An Ostracise button would be good, it could be right next to kudos 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism
I always felt sorry for the silly Aristides.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism
I always felt sorry for the silly Aristides.
Re:The thread "Farewell from WW"
- Thread starter Sunfish
- Start date
Sim
Administrator
What Thommo (and some other people) seem to continually fail to understand is that any problem the moderators have with them is NOT because they are a "dissenting voice".
Yes, I do ban trolls. No, I don't ban people who are negative. Trolls are negative. Negative people are not necessarily trolls. Thommo has been on the forums using various usernames for a long time. If I really thought he was a troll I would have banned him already.
The problem the moderators have is when people break the rules. Mostly this is due to personal attacks on other members. Often this is a result of "robust debate" as people call it - but one person's robust debate is another person's bullying. Thommo is by no means the only offender and is far from the worst - he's never been banned, but he has been cautioned quite a few times and has had plenty of posts deleted or edited for stepping over the line a little.
The biggest issue I have with Thommo right now is the continual attacks on the moderation team. I don't have a problem with someone complaining directly to me - I will look into an issue and explain things the best way I can, making changes if required ... but a sustained public attack on the moderators is unfair and uncalled for when they are simply implementing the rules that we expect ALL members to adhere to.
Sim
Administrator
we should set up a voting system and vote on getting rid of someone every week for a week. that will give food for discussion for the whole of next week
The Kudos system we have implemented here is actually built as a "reputation" system, and by default allows people to give negative reputation. We renamed it and made it a positive-only thing to minimise abuse and encourage positive feedback.
If we allowed negative reputation, this could be linked with automatic banning if your reputation dropped below a certain level - but given how long we've only been accumulating positive reputation, it would be almost impossible to ban some of the more established members (we'd have to reset everything, which would not be fair). I don't intend to implement this type of thing (I would rather keep it positive) - just explaining how it might be done.
we should set up a voting system and vote on getting rid of someone every week for a week. that will give food for discussion for the whole of next week
LOL - Sounds like I've missed a good thread..or debate...or negative rant!
Regards JO
Sim
Administrator
You're taking my words out of context a little there. "No, I don't ban people who are negative" should probably have been written "No, I don't ban people just because they are negative". I'll say it again: being negative alone isn't ban-worthy unless it's part of a broader pattern of behaviour which I feel is detrimental to the forum community ... which usually means trolling.
If I recall correctly, the issue in question was what I refer to as "crusading". You went out of your way to pursue an issue and I asked you to stop because it was starting to cause problems for us. Your crusading became a form of trolling, it's not just about being negative.
Sim,
Yet from a promoter of a product, 'crusading' about the positives was seen as OK, even though the product had not been time tested in the market through all market conditions, it was the word of the promoter taken that it was a good product, and past performance had been 'excellent'.
If you were to go back and count the number of positive 'crusading' comments by the promoter, it clearly was way above the negative 'crusading' comments of mine, yet a stance was taken that the negative should stop, but not the positive.
You still do not get it.
There is some bias in the moderation, yet those moderating sometimes don't see it from their personal perspective because they have judged one side (internally, probably even subconsciously) of the argument to be 'good' and the other side 'bad'.
The product, a sharemarket fund, was consistently promoted in many posts in a property forum. Examples were given where the fund would return 10% income and 5% capital growth as ongoing, no downside, with no discussion of downside risk by the promoter.
The fund had NO track record in a bear market and was promoted before it had any track record at all.
Yet here you are STILL defending the totally biased side of the argument.
You still do not see that there should have been far MORE discussion of the possible negative side of an unproven product that was shamelessly being promoted. You STILL call the side that was "Wake up and look people" as the negative, crusading, trolling side of the argument.
bye
Yet from a promoter of a product, 'crusading' about the positives was seen as OK, even though the product had not been time tested in the market through all market conditions, it was the word of the promoter taken that it was a good product, and past performance had been 'excellent'.
If you were to go back and count the number of positive 'crusading' comments by the promoter, it clearly was way above the negative 'crusading' comments of mine, yet a stance was taken that the negative should stop, but not the positive.
You still do not get it.
There is some bias in the moderation, yet those moderating sometimes don't see it from their personal perspective because they have judged one side (internally, probably even subconsciously) of the argument to be 'good' and the other side 'bad'.
The product, a sharemarket fund, was consistently promoted in many posts in a property forum. Examples were given where the fund would return 10% income and 5% capital growth as ongoing, no downside, with no discussion of downside risk by the promoter.
The fund had NO track record in a bear market and was promoted before it had any track record at all.
Yet here you are STILL defending the totally biased side of the argument.
You still do not see that there should have been far MORE discussion of the possible negative side of an unproven product that was shamelessly being promoted. You STILL call the side that was "Wake up and look people" as the negative, crusading, trolling side of the argument.
bye
Very close! Terms of Use - they're at the bottom of the page.Terms of Usage
Or if all that scrolling is just too hard, here's a link. Have a read - they're really not that onerous, IMHO. Commonsense stuff!
Sim
Administrator
That's not crusading - that's spruiking. That's a very different behaviour and it has its own problems. We deal with that differently. As I said before, these days we would probably be much more strict about it than we were back then. The spruikers never chased you up, posting in every thread that you did, trying to get their message across to you. They didn't challenge you at every turn trying to tear you down.
My definition of crusading is the continual badgering of a person by someone who just can't let something go. People who just can't move on. People who can't just have their say and then leave it be. They simply must "prove" their point and continue to post on a subject over and over - sometimes to the point of virtually stalking the subject of their displeasure. If they can't accept that perhaps there is more to the story than their point of view.
And it looks like you are still doing it, many years after the event. Please Bill, move on. Don't let this eat you up like it obviously has. It really doesn't matter anymore - it's in the past, leave it be.
Sorry, with several exceptions of taboo subjects, we do not judge the topic of the discussion. We judge the actions of the posters.
The complaints I had about you were your crusading. It was about the way you posted, not what you posted. Heck, I agreed with some of your assertions (but not all of them). That's not the point. It was the badgering, the harassing, the potentially libellous posts. It wasn't that you disagreed, it was how you did it.
Same story with Thommo - as I've tried to explain to you and him before ... it's not his negativity I have a problem with, it's the way he posts and the attacks he makes. It's the behaviour, not the content.
I'm not defending anything. I haven't talked about the fund at all. I've talked about your actions, your behaviours.
Should have been? That's a subjective matter. It's your opinion, and you are welcome to it. And you certainly did get to air those opinions at the time. You got plenty of opportunity to express your concerns. You got a platform to discuss the possible negative sides of a product.
But there are two critical things you still don't seem to understand.
1) it was a "possible" negative side. In the same way that someone is "alleged" to have committed a crime, our law relies on the basis of "innocent until proven guilty". The exact the same reasoning that you use to base your complaints on (it was an unproven product), can be used by both sides of the argument. You can't prove the bad performance of the product for exactly the same reason that the promoter can't prove the good performance. Because it is untested. The best anyone can do is model predictions based on back-testing. This is the same for any new financial product of this nature, no matter who is promoting it.
2) the POINT is that you don't hold an open license to totally slam a product in advance because you cannot prove that it will not perform. It is libellous to assert that a product WILL do (or not do) something without evidence to back that up. Sure, once a product has failed to perform, you can pull out the real data and say "hey look - it didn't do what it was supposed to do" - that's based on fact. But just because you don't THINK it will work, doesn't mean it won't. Just because you don't LIKE a product, doesn't mean you have the right to attack it at every turn.
Sure, you can express your concerns and urge caution - and you and many others did. There's nothing wrong with that - anyone spruiking on an open discussion forum needs to be prepared for that ... it is part of the healty debate. Most of those posts still remain on this forum today and will show up in search results (I just Googled and found plenty of your posts on the subject still there!). But you took it way too far.
The product itself doesn't matter, it could be a new ETF for all I care - the principal is the same. You launched a sustained and unprovoked attack on a person and product which you took a dislike to, to the point where it became a legal issue (and still is - years later!). Indeed, I seem to remember similar problems with you and another fund spruiker on this forum as well - different fund, different person, same behaviour from you, same outcome for all of us - legal issues.
What I actually never have understood is why it was all so important to you.
Sim,
You brought the subject to attention, by stating the following..
not me.
I tried to keep the topic out of it by just using an example of part of a PM I'd been sent, without naming anyone nor the topic, you outed yourself as the person.
How is this not a personal attack?? You are claiming here something that is not true and has nothing to do with anything being discussed.
You are correct about my posting style, I do not have the 'wordsmith' skills of many others.
I first started trading shares and commodities 30 years ago, I probably made every mistake in the book and invented a few new ones, I moved into options in the early '90's and managed to make more mistakes. Eventually I learned what to do in markets and how to manage downside risk. In 07-08 my sharetrading account rose in value because I had most of my money in cash for most of the year, in 08-09 my sharetrading lost ~1%.
I joined a property forum to talk about property, yet the forum evolved and shares became a greater part of discussions. I did not think I should let my experiences go completely to waste by letting other people relive my mistakes.
Why should I NOT care??
I will just finish with a direct quote of the full post by Steve Navra...
from here...
http://www.somersoft.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17191&highlight=Navra&page=4
post 52
Goodnight and goodbye
You brought the subject to attention, by stating the following..
not me.
I tried to keep the topic out of it by just using an example of part of a PM I'd been sent, without naming anyone nor the topic, you outed yourself as the person.
How is this not a personal attack?? You are claiming here something that is not true and has nothing to do with anything being discussed.
You are correct about my posting style, I do not have the 'wordsmith' skills of many others.
I first started trading shares and commodities 30 years ago, I probably made every mistake in the book and invented a few new ones, I moved into options in the early '90's and managed to make more mistakes. Eventually I learned what to do in markets and how to manage downside risk. In 07-08 my sharetrading account rose in value because I had most of my money in cash for most of the year, in 08-09 my sharetrading lost ~1%.
I joined a property forum to talk about property, yet the forum evolved and shares became a greater part of discussions. I did not think I should let my experiences go completely to waste by letting other people relive my mistakes.
Why should I NOT care??
I will just finish with a direct quote of the full post by Steve Navra...
from here...
http://www.somersoft.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17191&highlight=Navra&page=4
post 52
Goodnight and goodbye
WW's departure is akin to losing the brilliant young physicist Henry Mosely in Gallipolli. A Nobel Prize winner for sure, had he lived. Oh life will never be the same without our dear departed WW.
He was irreplacable and how can we possibly go on living without him? The world will never be the same. Bah! WW was a depressing, negative chap who was convinced that the world was going to end. He rarely had anything positive to say and spent most of his time whining about something or the other. I learnt a few things from Dazz and people like Topcropper. But I can't honestly say I learnt anything from WW.
I can't see that this thread is going anywhere..... one group of people think the moderators are too heavy handed and the other group think WW is a waste of space. Since neither group seem to be willing to see the world from the other sides' point of view, the thread is going round in circles, which is how we have gotten into trouble on other threads which have ended up being closed down.
My advice is that people try not to be so critical of one another (whether its mods or users)... try to remember that behind the post is a real person.
If someone says that you think is stupid or offensive, then tell them so on the forum politely, and explain your point of view, but dont' attack them personally, and then report the post to the moderators. That's what they are there for.
But if you are reporting people on a constant basis, then perhaps you need to think about how easily you get offended! In the years that I've been on here, I've only reported people a handful of times.
If you really dislike people, and continually find them offensive, then use the ignore button so that you don't have to see their posts.
To me, it doesn't seem that hard and it will allow the forum to continue being a place where we can have robust discussions. If we just stick to the pattern of behaviour that is shown on this thread, (from both sides of the debate!!!!!!) the forum will become very boring.
cheers
Pen
My advice is that people try not to be so critical of one another (whether its mods or users)... try to remember that behind the post is a real person.
If someone says that you think is stupid or offensive, then tell them so on the forum politely, and explain your point of view, but dont' attack them personally, and then report the post to the moderators. That's what they are there for.
But if you are reporting people on a constant basis, then perhaps you need to think about how easily you get offended! In the years that I've been on here, I've only reported people a handful of times.
If you really dislike people, and continually find them offensive, then use the ignore button so that you don't have to see their posts.
To me, it doesn't seem that hard and it will allow the forum to continue being a place where we can have robust discussions. If we just stick to the pattern of behaviour that is shown on this thread, (from both sides of the debate!!!!!!) the forum will become very boring.
cheers
Pen
I hope you are not going to walk away from this site Bill L,and some of the mistakes you have made over the last 30 years a person like myself is yet to make
,the people that underestimate a Man with your experience would be making a very sad mistake,btw I have never complained about anyone in this site,if you don't complain you don't have to explain.."KP"..but if you make your mind up and not post anymore,,GOOD LUCK, and thankyou i have learnt so much from your mindset.. Thanks Stefan Neckermann..
