As New Coke and Crystal Pepsi have proven, that rule about "If ain't broke don't fix it" should be tenaciously adhered to and can be extremely costly when ignored.
However, "If ain't broke don't fix it" doesn't really apply here because something was definitely broken imo.
There were flame wars erupting long before the overhaul, but far too often mods & admins were heavy-handed and removed posts without rhyme or reason or on a whim.
Many of my posts that were "removed by admin" were restored after I questioned their removal, meaning they were wrongfully removed in the first place.
More than once I argued about a post being removed because the words "investors" or "shareholders" was viewed as an attack on other members. Despite my protestations that's it's ludicrous to forbid the words investors and shareholders on a site made for investors and shareholders, the posts were not restored.
Your messages need to focus on the company and the stock and should not contain comments about people who post on the board whether specific or in general.
While the old Handbook rules were applied too harshly yet did more to diminish attacks, the new ones are too hands-off and allow almost unrestricted vitriolic posting. There needs to be some middle ground or - here's a thought - make people obey the TOS.
As I've pointed out ad-nauseam, the TOS and the Handbook are in direct conflict with each other, and that's part of the problem. Which one are we supposed to adhere to? The one that expressly prohibits threatening, abusive, harassing, vulgar, hateful, posts, or the one that only says "Debate the message rather than attacking the messenger" and "avoid vulgar name calling?"
The Moderators' Guidelines are more restrictive, but why would the average member read the mod's guidelines?
For example, the Community Guidelines don't mention anything about religion, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, age or disability, but the mod's page does.
The Community guidelines say "No egregious vulgarity." Wow - that's completely undefined and open to interpretation. But the mod's guidelines attempt to define it and even allow some usage of the "F" word:
If society has deemed it appropriate for a 13 year old to hear, it is unlikely that it will be offensive to the majority of Users. It should be noted that PG13 does include some use of the “f” word.
The admins continuously instruct members to report issues to them, but after I had reported one mod numerous times for personal attacks I was threatened with being blocked from sending PMs to admins.
AI
