Replies to post #1989 on The Question and Answer Board (IHUB)

[Poet]

Hi Gary,

I understand and accept your post about, despite the fact that you disgree with the CoB's actions on this thread, you will support his right to act as he wishes. I think this is admirable.

I have trouble with this bit, though:

Heck again look at how you deal with Jenna for example on your own thread. That poor woman
has tons of stalkers and harassers that are always making these very same type posts to get
her going and cause disruption and you do nothing I see top them but you delete her posts.

You appear to be saying that Jenna is not responsible for her own behavior, that provocation is an excuse to violate the IHub TOU. This surprises me, as I have never read a post by you in which you resort to such nastiness and namecalling. You are able to argue your points like a gentleman.

[Was (Bob)]

HUH??? I expected better from you but that is the banner you operate under.

That was such a stupendously simple post, especially coming from me, that I didn't think there was any chance of misconstruing it.

Note that I put "?!?" at the end of it. That's a surprised question. The post to which I was replying made it clear that the author thought that duct-taping someone's mouth shut is the appropriate way to deal with someone who disagrees with them.

I was expressing my surprise at that notion.

I am not in favor of it.

There are times I use the duct tape, though, as you touch on later but incorrectly.

A post comes on a stock site saying "This is a POS and all you pumpers will never get this going ... the only way it is going
is down and there is nothing you hysters can do about it."

That post is a delete the minute it hits the thread. The only topic it has is a bias scenario maybe because it is an OTC.

I agree that it's a delete. You don't think it should be?

Another of the unspoken rules, but actually one I was aware of, and it'll become spoken in the Terms of Use, and I addressed it in my first or second post to the site is this: If you want to make such a comment in your own general-commentary thread, go for it. But if you go to the thread specific to that stock, you need to change your approach.

Here's where I touched on this topic specifically, shortly after I got here:
http://www.investorshub.com/beta/read_msg.asp?message_id=75548

General Rudeness

This is something that wasn't addressed on Silicon Investor at all. It will be here.

Excluding vulgarity, personal attacks, threats, and invasions of privacy, members will be able to conduct their
own non-stock threads in any manner they see fit. If your thread is not specific to a particular stock or group
of stocks, feel free to post in any way you see fit.

For example, if you have such a thread and post "This stock is a POS and the CEO works part-time at my
estate pulling dandelions with his teeth. If this turd ever pokes its ugly head above $5 again, I'm going to short
it until you feel some serious pain.", that would be acceptable.

However, if you go to the thread that's specific to that stock and post the same thing, you're going to get a
warning or suspension. If you want to post your negative opinion on the stock-specific thread, do so in a civil
manner. For example, "This stock is a poor investment choice because the CEO's only prior experience is in
lawn maintenance and I will see any rally as an opportunity to re-enter my short position."

On threads that are specific to stocks, civility is expected.

As a side note, does anyone notice the commentary about conducting non-stock threads in any manner the chairperson sees fit? I was already leaning this direction back then. Actually, long before then. That and a couple of other posts were drafted up as Word documents long before I was even offered the job.

Arguably, "General Rudeness" should be part of the deletion-reason dropdown, and by my posting it in what I thought was going to be an easily-navigated thread, I intended it to have the effect of a Terms of Use modification (same as my rescinding "libel" as a valid deletion reason and doing away with the one-thread-per-stock rule except for OTCBB and Pinks), but I prefer, for now at least, that General Rudeness issues be brought directly to my attention. It *is* going to be added to the Terms of Use. But I don't want everyone making that call until I get a good feel for how they'd use that deletion reason if they could.

The upshot is, like it or not, if I'm at iHub, stock threads are going to be held to an even higher standard than they were/are at SI. The loosening of rules and my hold on non-stock threads is a counterbalance to the higher standards I'm imposing on the stock threads.

Heck again look at how you deal with Jenna for example on your own thread.

Unless you know all of the aspects of how I deal with a situation, you're not really qualified to dictate to me how I should be doing it. Especially when you base assumptions only on what you see, and dismiss as possibilities the things that you very well know may or may not be happening behind the scenes that you know just as well I won't disclose.

That poor woman has tons of stalkers and harassers that are always making these very same type posts to get her going

Has this activity been happening currently or is this a past-tense thing and you haven't noted any change or the plausible possibility that the change might have something to do with my own unseen actions.

Now getting back to the subject of Silicon Investor, apparently my Cadillac/Vega analogy was just too subtle, so here it is without the analogy:

Granted, the current Silicon Investor is but a shadow of its former self, but it is *not*, as so many would portray it, a complete cesspool.

I don't think it's in a very healthy state right now, but it's not dead or even mortally wounded yet. I think it's still the best of class. I'd rate us between 4th and 6th.

If someone wants to cite the ratio of stock to non-stock postings there as evidence that we're better than them, they're ignoring our own ratio. I'm quite certain ours is far worse. And to me, this is the most important metric of a quality stock site.

I find it offensive and think it doesn't speak very highly of us when someone proclaims that we're the best and that SI is garbage. I also believe it's just not the case. Have you looked at threads like the Moderated AMD thread there? How about our own AMD thread? 2 months old and it's got 10 posts. One of which was mine in an attempt to spark any kind of conversation there. How many of our members have an interest in companies like AMD (10 posts), INTC (76 posts), CSCO (31 posts after nearly a year), or MSFT (8 posts in 8 months)?

Of course, on the flip side, we do have OBOX (133 posts in 3 months) and ASKV (3638 posts in just 4 months) and both are very market-centric and VERY active (almost all signal), but it's my understanding we're supposed to dismiss those since they're populated by "cronies" rather than "real iHub members".

Though SI has tons of noise on it, and it's the kind of noise that simply isn't tolerated here, their signal/noise ratio still trounces ours.

I hope to improve it dramatically, but when it comes down to it, there's really not that much I can do about it. I can try to get people talking about market-related things (and an attempt actually worked better than I expected) but I sure can't force them. Or maybe I can. I'm not willing to do so at this point anyway.

If the members of iHub want to see the site's signal/noise ratio improve to a point where they can be justified in saying we're better than SI, well, it's in their power to make it happen.

What I'm trying to say here is that, in my opinion, we are NOT better than SI yet, though it's my expectation that we will be, but people who would rather focus on beating up on the admin and each other rather than talking about the market aren't really trying to solve the real problem. They're being very much a part of it.

Regards,

iHub Admin (Bob)

[Was (Bob)]

BTW,

Because of your openly confessed bias of OTCs, I do not agree with you being over anything with OTCs.

Openly confessed bias? Hate to break it to you, but at least 95% of my market activity is with OTC stocks. And I'm pretty active; probably averaging 3 trades per week now, but sometimes 3 per day. I'm *very* interested in seeing your response to that. <g>