which in turn cause battles which are meaningless to the sincere investor.
It's not about "the sincere investor". Never was and never will be.
It's about *everyone* who wants to talk about a particular company or the market, both the upside and downside.
I haven't done a lot of reading lately, but the bottom line to me is that any model that allows "Once" to be prevented from posting there unless he breaks the site rules would be a very flawed model.
It's not about warm fuzzies and "believing in" a company and having a forum specifically for "believers" to congregate.
It's about having a forum that can be used as one of many research tools for deciding whether or not to take or keep a position in a company. And knowing that what you're getting isn't some "edited" version of the general feeling. An "edit" done, in nearly all cases, by people who would have a long position in the security and would therefore have a financial interest in such "editing". By "edit" in this case I don't mean literal editing of messages. I mean control over cumulative content.
In nearly every board on any site, far more than 90% of the participants are going to be long the security in question. Democracy doesn't work in an environment like that.
The effect of this is a board over run with off topics and petty spats which wasn’t in the business plan of IHUB or the interest of investors. Emphasis mine.
The naysayers would get voted off the island, which would certainly be in the best "interest of investors", but that doesn't make it right.
My observation (over several years of this) is that the problems you're seeing, while I'll quickly admit they'd go away if the naysayers are kicked off the island, aren't their doing. The problems are, in nearly any situation I've observed, caused by people who can't control themselves. Often people who are too much "in love" with a security and have forgotten that the reason we're all here (or *should be* the reason) is to make money. That we don't invest in companies because we "like" the companies, but invest in them because we think we can make money by doing so. But not to manipulate our way into profit, even if manipulation isn't the real intent.
And to my knowledge, iHub's Business Plan doesn't address the interest of investors in specific securities.
"Open" is a big word with us. We won't allow people to be removed because they or their views are unpopular. Or because other people are unable to control themselves in their presence.
All that said, it is possible that someday we might offer something along the lines of private boards, but I wouldn't expect them to be popular. There would be many restrictions and the cost would not be cheap. And IF they ever happened, it wouldn't be even remotely soon.
I really don't want to re-open the topic of private boards again, but at this point, here are the rules/requirements I'd have for such a thing:
1. The board moderators would pay us a monthly fee for operation of such a board. The board's users can pool funds to make this monthly payment.
2. Such a board would be "invitation only". That is, nobody would be able to even *read* the board unless the moderators allowed them to. The exception would be me and Matt and any accounts held by members of regulatory or law enforcement agencies. For example, people with the SEC would have access that couldn't be removed and wouldn't be known about by the board operators.
3. Such boards would be considered subsites. In many ways "separate sites". We'd provide the technology, computing power, and bandwidth. Our involvement would end past that. The "owners" of the boards would be able to make their own rules and would have all responsibility for enforcing them. And would be the ones who would answer to the SEC or other parties for anything that happened in those boards.
4. Only people who have active subscriptions to iHub would be allowed to read or write to those boards. Even if the board "owners" allowed them, they couldn't access them unless they're also iHub subscribers.
5. Entry into such a sub-site would include a disclaimer and the user indicating their acceptance of the disclaimer. The verbage would include strongly-worded warnings that the board is likely run by people who are long the security in question and that the contents of the board should be treated with even more skepticism than the contents of other boards because it's very likely that negative information that could be very relevant to investing decisions has either been removed or has been otherwise prevented.
6. A public board under the currently-existing model would still continue to exist and operate as it always had.
7. Such a board would otherwise have carte blanche. They could allow vulgarity and personal attacks if they like, but not invasions of privacy. Things like that, if we feel they're not properly addressed, could possibly result in suspension or termination of a board's operational status. As in becoming read-only for a few days or not even being readable.
I don't mind making money, but, for me, there are huge philosophical barriers to any model that isn't based on our current model, which is that ultimate responsibility for the content of boards lies with a person (our Administrator) who has no financial or other interest in the security in question. And, *very importantly*, doesn't have or at least act on any feeling of like or dislike for any participants.
So, again, I don't want to re-open the topic of private boards, but want to make sure it's understood that though I don't like the idea, it's an idea I can live with under certain conditions.
The question I would pose to you is this: With the restrictions and requirements enumerated above, would you still be just as keenly interested in a private board? I know you said "It's not a private board the IDCC investors want", but, to me, if a board is for a specific security's *investors* and is to be operated in a manner that is aimed specifically at "the sincere investor", a private board would be the only way to go.
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