I've been a member of ET almost from the beginning and a few years ago Baron gave me permission to change my user name.
Anyways, prior and until a few years ago, ET management and its moderators heavily moderated this forum that included deleting and heavily editing threads like this one. It was easy back then for moderating because moderators were active members and quickly responded to complaints by other members along with the moderators actively participating in just about every conversation here at ET.
In fact, there was no chit chat threads, no political & religion threads, very little bashing that had resorted to personal attacks and so on. Some members used words for ET like dictatorship, run by a Nazi, violation of free speech but there were excellent trading discussions where folks actually shared openly their methods, consistently did live calls, consistently showed broker statements...
That changed because to attract sponsors, Baron (ET owner) needed members to come back more often, click on threads, increase the bandwidth. Simply, Baron created a chit chat section that now includes soft pornography, created the political & religion thread, seldom delete & edit bashing threads unless its against/hurting financially one of his sponsors, a lot slower in removing spam to allow more bashing.
Simply, the noise to trading discussion ratio has increased dramatically in comparison to yester-years to create a place where traders have more freedom of speech and put more dollars in Baron's pockets via the sponsors. My guess, eventually that well will run dry and ET will return to its prior years of glory where magazines like Barron (newspaper), Futures Magazine, Stocks & Commodities magazine called it one of the best forums for traders.
It's been awhile since those financial newspapers and magazines have given ET such high praise. If you have doubts, there's a thread here at ET that Baron or one of the moderators pinned as a "sticky thread" that members listed all the great trading discussion threads and all the great ET members...most of those threads are now inactive and most of those members have long gone due to how ET has changed.
P.S. At least ET had the guts to get rid of the guy that started a thread that including child pornography but it took a uproar by a few long standing members to get management to notice what was being posted underneath their roof.
