Meta - negativity and voting

Originally posted by blue in another topic then moved here:

Originally posted by BruceM

Bring it on Paul...just because nobody responds doesn't mean they aren't interested...unfortunately the forum is becoming more of a spectator forum than that of active participation....WE can "see" how many read them.....so we help others who don't care to vote, leave feedback or contribute and at the same time we help ourselves by exploring the ideas and reaffirming concepts that are important....

Nothing below is meant to be negative or directed specifically at anyone. They are only my general thoughts offered that hopefully will help improve the participation in the forum.


I myself am very short on time during the trading day, so I don't visit forums much (however today is Good Friday and markets are closed). I think there is a reason that the forum doesn't have active participation. I have found it sometimes unfriendly and sometimes people write nasty things rather than move along without taking a jab at someone.

If longer term members are sometimes rude, discourteous or don't bother to reply to specific questions asked of them, then people will tend not to post.

I myself don't understand the voting system. I don't really feel that my opinion matters and that voting is only useful for soliciting feedback as in "I think the market has made a top but I'm unsure. What do others feel? Vote yes for top and no that top is not in."

I started a journal and asked that negative (and positive) feedback not be given - but negative comments were posted and not deleted -so I discontinued posting it. (As someone else said who needs to put out and have the forum trolls slash at you?)

I never post anything negative or critical of another person.
I only post questions. Usually I think about something first and therefore I am only really seeking well-thought out replies. Usually we get sound bites back.

I am philosophical about life and feel things are for a reason. So it turned out to be a good thing. Now I save the time I would have spent in posting the journal.

Before posting the journal I read through old journals to see what others had posted. Time and time again the posters were blasted and attacked. That's why I was very hesitant about even starting to post it and very quick to abandon posting it.

Trading is hard enough. The market can be tough on your self-esteem and wallet.

Many of us work hard at it and have to persist through a long learning curve. We all need support, a pat on the back and an occasional "well-done" from our peers. My personal feeling is that the established members of the board must be very clear that negativity is not acceptable.

You may wonder about lack of responses in general on the board. Other boards suffer from this as well. I have yet to find a board without the nasty crotchety old fart. As we were often told as children "If you have nothing nice to say then say nothing."

This board is about the best I have found, but as you have noticed there is a lack of new ideas and postings.

Cause and effect is the fundamental law of the universe. Where there is a persistent noticed effect then there is also a cause.

Originally posted by blue
I myself am very short on time during the trading day, so I don't visit forums much (however today is Good Friday and markets are closed). I think there is a reason that the forum doesn't have active participation. I have found it sometimes unfriendly and sometimes people write nasty things rather than move along without taking a jab at someone.

If longer term members are sometimes rude, discourteous or don't bother to reply to specific questions asked of them, then people will tend not to post.

I started a journal and asked that negative (and positive) feedback not be given - but negative comments were posted and not deleted -so I discontinued posting it. (As someone else said who needs to put out and have the forum trolls slash at you?)

I never post anything negative or critical of another person.
I only post questions. Usually I think about something first and therefore I am only really seeking well-thought out replies. Usually we get sound bites back.

I was recently listening to some comments made by a famous blogger who has hundreds of thousands readers of his blog posts. He said that he is going to stop blogging and the main reason that he's doing that is because now and then he receives an unpleasant or nasty comment or email. He said that he may receive 30 very positive and complimentary emails which are great but all he needs is just one negative comment and that will upset him for the rest of the day. So even though he had a net 29 great comments the power of that one negative comment is overwhelming.

If, however, we implement censorship, and remove negative comments then we, are denying our members the right to free speech and expressing their feelings. I feel that we need criticism to be able to grow and improve. I also agree that comments such as "you're an idiot" (without supporting and justified comments) are counter productive and should be deleted. If you aren't going to justify negative comments then deleting that is not denying free speech.

I myself don't understand the voting system. I don't really feel that my opinion matters and that voting is only useful for soliciting feedback as in "I think the market has made a top but I'm unsure. What do others feel? Vote yes for top and no that top is not in."

The voting system has only been in-place for a short while but I have seen some improvement in the forum as a result of it. The reason for voting a post up or down can be as a result to a question like in your example. It is, however, intended that if you find anything of value you can vote it up. If you find that something takes value away from the experience you can vote it down. The net figure shows you how your post has been received.

Trading is hard enough. The market can be tough on your self-esteem and wallet.

Many of us work hard at it and have to persist through a long learning curve. We all need support, a pat on the back and an occasional "well-done" from our peers. My personal feeling is that the established members of the board must be very clear that negativity is not acceptable.

Can you post a link to an example of one of the replies to your posts that you think should have been removed?

You may wonder about lack of responses in general on the board. Other boards suffer from this as well. I have yet to find a board without the nasty crotchety old fart. As we were often told as children "If you have nothing nice to say then say nothing."

Vote it down. If nobody finds value in it then it will be voted down. That's how Joe Ross ended up locked out of the forum. He wouldn't respond to questions that were asked of him about his posts and made the same post on multiple boards which most members here considered spam. Without voting we wouldn't have know how badly he was being received. There were complaints about him before we had the voting in place but only after the voting was in place could we have a democratic idea of how the community felt about him.

This board is about the best I have found, but as you have noticed there is a lack of new ideas and postings.

Thank you, and as you can see we are listening to your ideas, complaints and compliments and trying to make it better.

Cause and effect is the fundamental law of the universe. Where there is a persistent noticed effect then there is also a cause.

I agree.

I re-arranged some of your sentences to be able to comment on themes you touched on.

Originally posted by BruceM and then moved here:

How about we bring this stuff to a new thread that could be specific about the forum and feedback on the voting system. How to make it better....what's working and what isn't etc....I'd find that interesting..

Dt and Blue, both make good points and could explain why so many of our active posters have slowed down in posting or disappeared.....

I think the voting system causes many, including myself to question the value of our posts. Especially if we compare them to other posts that have been voted up or those that have so few views but higher votes. It certainly would stop many from posting if they think they aren't appreciated. Should that be the intent or are people just not using the voting system on the positive side? I think we are fairly quick to vote down folks who are taking advantage etc but I'm not convinced that we celebrate the positive. Is it just human nature?

I think the most votes I've ever seen is 5 or 6. I'm not sure of the thread but it wasn't mine..LOL
Some threads have 900 views or more since the voting has been implemented but only 5-6 people found it useful ? Seems on the low side. Any stats we can pull from other forums on this ?

Perhaps a new thread is best.....

Originally posted by BruceM

How about we bring this stuff to a new thread that could be specific about the forum and feedback on the voting system. How to make it better....what's working and what isn't etc....I'd find that interesting..

Excellent idea and here it is.

Dt and Blue, both make good points and could explain why so many of our active posters have slowed down in posting or disappeared.....

The prolific posters that have taken a hiatus are CharterJoe and KoolBlue. Who else has disappeared recently. I don't believe that the new format had anything to do with their slowdown in posts as they cited other reasons.

I think the voting system causes many, including myself to question the value of our posts. Especially if we compare them to other posts that have been voted up or those that have so few views but higher votes. It certainly would stop many from posting if they think they aren't appreciated.

Very good point. One of the problems with voting is that you have to (1) be logged in and (2) already have 50 or more reputation points before you can vote. I'd imagine that a lot of people would want to vote but can't because they don't have enough rep.

We have to keep a minimum rep for voting otherwise spammers will register multiple accounts and start voting themselves up. i.e. it's an anti-gaming strategy.

Should that be the intent or are people just not using the voting system on the positive side? I think we are fairly quick to vote down folks who are taking advantage etc but I'm not convinced that we celebrate the positive. Is it just human nature?

I think that might be happening and we need to incentivize people to vote, and use their 20 or 40 vote limit per day. Ideas?

I think the most votes I've ever seen is 5 or 6. I'm not sure of the thread but it wasn't mine..LOL

You are correct. I haven't seen more than 5 if I recall and the number of votes for any one thread is lower than I would have expected at this point.

Some threads have 900 views or more since the voting has been implemented but only 5-6 people found it useful ? Seems on the low side. Any stats we can pull from other forums on this ?

The thread might have a high ranking on Google and so gets a lot of search hits from users who aren't registered on the site and can't vote so that could skew the comparison.

900 views but only 5 or 6 found it useful?

I can only speak for myself, but it's possible some others feel the same way. I think 90% of the peoople reading boards are reading them, to learn something that will help them be more profitable & make them a better trader. John Carter, Larry Pesavento, Peter Reznicek & the other gurus don't read boards, they're no longer searching for indicators, methods, systems or the holy grail.

I read most of the threads here & post occasionally, if I were smarter & a better trader with more to offer I'd probably post more often, if I read something I believe is useful to someone learning to trade I vote it up. I think lots of people that are reading the threads are searching for answers & aren't as concerned with the votes.

DT I'm not suggesting the voting isn't important, it just may not be as important to the ones searching for answers as it is to some of the regular members.

Thanks for your comments staylor455. I think that there would be plenty more voting but unfortunately the "barriers to voting" prevent a lot of people from voting.

i.e. you have to (1) have an account (2) be logged in and (3) have a rep of 50 or more, to be able to vote.

These barriers have to be in place to prevent gaming and scamming.

I just ran a query on the forum and of the 4372 registered members as of right now only 75 are eligible to vote of which 52 of them have logged in during the last month.

When the voting was added to the forum we had to seed the members with an initial reputation and this was done by giving the top 50 posters (by number of posts) 100 points each. Only they can vote for posts by new members and considering that we have already got 50% more eligible voters I can see that the voting is creating a greater pool of voters.

In time to come we'll see more votes on posts and valued members of the forum will be recognized by their colleagues.

Here are the current top 10 most valuable posters as voted by the members in order of reputation:

day trading
BruceM
koolblue
jimkane
roofer
MonkeyMeat
pt_emini
phantasmagoria
redsixspeed
blue

The reason that I am at the top of the list is because I've been creating dictionary definitions which award 25 points per definition accepted. (If you're going to do this then check that the definition hasn't already been created: Futures Traders Dictionary.