To my understanding, unless Matt has set precedent to the contrary, which would trump my "understanding", if it's a Premium board but not stock-specific, the moderator can ban according to their whim, but not delete in the same manner. If the post doesn't break the site's rules, it remains. But the moderator can ban the poster and nobody on this side of the system will bat an eyelid.
In that aspect, iHub and SI use the same model except that SI extends this to include stock-specific boards. Which is okay because SI doesn't have a "one ticker: one board" rule. And some of the most popular boards on SI are stock-specific boards of the Moderated variety.
I think either type of posts described in the above 2 paragraphs should be a target for a warranted deletion. Those with a constant pumping agenda either to profit on a large position taken, or try to attract buys to raise the price so a shorting effort can be set up.....or bashers who are easily spotted by the masses now and add nothing to change anyone's mind. The only real purpose I see them doing is disrupting boards to prevent continued DD on a promising company to come out.
Both are easily spotted and overtime become glaringly obvious to anyone following their posts.
My take on that is that it's too subjective. Whether someone has a pumping or dumping agenda might seem "obvious" to one but "speculation" to another.
If a poster touts or bashes *without* violating the site's rules, their posts should be left alone and those who don't care to see their posts can simply put them on their Ignore list.
If someone is prone to personal attacks, vulgarity, spam, invasions of privacy, or anything against the SITE's rules, their post should be deleted, which will hit a screen for Matt's review for him to decide whether to restore and have a word with the moderator, or leave deleted and have a word with the poster. That's the basics of how this system's supposed to work.
The "Moderator" function on iHub is not an editorial one. It's an administrative one. Rather than having one over-worked Admin dealing with all of the users and getting to posts and deleting them when he's able to catch up to them (the SI model), our system is meant for the *quick* removal of posts that really do violate our rules and Matt deals with a relatively small number of moderators rather than a relatively large number of users.
Edit: To use a directly relevant example, many of Janices posts were deleted that did not violate the site's rules. Instead, it appears some latitude was given to permit deletion in this board's case "because the poster's mere presence is an annoyance and distraction", which I think is one of this experiment's biggest failings.
It took a long time to sell me on this site's model, but I *am* sold. I'm as open to experimentation as anyone, but this one went where it shouldn't have. Which could've been predicted but not with 100% certainty, so I certainly don't have an issue with the experiment having been tried.
So, the short version is that had this been a Premium board, and Janice's posts were left intact, but she'd been banned at the moderator's whim, no problem. As long as it's not a stock-specific board, which this board sometimes was. The old iBox was a giveaway.
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