyone else, there wouldn't be much that could justify the existence of a site like this. "I like xxyz." "Me too!" Gets old. Doesn't help making informed decisions.
There's a LOT of room for conflict and controversy without it getting personal.
This whole thing of wanting civility isn't just because the site is operated by civil people with an ideal that the internet should be an enabler for communities of people getting along and gaining mutual benefit from their virtual neighbors.
It's also very calculated.
Since you wanted to give me business advice on the topic, let's really look at the business side of it.
Person A on Site A likes to call people idiots and use profanity in his posts, and talks more about the idiocy of his neighbors than about a stock itself (pro or con).
Person B on Site B has all of his money tied up in one stock and only wants to hear good things about it, whether true or not. He wants confirmation of his faith.
Person C on Site C is a critical thinker and because he's educated/intelligent, is able to refute an opposing point of view using unassailable logic and feels that personal attacks are cheap shots and doesn't dish them out nor wish to be subjected to them.
There are sites for each of these people.
Which of these people is most likely to have the most discretionary income, so is most likely to purchase a subscription and is more desirable to advertisers? From a purely profit-motivated point of view (forgetting for the moment our collective disdain for uncivil conduct), which person do you think I want tens of thousands of using our site?
And one more thought. Do you think a brokerage wants to see their ad in a post that says nothing more than "You're an idiot. ROTFLMAO!"?
It's that kind of thing that has made ad income very hard to come by for message-board sites. We've actually helped everyone (all message-board sites) by showing advertisers that we're not all free-for-all flame wars.
IH YODA, Will we be notified before the emails start? (I'm really gonna have to rethink that handle.... PHB, perhaps?)
After a fashion.
We are currently planning to send out an email this Friday to all iHub members past and present, announcing the additions to the site. That email won't contain any outside advertising as far as I know. The SI one didn't.
That email will contain an opt-out link and if you click it, you can opt out of all emails from us or just some of them.
Personally, I would hope everyone would opt to keep the Market Briefing email even if they opt out of advertising emails. Though the advertising emails are selected for relevance, so not a lot of people have opted out of them. With the price we command for advertising emails, the advertiser has to be really sure they're sending something you're going to have a good chance of being interested in.
As for the Market Briefing email, think you can guess the most frequent complaint the company gets about it?
"I'm not getting Market Briefing emails anymore? What's wrong?"
Usually too-aggressive opt-out. Those emails are actually quite good and even though I'm nowhere near what I'd consider an active market participant, I read them as a way to keep myself at least a bit informed about what's happening.
I'm getting alot
of spam mails from apparently United Kingdom area
also..a result of hub joining, buy out, merger
whatever of ADVFN, U think?..
Your assumption is incorrect. Spam comes from everywhere, and if you think ("apparently") a lot of your spam is coming from the UK, it doesn't necessarily follow that ADVFN would be the source. I can tell you that they're not.
Neither iHub nor ADVFN is sending emails to iHub users and we will NOT let loose of the email addresses themselves.
At some point in the future (as is currently the case on SI), we'll be sending out Daily Market Briefing emails, as well as advertising emails. But the process for advertising emails is that the advertiser sends us the copy and WE send out the emails. The addresses never leave our posession.
But iHub users aren't receiving any such emails yet.
We're not spamming anyone.
I should also add that once we do start sending out advertising and Market Briefing emails, they'll contain an opt-out link, just as we've been doing on SI. Even the email announcing the integration of the new ADVFN content contained an opt-out link, and the eventual similar email for iHub will also have one. Company policy.
Bob
Noticed it when I signed in tonight and I'll be asking about it.
We never had the number of subscribers on the homepage, but I'm sure we'll end up with the number of posts again.
Oh, you mean number of members. Yeah, we might put that back in too. For Premium members, we're going to end up with some spare screen real estate, though I think number of members and posts is useful/attractive to new visitors, too.
5. New Subscribers - I'm sure you've got a very good reason for this being on the home page. Maybe in the begining, it was a rush...but now?
Knee-jerk reaction: It needs to stay not only as another way to say "Thank you" to subscribers, but also to encourage others to subscribe.
After further thought, though, subscribe today and your name likely isn't on the list tomorrow. And there's plenty of other encouragement to subscribe.
How say you, Matt? If you want to replace that section with something else, I'm all for it.
LOL! I like having nicknames for our Brit teammates. Now Clem's got one!
How harmful would it have been if that post calling someone else's opinion "stupid" had been left undeleted?
To use a favorite analogy, it's the camel's nose in the tent. Don't smack his nose and soon the whole camel will be in the tent and there's no room for you.
A post being a "minor personal attack" is about like being "a bit pregnant".
We have to draw a clear line in the sand, and any form of personal attack goes over the line. That's an easier line to draw than "A personal attack we all think is too rough."
The expectation is that we're all going to be civil here, even in disagreement, and civil people don't call each other "stupid".
I'd like it centered on the screen, too, like it is on SI, and I think Matt might've mentioned wanting that too. If he did, it'll happen. Soon.
will non stock boards be phased out on ihub?
No.
It's pretty graphics-intensive so that first view from home (satellite) was pretty slow with all the graphical bits that needed to be fetched from across the pond with the latency satellite has for each packet.
After that first load, subsequent loads were acceptably fast. Still not the "smack against your eyeballs the instant you click" level we've always delivered, but a long-term plan to speed things up is being fleshed out.
If anyone has the homepage load consistently slowly, they should check to make sure they're letting their browser cache with the default level of aggression. In the "Super Quotes" section, if the "Go" buttons are showing up one at a time, your browser isn't doing enough caching.
Check out the top lists on the right side. With the tabs for the different markets on the top row and the stat on the next row.
Meant to make this a public reply, but apparently hit the wrong button.
We're going to standardize site-wide (both sites) on 1024x768.
The majority of our users (92%) use resolutions of 1024x768 or higher. Those using 800x600 will have some horizontal scrolling to do and more vertical. Or can shrink their fonts on their browser to make it fit.
We had to pick a standard and went with the most common, especially since we can't fit everything into 800x600 anymore. Most sites are going that direction.
The new one is a few K bigger, so won't fit in memory and is paging out to your floppy drive.
I'm sorry, but no. My universe, so my worlds within it. <g>
Although substituting Newfoundland for Boogerville could work.
Hadn't noticed it before (guess because I wasn't using it enough to notice), but add my voice to the ones wanting a background color other than pure white. I've always tried to avoid that because though contrast is necessary, a little less contrast is easier on my old eyes.
For those who have asked about using their own background color on the homepage like is done on the rest of the site, that's a no-can-do. A lot of the homepage content is actually delivered by the UK side, which has no idea what your selected background color is and no way of knowing.
But, Matt, could you give some thought to an off-white background we can use both locally and in the iframes?
You can't. Think of the Archives as a trash can you can't empty. But it has infinite capacity.
Point extremely well taken but keep in mind that as important as you feel simplicity is to you, we're absolutely fanatical about it on this side of the screen.
You shouldn't ever need to worry on this count where we're concerned because a huge advantage we have is that a couple of us (Meatloaf and I) were doing this back in the DOS/BBS days when simplicity was forced on everything we did and we lucked out in that Matt, who ultimately controls the UI, cut his teeth on simple, fast pages.
The ol' girl has been in serious need of a facelift, but we know that it has to be simple and it can't change dramatically unless it's a REAL good change.
And if it means anything, I think the new homepage is orders of magnitude better than the old one (though there are subtle tweaks remaining) in that it's a LOT more feature-rich yet is very simple, and I simply can't use ADVFN's homepage because it isn't simple enough.
It's a difference in cultures that we're all very aware of and we don't fight it. What works in the UK doesn't in the US and vice-versa. And I've read enough of ADVFN's boards to know that to British eyes, our interface is typically as unlikeable as theirs is to our eyes.
I think to truly appreciate the reason why nationality has such an impact on what's acceptable and what isn't, one need only spend a month in Boogerville, followed by a month in London.
Simplicity while being loaded with features has always been what made the wheels turn on this baby.
Amen, sister!
And it's a tough balancing act being feature-rich but simple. One usually works against the other, but we make sure "simple" gets a fighting chance.
Need to qualify that with "Currently".
The whole site has been in need of a facelift for a long time, and it's never (intentionally) gone stagnant for any length of time. Features get added, and they'll start getting added as rapidly as they used to be.
Of course, "Simplicity" will still be the word of the day.
Same here. Meaty says it's happening only in IE and he's notified the responsible person in London about it.
We knew we'd encountered that somewhere while we were in Vegas, but couldn't remember or find where it was happening.
Thanks for the catch!
What browser/OS are you using?
I'm not seeing that in IE/XP. When I'm using the Nasdaq tab, I'm seeing 12 quotes and plenty of space before the Forex and Commodity Channel blocks.
good, so if FREEBIES can get 15 minute delayed quotes, then PREEMIES should be able to get free real time quotes...right?
Nope. We're keeping realtime as an ala carte item because of the cost and the fact that not everyone who subscribes needs the realtime quotes.
one I assumed was a quote and the other was a chart.
The first one is supposed to take you to the board; not a quote. Which is what it's doing. I can see how the icon could imply either one, though.
We were just talking about that.
In-house, we're not 100% decided on that yet, but leaning toward free quotes rather than having a high probability first-visit action resulting in an encounter with a locked door.
Good point, but like the "sentence" below it, I'm going to call it "artistic license". Not technically complete sentences, but they do get the message across economically.
Which is a sure sign I didn't write it. <g>
The Meaty one will be putting our new homepage into production minutes from now. We'd love to hear opinions.
At first blush, I like this idea quite a lot, haven't thought of a major programming/database/presentation hurdle yet, and have Kept your message as a reminder to think it through when I get a chance and see if it's do-able, desirable, and where to put it in the project queue.
Like has already been said, keep 'em coming. Most improvements to the site are ones its members have suggested.
Was good seeing you again today, Tim. Too bad I haven't been able to see everyone that showed up. I had to bail on drinks because the show started unexpectedly on Thursday and my laptop was needed, and I couldn't make lunch because I was working the booth. But if anyone wants to come by and is still in Vegas in the morning (Sunday), I'll be at the booth from 9 to 11:30.
I think we've still got plenty of t-shirts available, too.
I thought I put in code so it couldn't be done. Guess not. I'll look into it when we get back from the convention.
Meat commented that a lot of user issues are problems with their CSS files, so I assumed it was a matter of matching background/foreground colors.
Each user who has specified anything in "My Interface" has their own .CSS files sitting on the webserver(s). It's become too cumbersome to offer that granular a level of control over the interface. And cookieing things that belong in CSS wouldn't be any easier on the equipment. It'd be worse.
There will have to be multiple servers at some point. We have no redundancy now, so a single failed machine would bring down the site. Until we switch another box in to take its place. We've got warm spares, at best.
And it wouldn't take much growth on iHub's part for it to overwhelm the single server it's currently using. Which is a big part of why I'm pushing for the .NET conversion to start happening at long last. It took over a year to get started. If it takes over a year to get finished, we're gonna be in a world of hurt at current growth rates.
That looks so darned good I'm taking the other thing out of the project queue!
Not without extensive use of Javascript, which I avoid like the plague for a plethora of reasons.
I'm with you on really liking WordStar stuff, though. I prefer to use PrimalScript 2.2 instead of 3.0 for development work mainly because 2.2 still supported WS keyboard shortcuts, which all of us old geeks have memorized. It was the standard (aside from WordPerfect) in the pre-Windoze days.
Yeah, it didn't take too long for people to occasionally set their background and foreground to the same color, which is why the "Restore Defaults" button was added. But you know how easily we miss things right in front of us.
Very easily done. I've got Meaty frying a couple of huge fish he can't be distracted from, but I'll add it to the queue for me to do later.
It's definitely nice having a parent company that includes a photo-hosting website.
If the new language makes it easier/better, but I'm not aware of any way in which it does. Using the pre tag, you still have to use spaces to get everything lined up, and the message-composition box is too small for someone to easily align a table as big as the one you're citing.
Your asking the question made me think of a possible solution, though. I'll put it in the project queue for discussion.
He really is incredibly childish. In a Linda Blair kind of way.
LOLissimo! That line's a keeper. Too bad I won't get an opportunity to use it. Don't know anyone like that and hope to never have the pleasure.
To get back on-topic, hopefully I was clear enough last night about the upcoming (very long-term) changes.
The contractor was brought in simply to help us get a running start at rolling out a new version of the site whose primary difference will be that it's written in another language. The end result in terms of what everyone sees when they use the site will be identical save for the fact that we'll take advantage of some neat stuff the new language makes available.
Dave suggested at our most recent meeting that instead of allowing each user to specify every single aspect of their iHub expect down to the colors of the words in the menus, we offer a limited number of "skins" people can use, and we're probably going to go with that approach. The current default one will be one of the available skins.
He's also right that the word used to describe it was "amateurish", which I've always thought and I'm sure Matt will agree. Heck, he was 17 when he designed it. I've told Matt that the default layout looks like it was done using a Crayola. And it may not be that Meaty thought my user-configurable CSS ("My Interface" in the Tools screen) was what was being talked about. Couldn't be. That stuff was brilliant! <g> While it was of manageable size. <ng>
We've often talked of having a UI expert help us give the ol' girl a facelift (the site, not you, Janice -- ducking and running), but I'm going to hold off on that as I think we might just have the requisite UI expertise in-house. And the source of it is surprising.
I'll wait for you all to be the judge of that. When the new homepage is rolled out, which should be this month. The mockup, designed by none other than Matt with the capable assistance of the artsy-geek in London is shockingly good, IMO! It's so good that I think all we'll be doing in the future for any changes to the layout or additional skins is sending Matt to London.
I'm sure I'm gonna hear from Chu about this being one of my long-winded messages. <g>
As for changes being done for the benefit of advertisers, London understands that though advertisers are very important since they are what separate the businesses from the hobbies, without users there's nobody to see and click on the ads. So keeping them and bringing in as many new ones as possible is a universal focus.
And as someone pointed out, the technology and the way it's presented is a major competitive advantage we enjoy. It's done the right way. It's no accident that one of our newest competitors is basically a clone of ours who's simply still a small and nimble operation capable of cranking out improvements at a rapid-fire pace. This is actually one of the talking points I've included in my presentation for our company meeting next week. That we used to be David but have become Goliath and need to get back to being David.
Anyway, my suspicion and currently my goal is that when we roll out the new version of the site, those who are using the default layout won't be able to tell anything's changed until they notice the unobtrusive but nifty things the new language will allow us to do.
It's gonna be tough for me, though. I'm very fond of my user-defined interface and I'm as much a creature of habit as anyone else. When it's different it just looks "wrong" for a while.
Drunken Troll? Surely not the one I'm thinking of dating back to RMIL!
Keeping the customers happy and bringing in new ones, including and especially with the interface and featureset, makes financial sense. It'd be foolish to screw up a good thing.
We don't do change for change's sake. Most of the reason for the rewrite as .NET is about performance, the ability to add features, and making life easier for the database server. It's not about changing the way everything looks and works, and the contractor wasn't brought in as a UI expert.