What method should we use to get rid of spam/inappropriate comments? (feel free to add additional poll options in the comments)
November 12, 2009 by korvus
Give a trusted group of users the permission to remove comments at will
36% (46 votes)
Have a rating system where comments are rated on a scale (4/5/6/7 stars), and low value ones are hidden/removed
12% (15 votes)
Have a simple Spam/Not Spam rating system, with comments hidden/removed if they have too many Spam votes relative to Not Spam
31% (40 votes)
Aggressively remove commenting powers from users (or banning them) when they disobey the rules
18% (23 votes)
Do nothing but have Bill and myself police the comments, and risk us getting fed up and turning off the comments occasionally
4% (5 votes)
Total votes: 129
Comments
addendum
unless you have some sort of "comment bank or spending money", you run the risk that someone votes for everyone or against everyone. Limiting the number of daily votes, the voter has to be more conscious (sp) of how to use his vote.
Otherwise we have the Chicago School of Politics...vote early and vote often.
Re: addendum
Agree, BSI.
I voted for second option for now, until we see how it goes and perhaps leading to a simplified system of 2 or 3 later on. See my edited post # 52274.
I like voting, as long as plenty of options are available.
spam
I've always considered this Cara Community site mostly spam free. Is that because it's quickly deleted? Whatever you've been doing all along seems really good to me. Any overt spam I quickly ignore anyway.
Re: spam
Perhaps spam is too restrictive in the usual connotation. Here it would include, I believe, deliberate attempts to direct readers to an unwanted website. That would be in the eye of the beholder.
Use the ignore Buttons
This includes everyone. If you do not like it, ignore it with the system that was set in place but never used. Instead people choose to write/e-mail to Bill Cara and cry about things.
I wonder if these people ever stopped to think that Bill is running money and what that responsibility entails instead of adding to his workload and stress levels.
In my mind, the ignore buttons have not been implemented by these people who seem to have such thin skin. I sure would not want to be around them when they incur losses.
I'm very close to walking away from all blogging and being the lone wolf that I am. That should really make some people happy. Ha Ha
P.S. There is also the scroll function which allows one to by pass views one finds objectionable.
Re: spam
Illini has point, it's not just "spam" that is the problem, that's just a small factor. The last two users who were banned were not spamming. "spam" is not the correct word.
Re: spam
There are two problems we're trying to solve here. I'm concerned we're conflating them.
1) removing offensive commentary. when folks break the rules here, there needs to be enforcement in a timely manner, to provide the type of content that Bill stands behind.
2) encouraging folks to provide commentary that's relevant to the community
Enforcement of the rules is a requirement. Bill won't support the site otherwise.
Encouraging folks to provide relevant commentary - the spam removal - is fraught with difficulty. There are a large number of views on what is spam. Some think linking in articles from elsewhere is good, others think it's lame. Copying econoday postings: helpful, or annoying? I'm sure views diverge. Personally I like 'em but not everyone feels the same.
We have to execute on #1- t's a must-have. And I think that job belongs to trusted people - individuals - who can use judgement to either edit or remove those offensive comments rapidly. I say we just recruit a half-dozen or so moderators in different timezones that provide rough coverage, give them the power to edit, delete, or ban. You might want to require announcement of banned members, to give the community a chance for feedback.
As for spam filtering, I suggest we leave that to the "ignore" button. That's what I use when I find a thread getting tedious. Occasionally an otherwise-sane member gets charged up about something and won't let go (I've been guilty of that in the past, certainly) and that's what Ignore is good for.
If we're desperate to have a feedback system, perhaps simply a "like/dislike" button can be provided whose only goal is to provide feedback, not filtering. Members can use that feedback to self-censor, if they want to. "Voting someone off the island" seems - unfortunate to me. I'm not even sure about like/dislike. Minority views are often useful. God knows Kaimu would have been thought a crackpot only a year or two ago. End the Fed indeed.
Re: addendum
re providing relevant commentary........... is there some way to cut off comments longer than say 600 words...... commentary on this site has become quite long on some days
Re: spam
:As for spam filtering, I suggest we leave that to the "ignore" button."
Dave, the problem with this is, spammer posting the link to his site effectively gets free ride by attracting the traffic and upping his ranking in search engines - all by simply piggybacking Bill's hard work. Start some site and wait for the crowds to discover it - and you'll wait for eons. Get (or as the case may be organize) regular mention and link on another site(s) with heavy traffic and watch your rank and traffic skyrocketing. Remember some guy popping up with practically irrelevant commentary, like some generic rant, followed by link to a very lame "portal"? That was exactly what he was doing.
I don't believe it's fair to Bill to leave such posts on the blog. Spam should be removed.
Re: Use the ignore Buttons
I definetely concur with Telestar3d. The ignore buttons are the way to go. But this has to be in conjunction with full time Moderators who can immediately delete spam posts. Moderators would also have to be able to differentiate between spam and someone with strong opinions not everyone may like or agree with. Not everyone is going to agree with all of Bills posts or any of the many other members here and and that can create either intelligent dialogue and learning or angry debate. Hopefully the former. No one on this blog has all the answers all the time. What we have are objective opinions that may be based on an expertise or experience. Those opinions need to be heard.
I would suspect that Bill learns on a daily basis as we all do in these crazy market conditions where tried and true techinical analysis has been thrown on its perverbial butt along with many other tried and true market indicators and has so many doubting their trading prowness. Healthy discussion makes us all smarter hopefully. Keeping it civil is the main key.
Re: spam
VAD said -Dave, the problem with this is, spammer posting the link to his site effectively gets free ride by attracting the traffic and upping his ranking in search engines
Ahhh I see. Yes what you say makes sense - let me change my statement then. (I was mis-using the term spam, I'm afraid)
SPAMming needs to be against the rules. Break this rule, and you are first deleted, and if deleting doesn't work, banned. Up to one of the moderators to enforce. Its a judgement call thing, and requires some amount of sensitivity.
Addressing the issue of relevance, however, is still an open question for me. Do we have a voting mechanism to provide feedback to posters to give them a sense of what the community finds relevant?
Honestly, I don't think it should be an automated filter. For this group, I think simple feedback is all thats necessary.
Re: spam
David there are many valid educational sites out there dedicated to knowledge, education, trading strategies and the like that can be very beneficial to readers here so that puts the additional burden on moderators to have to evaluate those links/sites as well which may be very justified to have a posting here on Cara. Maybe moderators should look at them quickly to make sure they are legit but thats about it. Let them stand otherwise.
So many posts here are to links that may or may be reputable. Tough call to ban them. Anyway, who cares if people post links to to other sites and they get search engine position. If they are worth it then its a good thing if they aren't they will die on the vine in short order beacuse everyone will see that. People come to Bill's site from other peoples links so why not return the favor. Otherwise we become exactly what we critize so much here of others. Nothing to be insecure about letting other links in.
Re: spam
"Addressing the issue of relevance, however, is still an open question for me. Do we have a voting mechanism to provide feedback to posters to give them a sense of what the community finds relevant?
Honestly, I don't think it should be an automated filter. For this group, I think simple feedback is all thats necessary."
I agree with David on this aspect of the blog.
In my history of posting I find it most frustrating when I have posted something that I think may be relevant to some of the members and receive no feedback.
This leads to the mental question, "Is any one out there listening?"... and if I get the feeling that the answer is no, then "Why should I post?"
Re: spam
Golfer, it does operate as sort of an ol' boys network. I would surmise that is certainly not the spirit or intention of Bill but it somehow manifests that way. Your same question was actually responded to if memory serves me correctly some time ago.Someone else made the same point as you and the responses in so many words was "that you need to make a few posts and win the respect of fellow posters to be acknowledged and responded to". I found that a little childish and simply left the blog after reading that not wanting to waste my time here anymore. I am only back now to help inject some feedback to help this blog develop so it becomes more attractive to others out there and more useful to me and my trading. I only hope this country club mentality stops cold and people respond to all intelligent postings if indeed it presents a valid topic. Without question there have been very long winded conversations between members about practically nothing.
Again people I am only putting in my objective critisism here.
Poll
I have never used the ignore thread function but will now attempt to do so (when the number of comments increases again). Another feature that might help is adding a 'favorite commenter' function that readers can use to read through the posts they want and skip the rest.
Re: spam
better - Without question there have been very long winded conversations between members about practically nothing.
Hehe I've been long winded before. :) Once or twice...
Re: spam
I have followed the same route as you in terms of the blogging but I still find reading Bill's views and trading/market knowledge expressed in the daily C and C's and his Weekly Reports of much value to me so I have the site on my "must reads list."
Early results for the spam removal poll:
Early results for the spam removal poll:
I find it interesting and disturbing that (by a slim margin) the first option is leading. Interesting in that this is exactly what most of us here protest when this approach is used to run our economy and the markets.
"Give a trusted group of users" control.
Trust involves more than honesty. It is a relinquishing of judgment to the subjective opinions of others. In my opinion this will negate any meaningful reason to come here anymore.
I realize this is not really up to the group since it is Bill's time and energy which is the driving force here. But while it is ultimately up to Bill, it has been the free exchange of thoughts and ideas which has kept me coming back.
Bad behavior is a lot like pornography — more difficult to define than to recognize. We've seen some, but most people, most of he time seem to honor even those views with which they totally disagree.
Personally, I have found my views modified on some issues over time.
Re: Early results for the spam removal poll:
So Grym, I think there's a big difference between relinquishing control to a group of faceless folk you don't know, and letting some of your friends police the neighborhood for you. This is a pretty collegial environment, these guys would be doing a service.
The way I see it - I want a group of my friends to pick up the trash in the neighborhood. You see it as something sinister, and I just see it as trash collection. I'm happy to volunteer to help with the trash, but if you worry I'll throw away the wrong things, I'm just as happy not doing it.
One other point. Bill remains in charge. We can try it out and see how it goes. If it doesn't work, we can try something else. It's not like we're putting the Communists in power who require a lot of bodies on the ground to remove if we're unhappy.
Bottom line - whatever method "wins", let's just try it out. If it doesn't work, and we don't like it, then we can move to the 2nd most popular method and see how that one goes.
I think option number three is a good choice
Actually 1 and 3 are both good but I prefer 3. The idea of including the readers/posters in the decision seems to be reasonable. The idea of people posting messages that are absolutely spam can be handled by 1 or 3 depending on which is fastest. Method 3 has an advantage when the messages are questionable.
My $.02 worth
No answer/option is perfect. I go with a handful of moderators/arbiteurs for this reason.
Look...Bill has a set of rules built around common decorum. Most of us abide by them. It's somewhat like what that judge said about "pornography". I know it when I see it.
As for some digression from a narrow focus on "trading". Well, Bill often adresses the macro-economic environment. The economic environment is itself a study in the intersections of human nature. That some of the discussions somewhat digress, can in themselves have content that is useful and informative. As Dave said, our beloved "Crackpot" Kaimu. That people can bring ground level information (Grym) about societal consequences to economic/political decisions.
Maybe the larger digressions should be tempered until the afterhours or towards the weekends, but I find them to be part of the foundation that makes this a "community."
Voting
Grym, re. the "small lead".
A few years ago I ran a survey for Bill here. We received 212 responses in 1 hour. Total was over 700 responses, this in the middle of summer (low traffic), and it was a lengthy survey. Conversations then used to be deep and meaningful, although beginners had and have always been welcome to ask questions. It appears that most of these users have disappeared. The voting today seems to be in much smaller numbers and the result would be biased to the new type of users, the same ones that may have caused the vast majority of others to disband.
This is why I think there should be a separate thread for the "buy x sell y, lost z% made w%" and free for all (less spam), and the gambling type of users. Free for all, nobody can complain. But there is no such option to vote for. Most of these new type of users it seems don't know what they are doing (this is very dangerous, someone might follow their lead, I wonder if they think about that). This does not include 'professionals' like G034 or optionoracle or Vad or etc. etc. who are a pleasure to read.
The issue is not spam, that is very easy to fix. That is why I think that particular voting option is not correct. The above problems cannot be solved with the ignore options.
Maybe with fixing this the old users and level of discussion will come back, maybe not. Who knows.
This is just my opinion and not meant as disrespect to anyone.
Voting
The rating system, coupled with the ability of users to ignore participants or threads they find add little value to the discourse is the best way. Moreover, it is the most democratic and in keeping with the philosophy of social equity. All IMHO.
Lost in a jungle of attitudes and perceptions
..and there appears to be no clean and clear path to Perfection.
Sort of feels like Life itself, doesn't it..
btw, when is this market going to go down so I can feel good about jumping in again? :-)
Re: Early results for the spam removal poll:
I voted for the first option, I have seen other forums that use moderators to control a blogs or a forums content.In my view someone or a group of persons trusted by Bill that will ensure that the rules are followed, thats all they need do.From time to time there will always be those that will push patience to the limit and will have to be removed for spamming and or breaking the rules.
Why not do two of them
I would implement #1 and #3.
Having this forum moderated by a group of members would be just fine. If there is abuse of that power, there is always a higher authority. I for one would like to see the drivel just stopped and having a group of moderators could be the ticket.
#3 would allow for quick removal of spam. In fact, the moderators might use this as the first line of defense and take more drastic action if a user persists.
Having a moderatored forum in this day and age is almost a must. Between spam and people posting way off topic threads, the usefulness of the forum can quickly decline. Most of the forums I belong to work very hard to maintain the topics on point.
I vote we give both a try and see how it goes. I have a feeling it will work out pretty well. One suggestion, if a comment is marked as spam or moderated away, can an email be sent to the author? That way they know it is gone and why.
This is Bill's site what he
This is Bill's site what he wants to do should prevail. My feeling is that he designates who is in charge of monitoring the comments. If the rules are clear- they can easily be enforced. Remove the poster after say three posts that violate the rules.
You can't allow comments that degenerate the site into nonsense...just like you can't let a kid continually disrupt a classroom and be an effective teacher... Bill's the teacher and it is his classroom. Let him determine the discipline, otherwise, the site will become something he would not enjoy participating in.
Bill should be able to determine what content is distributed in his classroom...to reach his desires for the site...and there are many great posters here.
we have seen this before
anyone who's spent enough time on website forums knows this becomes a problem as a site grows.
i would opine that there is a distinct difference b/w clear spammers and those who link articles. you build up a reputation as being someone who isnt interested in spamming and you get additional leadway to post articles and links. if you do it right away you get the banhammer.
most busy forums seem to do best with a divided approach with a gold forum, general topics forum, rants forum, social issues/politics forum, and even a separate forum to discuss the site itself and suggestions.
i dont think anyone should hope to exercise too much control over the content of commentary as there will always be crooks and ass-hats on forums. but if they can be shifted in their appropriate place it will prevent people from getting lost in a sea of disconnected comments.
if you dont like hearing people say "i bough x for $4 and sold it for $4.50" then you stay out of the day traders forum. same goes if you dont like talking politics or spirituality on a site.
my 2 cents.
Vote
Since this is Bills site, we should acknowledge that we ALL must live by the rules that he imposes on us, in order for each of us to freely participate. Otherwise chaos reigns. I have enjoyed this site for a long while, and would hate to see it lost because of the few who feel they can impose their views. Social equity is one of Bills guiding principals, and we owe it to ourselves to follow his lead for an open discourse!
Re: Voting
SiO2,
"A few years ago I ran a survey for Bill here. We received 212 responses in 1 hour. Total was over 700 responses... It appears that most of these users have disappeared. The voting today seems to be in much smaller numbers... the vast majority of others to disband."
The declining numbers speak volumes. A few weeks ago when I revisited this blogging site and was scanning through the posts I kept asking myself, "where have all the bloggers (those were here 2 to 3 years ago)gone?
I went back to the archives and made a list of those that were here a number of years ago and compared it to today's... not many still here as I see it.
Is this blogging site better or worse for this change?
I know things evolve but there is good evolution and bad evolution... the banking system comes to mind.
Another aspect of today's site that I see is the relatively few responses to Bill's comments at the beginning of the Daily C and C, which if I am not mistaken used to generate much discussion in the past.
Just some musings of a long-time member of the site.
Spam
It is like owning a company and making it successful. This blog is created and "owned" by Bill Cara. He is entitled to define/shape a community as per his vision; and it is our option not to participate. It is not a democratic entity. It is time to make a decision and get back to market comments. I am new to the blog and enjoyed it so far ignoring comments I find useless.
Rules Violation system
Why not have a true “Rules Violation” comment system. Categorize the rules into two groups; #1 zero tolerance and #2 general. Any viewer spotting a violation would have the ability to denote it. When a charge for rules violation is denoted, the commenter must also cite the rule being violated. Allow the original poster to view any/all violation charges being made. Comments receiving a #1 violation would be removed/hidden and reviewed by Korvus to determine further action. Any poster who is cited more than five (or whatever) times for a #2 violation would also be reviewed by Korvus. Otherwise use the ignore button when not interested in a poster’s comments.
Agenda
Start Over
Why do people go to Bill Cara Site?
Answer: To Make Money on the Stock Market.
A new (and complex) rating system was recently installed which encourages members to judge each other. BASED ON WHAT? Vocabulary? Stock picks? Grammar? Personality? Screename? Length of post? Speech?
I think this rating system is doomed for failure (edited: in the existing state without specific criteria of what is to be considered when rating a comment. To make matters more confusing, a 1-5 level system.)
For most, including myself, I am not brave enough to comment any longer on this blog under these conditions. I will continue to read and take but there is too much risk for me to share my thoughts.
If you insist on a rating system, I suggest tracking and rating members based on their stock picks so that we can All Make More Money??? If you do this, I bet that 99% of the whining will Go Away and I would be willing to bet that Peggie Sue is not going to run whining to Bill that Beaniebird hurt her feelings while discussing the Global Windfall Tax on Locomotives in China if Beaniebird has a 99% accuracy on picking stocks!!!
Sales 101 - It always boils down to the money
For the spam problem - Save yourself all the headache of having to figure how how design your own system. I agree to use the Clist system. Put a button up to flag the Moderator and copy and paste the Craiglist rules onto your site
I hope my comments here are helpful.
I hope everyone Makes Money on the Stock Market Today
sincerely
vb
Keep 'em coming
Keep the suggestions coming. I've read every comment, and it is giving me a better idea for what people want. The fact that some people are discouraged from posting with the rating system in place is a big negative.
The main goal is to attract as much quality discussion here as possible. Part of that includes keeping the "signal to noise" ratio high (getting rid of spam or offensive, irrelevant comments). Part of that means that people should feel free to post anything they think might contribute to the discussion.
The secondary goal is to keep this community in line with Bill's vision. Whenever he sees it diverging too much from what he wants, he gets (understandably) frustrated. He enjoys the fact that teachers and students use the blog, and he likes the diversity of our commenters, which are two reasons why he has been so strict about offensive and inappropriate comments.
To be clear, we don't want to be censoring people. This isn't a marketing/branding issue. It's all about finding the balance that makes this community have the most value to the most people. This site is about teaching and learning. Through sharing knowledge, we have a chance to be successful traders, despite the deck being stacked against us by those who run the system. I am fully committed to making this the best community possible, so I am going to avoid anything that forces too many people away. You can't always make everyone happy, but I'll try!
Re: Keep 'em coming
I was an early voter and just changed my vote from 2 to one. I find it frustrating and time consuming to read and rate on the scaling system. Would rather scroll through things that are not of interest and leave it at that.
Maybe you do a combo of 1 and 3.
Re: Keep 'em coming
Korvus,
"Bill Cara invites all students of the market to freely read and discuss capital markets and social equity"
Perhaps a re-write of the mission statement. (Blogs and sites evolve over time and perhaps this needs to be looked at)
Encourage Trader Netiquette.
Remind users the blog is frequented by high level traders who are in the midst of making high stake trades. Be considerate of this fact and understand, these high level traders can be short tempered and on edge when market makes a sudden turn. Encourage users to keep posts short, on topic and to the point during trading hours. (don't ban people for being rude, educate them and encourage to use "Cara Netiquette")
Then copywrite and Brand "Cara Netiquette" and send me a check (just kidding!)
These are just some ideas
Have Fun and keep it simple
vb
Ray Dalio - Bridgewater's approach
Bridgewater, by some measures the world's largest hedge fund, builds portfolios from "multiple non-correlated return streams". Ray Dalio also has impressive insights into the crash and current aftermath. Here are a few sources of his wisdom:
Interesting 18 minute audiocast: http://www.pionline.com/article/20090406/FREE/9040...
First, if you don’t know his style, it’s best to read this:
http://cnnmoney.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?...
These are from March, April, but show an impressive discipline and view of what’s likely to happen over the next few years .
Also, his February, 2000 interview in Barrons was very good:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://4.bp.bl...
My 2 cents
Agreed that I've never had a problem with spam on this site, however I have had issues with a couple of individuals that I'm glad to have seen banned. A couple of bad apples should not ruin this great experience of reading Bill and other well written comments by the community. I'm fine putting people like Korvus in control and letting them in their subjective opinion warn and then ban people from the site. One warning or zero warnings and then you're gone.
Re: My 2 cents
Grasshopper. Would be interested in knowing which two you are referring and what was it about their posts that was offensive or a problem for you. Just trying to get a handle on what irritates people about posters here.
I find that if people just talk about a topic intelligently and with purpose then there should be no issues but when posts become inside jokes or conversations between members then there is a problem.
Any trades mentioned should have an absolute reasoning behind why they were made. Technical, fundamental, political whatever but what was it that had you buying or selling the investment vehicle. Just saying you did something means nothing. It needs to mean something in my mind to have any value to me.
Bottom line I believe that if you post a topic it should say something relative to the markets and making money
define spam
Question: Sometimes I post a link to congress, an article or an info blog (no ads, no offers) to assist the background of a comment. It would help to know if such posts are considered spam or are we just talking about people trying to hijack the Cara Community? Thanks in advance.
Voting, TOS violations and Blog format...
As to the current rating system proposal, it should only apply to post removal as inappropriate, ie X removal votes and it is hidden to be reviewed later by the admin panel. We shouldn't have to be voting just to keep regular posts from being hidden.
However even just voting on inappropriate posts puts undue work on the admin panel. Many sites use the report a TOS (Terms of Service), violation procedure. There is a button for TOS violation which brings up a form where you have to identify the specific violation and also the context of the whole situation which may have spanned several posts.
Blogs and text are difficult as so much of our direct communication is through body language and facial expression, which are all missing here. Face to face we can easily see that a comment has been taken out of context and instantly react to correct the situation. But here on the blog it may have been a quick post on the way to work, only to read later on that evening the barrage of posts debating the pros and cons of your post and all the comments totally misread what you were trying to say. It happens.
Reminds me of a quote years ago, went something like this.
"I know you think you understand what you thought I said, but unfortunately what I said was not exactly what I meant".
As far as the format I prefer the Twin or multi blog system;
1) Day trading, scalping chat line, similar to the minute by minute posts on part of Vad's site or many other sites.
2) Cara 100 ( or Cara 100 plus wannabee 100's, as picked by Bill), short / med / long term outlook. A place where the discussion and targets are beyond the EOD. Cara 100 stocks and longer term outlooks for energy, commodities, tech, bio etc., the sectors we should be preparing for weeks or months in advance. I see it being more of a research blog where participation could be every few days or even weekly and still keep up.
WRT the Free speech argument, yes I agree, go set up your own blog and say whatever you want, but it doesn't apply everywhere, anytime. You cannot yell FIRE in a crowded theater, you cannot tell stag party jokes at my children's Christmas party, etc. and telling the host and everyone else they can just ignore you is not good enough, I would ask you to leave.
This site is Bill's living room, his name is over the door, he is our host and I view adding value as the minimum price of admission.
Re: Agenda
I have to agree with vb here. The ratings system makes us judge others.
One site I visit regularly here in Australia offers a thumbs up and a thumbs down tab with a running total. A similar thing could be used. Any score of say -5 that comment is removed/hidden. Saves having to rate people's comments on a sliding scale, instead if you think its a quality post u thumb it up, if its a poor quality post/spam its a thumbs down and if enough agree its gone.
Just another approach....
Re: Ray Dalio - Bridgewater's approach
Jock,
Thanks for the link to the Dalio interview. Here is a summary of what I got from it.
---------
From the 4-6-09 audio interview:
• People need to be aware of the possibility of unexpected events.
• 90% of people are too heavily into equities most of the time.
• He likes 15 or more uncorrelated investment return streams (not linked to each other or to a basic factor — ie: an index or category).
• There MUST be a restructuring of all this debt.
• "Bankruptcy is beautiful" to eliminate the debt burden.
• 2008 was price readjustment time. 2009 and 2010 will see many bankruptcies as debt restructured. (and M&A as well — IMO)
• The attempt to stimulate credit growth will not work.
• There will be rallies, however, just as in the 1929 Depression.
• This is a global problem not just US.
Traditionally this kind of situation produces:
• About 3 years of contraction (economic and stock market)
• 20% decline in economic activity (GDP)
• 50% decline in total wealth
• 80% stock decline
• A gradual return to "normal" over about 10 years
• Longer time for stock market peak to peak
My current thoughts
Thanks for all the input. I'll leave this open until I actually make a change, but here is what I am thinking now.
The second option (what we do now) and the fifth option (what we did before) have a combined 16% of the vote. So change is needed.
The key here is that right now, Bill and I maintain the blog, and we are both busy. Moderating a users' first few comments has done a great job of cutting down pure spam (advertising) because most spammers won't spend the time to write a few quality posts before posting spam comments. We still have problems with users disobeying the rules, but Bill and I often don't see these posts for hours after they've been posted. We want a way to filter these out of the discussion earlier.
I currently think the following option will be best: We have a thumbs up / thumbs down system that we specify is based on following the rules. If a post breaks the rules, vote it down. If a post is getting voted down that you think should stay, you can vote it up. If it goes below a certain threshold, we will hide it by default (but still allow others to view it) until a moderator can check it out, in which case it will be deleted if we decide it should be. I will also have a group of community moderators that can make posts invisible to other users if they believe they shouldn't be there (but only Bill, myself, and perhaps a few others we know personally will be able to actually delete a message -- this way we can always override a community moderator's decision).
This is basically a combination of #1 and #3, which many people suggested. And those two are also the two options with the highest votes. This doesn't address post quality, but I'm not sure how to do that in a reasonable way.
FYI, I saw a comment about wanting to be able to follow specific users. If you go to a user's page (click on their username), you can then click on "Bookmark this user". That will not only highlight their posts in the discourse, but you can also go to Site Index -> Bookmarks -> Comments by my bookmarked users if you want to see a chronological list of comments by users you have bookmarked (or just click here).
I will probably change the star system in the next few days, and the community moderators will come later, once I feel I'm ready to manage them.
Once again, thoughts are welcome. Thanks for everyone's participation.
ADD
Hi Korvus
No, I don't think this will work. sorry, you lost me on step 2.
vb
------
Korvus
I currently think the following option will be best:
1. We have a thumbs up
2. thumbs down system that we specify is based on following the rules
a. If a post breaks the rules, vote it down.
b. If a post is getting voted down that you think should stay, you can vote it up.
c. If it goes below a certain threshold, we will hide it by default (but still allow others to view it) until a moderator can check it out, in which case it will be deleted if we decide it should be.
I will also have a
group of community moderators?
that can make posts invisible to other users if they believe they shouldn't be there (but only Bill, myself, and perhaps a few others we know personally will be able to actually delete a message -- this way we can always override a community moderator's decision
Re: ADD
VB,
I'm talking about using a system like that mentioned in comment #52405 so that community members can vote to hide a post. Then the moderators will come in later and make the decision if the post should be removed or restored (I don't envision any posts being kept hidden). Does that makes sense?
Jeff
Re: ADD
Jeff,
Yes, It makes sense. (A little complicated for me but again, I am just one person.)
It seems people are posting and voting so that is a Good sign it might work out.
best wishes!
vb