Replies to post #22545 on The Question and Answer Board (IHUB)

[Churak]

Koi...Phred is a Phish? I never knew that.

[0nceinalifetime]

What am I missing?

"As iHub grows, so do the numbers on the North and South side. So there has to be a scalable solution for it.

I don't think you will ever get everyone to agree, why would you want to? I think people come here to see both sides of the same coin, not to join in a big stock love-fest while the value of their portfolios decline and (at least) getting plenty of emotional support from those around since everyone is in the same boat.

I suppose if there really are as many "shorts" participating here as some of the longs imagine then we would have private boards where everyone was cheering and celebrating as the price dropped. Simultaneously, everyone in the long clubhouse would be consoling one another telling them to hold on for better days. But I don't think we will see any short-seller clubhouses because the shorts that participate on these boards are largely a figment of the longs imagination.

I guess I don't see what the problem is as long as everyone remains civil. What is this "North-South problem"?

Once

[Koikaze]

Thanks, Matt. I understand the problem you're trying to address. If I have a question about it, it would be the wisdom of imagining there is a middle ground for polar opposites. There is none, so what you're left with is keeping the participants civil with each other.

To me, it's like raising children (my wife and I had seven). You can't always please them. You have to lead them, even when they don't want to be led. My approach, "I may not always be right, but I'm always your father." wasn't popular, but it was effective. (... with due regard to the value of my wife's influence, which was undoubtedly greater than mine ... but I'm telling the story).

In any case, someone has to rap the knuckles of those overzealous individuals who go too far. You do it by putting people in jail, but I think you'd like to nip more of the problems in the bud. To do that, someone has to be willing to help the transgressors see the error of their ways ... before you have to step in. One way to do that is to take excessive, repetitive, offensive material off the board before it infects others.

Fred

[Cassandra]

Matt said: On the general stock boards, such as Zeev's, everybody meets for a common reason and the majority get along.

On the stock specific boards, somehow, over the years, a North and a South mentality has developed and too many people get caught up in the "war" instead of focusing on the stocks they are battling over. It always comes down to a war of motives on these boards, not a collective gathering of the minds.

Now Matt, why do you think that is? On Zeev's board people are really looking for information on how to make money in whatever market we are in, not focusing on or preferring any specific stock.

On the stock-specific boards, there is only one issue - whether or not that specific stock is likely to appreciate or depreciate in the future. There are people who hold both opinions - some that believe it has the potential to appreciate and some that believe it is destined to go down. Just like stock analysts, we do not all agree and should not all be expected to agree.

The main issue is to support our opinions with our reasoning and any verifiable facts that we can post.

"Getting along" isn't the issue -- getting to the most persuasive opinion is (at least for those with an open mind who seek truthful information on their investments).

Your division into only two camps, touts and bashers, leaves out all of the people who simply post seeking to find real information and those who seek to post real information to inform others (without pumping or bashing).

IMO, you have a very biased view that everyone who posts on a stock message board is either looking to pump or bash the stock, and that no one posts in either a quest for real information or to post factual information.

Since you are the owner of a stock discussion board, I find it to be rather disturbing that you do not think anyone posts simply for the sake of finding or revealing factual information.

It seems to me that you believe specific stock message boards are all about propaganda, either for or against a company, and that no one posts purely to obtain or reveal factual information.

I could not disagree more. I think that the majority of people who participate on these boards are looking for real information, but don't know who to believe. That's why it's up to people who present an opinion to support it with the verifiable facts and the reasoning behind it, whether they be pro or con a specific stock. Yet you are clearly biased against those who present facts that are negative to specific stocks, portraying that we must have some sort of profit agenda for posting our verifiable facts.

Unfortunately, the predominate opinion that has prevailed on Internet stock message boards has been that anyone who criticizes a specific stock is a paid "basher" hired to spread misinformation that will cause some to sell an otherwise very valuable stock.

Sadly, it turns out that most critics have been correct, especially in the realm of penny stocks, where the "basher" issue has been the greatest.

Matt, I can not influence your obviously strongly held belief that anyone who posts anything negative about a specific stock has some nefarious motive, but I can assure you that you are dead wrong. It may take you and those who follow your reasoning years to understand this, but someday you will. For some, it will be at the end of their financial rope.

Good luck in promoting your opinion about judging motivations as a reliable way to decipher the facts about information posted on iHub.