VAL9000 Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 In light of the TWTR thread devolving into the same old story (in record time!) I'd like to float the following proposal: 1. Create a new Discussion Group (similar to Investment Ideas) called Tech Investment Ideas 2. Move GOOG, AAPL, ORCL, BBRY, TWTR, etc. to that group. 3. Remove the Tech Investment Ideas discussion group from the "Recent Posts" scroll to keep the broader site content from being overrun with squabbles. Invariably the tech threads flare up on a weekly basis now. It's distracting and low value. Might as well accept it and use the tools we have to minimize the impact on the site. RSS subscribers can add the Tech Investment Ideas RSS feed to get the info if they want. Web users can still navigate to the tech threads area. The only real impact (from what I've thought through) is that the noise from the tech threads is contained. I like this idea because the tech threads can run wild without attracting the attention of users trying to contain the threads. What do you guys think? Tweaks? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ERICOPOLY Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 Alternate proposal: Two men enter, one man leaves Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
siddharth18 Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 Anything that would reduce flaming, sarcastic comments, petulance - I'm for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeffmori7 Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 I don't get why a new discussion group would change anything. Anybody is intelligent enough not to read a thread he is not interested in or to not answer to comments he finds inappropriate. Artificially displacing where is located a thread won't change anything, or am I wrong? And personally, following the thread where there were a lot of discussions about that, I find the tone has changed on the board and people are being more polite so far on those tech threads, no? And for me, there was just one or two suspect remarks on the Twitter thread, but nothing to call the firefighters for! No hard feelings Val9000. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 I don't get why a new discussion group would change anything. Anybody is intelligent enough not to read a thread he is not interested in or to not answer to comments he finds inappropriate. Artificially displacing where is located a thread won't change anything, or am I wrong? And personally, following the thread where there were a lot of discussions about that, I find the tone has changed on the board and people are being more polite so far on those tech threads, no? And for me, there was just one or two suspect remarks on the Twitter thread, but nothing to call the firefighters for! No hard feelings Val9000. Agreed. Don't like something, don't click on it. Parsad can moderate when people go over the line; he's been a wise leader so far and has created the best investing community on the net. Creating some ghetto within the forum is pointless. Next we'll have someone who wants a separate board for banks and then telecoms and retail such and that'll just make discovery and cross-pollination harder (making life easier for the subset of users who use RSS and don't want to see tech isn't worth making life harder for the vast majority of users who come to the website and already have many different sub-boards to monitor -- and if we look at the number of views on the tech threads, there is obviously a huge interest, these views don't all come from the 15 people who post). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JBird Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 3. Remove the Tech Investment Ideas discussion group from the "Recent Posts" scroll to keep the broader site content from being overrun with squabbles. +1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest valueInv Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 I propose the same for the macro threads. I find those annoying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxthetrade Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 3. Remove the Tech Investment Ideas discussion group from the "Recent Posts" scroll to keep the broader site content from being overrun with squabbles. +1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikazo Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 I have no interest in the BAC Warrants thread, but it still "clogs up" the recent posts list for me. It's tough to filter that list per user (unless there were a feature like that where you could "ignore" certain threads in the recent posts list). I'm happy just using the email notification feature for threads and every once in a while I'll go trolling for something new to follow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VAL9000 Posted October 5, 2013 Author Share Posted October 5, 2013 I don't get why a new discussion group would change anything. Anybody is intelligent enough not to read a thread he is not interested in or to not answer to comments he finds inappropriate. Artificially displacing where is located a thread won't change anything, or am I wrong? And personally, following the thread where there were a lot of discussions about that, I find the tone has changed on the board and people are being more polite so far on those tech threads, no? And for me, there was just one or two suspect remarks on the Twitter thread, but nothing to call the firefighters for! No hard feelings Val9000. Agreed. Don't like something, don't click on it. Parsad can moderate when people go over the line; he's been a wise leader so far and has created the best investing community on the net. Creating some ghetto within the forum is pointless. Next we'll have someone who wants a separate board for banks and then telecoms and retail such and that'll just make discovery and cross-pollination harder (making life easier for the subset of users who use RSS and don't want to see tech isn't worth making life harder for the vast majority of users who come to the website and already have many different sub-boards to monitor -- and if we look at the number of views on the tech threads, there is obviously a huge interest, these views don't all come from the 15 people who post). I agree that Parsad has done a great job, but there is always room for improvement. The amount of moderation he has to perform is proof to me that those of us fighting it out on the tech threads "can't have nice things". Primarily this is about web users. I don't use RSS and I would see this change as a huge benefit. The problem is that these threads have a very low signal to noise ratio. This dilutes the quality of the rest of the site. A lot of content gets buried under "AAPL.., AAPL.., AAPL.., AAPL.., AAPL.. " in the Recent Posts scroll which makes discovery more difficult. Because there is already a ton of noise in these threads, one can easily argue that the threads are already a ghetto. To your point about other sub groups, there is already a precedent in that BRK and FFH both have their own boards. I believe that there is wide consensus that the tech threads are structurally different than most other threads in the Investment Ideas group. Probably because they are more growth-oriented than value oriented. The conversation revolves much more around predictions and opinions vs. numerical fact. To Jeff's point about the cleaned up behaviour on the board, I think this is temporary. This happens every once in a while. Parsad puts us in Time Out, we're good for a couple of weeks, and then we resort to old habits. Besides, if this doesn't work well, we can always change it back. What is the harm in a little experimentation? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ERICOPOLY Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 I have no interest in the BAC Warrants thread, but it still "clogs up" the recent posts list for me. It's tough to filter that list per user (unless there were a feature like that where you could "ignore" certain threads in the recent posts list). I'm happy just using the email notification feature for threads and every once in a while I'll go trolling for something new to follow. The ability to "ignore" a particular thread is the best of the suggestions so far. I might be interested in a tech thread, and I don't want it banished off to a place where I'll never see it. But if a particular tech thread (or non-tech thread) gets annoying, just "ignore" it. But anyways, this is all more work for Sanjeev to deal with. I hope you all give him donations every now and then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 Instead of looking at 'recent posts', just go to the boards and look at which threads have new posts and interest you. Problem solved. SHLD, BAC and AIG had a zillions posts a day too for long periods. Should they also have their own sub-forum? It's easier if each person filters on their side than to try to change the structure of the board, because there's no one-size fits all. I also don't think there's necessarily opposition between growth and value. Buffett doesn't see it that way, and Apple at 400s and Google in the 400-500s (when the thread was most popular) aren't exactly CRM and Tesla. The main difference is the news flow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matts Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 I also think everyone should do a bit of filtering on their own. Don't like it, don't click it. As was said, some may be also annoyed with the giant BAC thread ect. An ignore thread option sounds like a good idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest wellmont Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 Ignore thread option is a great idea! There are plenty that I wish would not show up. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tombgrt Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 Hamsterdam baby! But seriously, I agree with Liberty and others. Dont make a specific sub forum or changes are you'll make it worse! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parsad Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 Even though this my forum, I still haven't figured out if there is an effective "ignore" feature, since I don't think ignoring someone's dialogue helps anyone. But then again, I know that there are certain animosities that flare up in discussions, and for specific users it may be effective. Can someone tell me if they use any sort of "ignore" feature on here right now? If not, Paul and I will see if we can find a plug-in. Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VAL9000 Posted October 5, 2013 Author Share Posted October 5, 2013 Hamsterdam baby! LOL - this way Parsad can't give us a Time Out cause that's "contrapment". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
racemize Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 I recently had an idea for forums in general, but I doubt it would be easily implemented. Basically, I was wondering how to deal with forums that get larger and larger with increasing posts per day. An interesting feature would be the ability to get the highlights from a thread. e.g., if someone wanted to read the BAC thread fresh, be able to condense it down to a smaller, and more useful, number of posts. Here was my thought: 1) implement a thumbs up on a per post basis--that way people could upvote posts as being particularly useful. (Downvotes optional) 2) then when you view a thread, there could be a feature to condense the thread, which would filter based on upvoted comments. For example, you could ask for the top 50%, 60, 70, 80, etc. of the comments. Then, people could choose whether to view threads in condensed formats or full content, depending on their preference. You also still get to keep everything in date order and in the thread format, which is better than the reddit/digg style threads, whose content moves down based on age or isn't date sorted. Kind of a hybrid format, that is optional to implement from the user side. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parsad Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 Sorry folks! No good "ignore user" plug-in on Simple Machines that works with this version of SMF. Hopefully, something will be updated or added to the next version. In the meantime, learn to respect others and be civil to one another...whether you like it or not! Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parsad Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 Ok, I found a plug-in that works with this version. A tiny bit complicated getting it active, but then it works fine thereafter. If some of you are eager to ignore others, then I don't think you'll mind a tiny bit of work. Two bits of information you will need, as I've activated it from my end, but you will need to activate your own end: You need to enable quick moderation. Profile > Look and layout (select checkboxes). Then when your on unread or unreadrepies page. Check the ones you want to ignore down the right hand side, and click Ignore Selected at the bottom. Please read the instructions at SMF for further details: http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1193 Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palantir Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 I think we should leave everything the way it is, I think the complaining about the tech threads is getting as tiring as the tech threads themselves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palantir Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 Btw, OT, this forum is displaying ads for "Sexy Arab Girls". What's up with that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ERICOPOLY Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 Btw, OT, this forum is displaying ads for "Sexy Arab Girls". What's up with that? They are tracking user's browsing history, and showing relevant targeted ads. I'm getting an ad for Furnace Creek Resort in Death Valley -- I went to Death Valley earlier this year and clearly I was tracked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palantir Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 I have never searched for Arab girls! Really... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ajc Posted October 5, 2013 Share Posted October 5, 2013 I'll happily +1 VAL9000's suggestion if Sanjeev thinks it can be done. Not sure what harm it could really do? Also, if you're into harm (and masochistic and bored) I posted this hour-long piece of my thoughts on the tech threads - http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/thoughts-on-the-tech-threads/msg135479/#new Good luck, you'll need it (along with a pillow probably...)! PS. I was going to post it here, but that would've been too much like cruel and unusual punishment. Those at the back who're laughing, feel free to stop that anytime. *gets off podium to end his sermon (podium is actually an overturned milk crate)* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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