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
