Credibility testing with a private forum?

[Stewie]

@Stewie

I'm with you on this. Trading is one of the easiest things to talk about, but one of the hardest things to do. Put your money where your mouth is. 20,000 posts mean nothing to me. If you come to a site called EliteTrader and don't know who the elite traders are, it seems to defeat the purpose.

And yes, no one put a gun to my head and forced me to come here, but it's the #1 trading discussion board on the internet, and other popular sites operate with the same lack of credibility. I know better than to get hoodwinked by a phony, but the newer and struggling traders are exposed to a lot of misinformation

I think it was lawrence-lugar who said it best (but maybe in another thread), in that when its most important to make the distinction between who is legit and who isn't, is exactly when you are least capable of making this distinction.

You're right that ET is probably the biggest trading discussion board, and that is perhaps also partly its downfall. Everyone comes here now, so its no longer as tight of a community where people trust each other.

I cannot even begin to envision how such a thing as verifying users on here could be accomplished, but I bet that if you all of a sudden you could match all the profiles to the truth, what you find out would be shocking.

 

[Stewie]

One more point is this. We all know how much time has been wasted in 2015 on discussions about TA. Every thread has almost turned into an argument about whether or not TA works. All we really needed was one or two posters who had in some way been verified as profitable traders to jump into the conversation and shut surf up.

We all know that in trading, its not the smartest guys who move price, its the guys with the most money (clearly institutions). That is what moves the markets. Likewise, the person who is right when it comes to trading is the one who is making money.

We might be having a very nice up trend today, but I'm sure there are some traders who took only shorts and still made a killing. Some poor fucker probably kept trying to get long at the worst places and although he wasn't wrong, he's maybe down. But then you also probably have a very keen trader who is looking for reversal trades that set up in this uptrend and gets in at just the right time with size to clean up nicely. Who do you wanna learn from? The guy who is trading in the right direction, cause you know, you should always trade in the direction of the trend, as the general trading logic would dictate, or the guy actually making money?

 

[profitlocker]

It's funny how my thread was moved to the Site Support section which is way down in the abyss. This section doesn't even show up in the most recent, or most viewed section. It started out in the trading section but the exposure is pretty much zero now

 

[Stewie]

It's funny how my thread was moved to the Site Support section which is way down in the abyss. This section doesn't even show up in the most recent, or most viewed section. It started out in the trading section but the exposure is pretty much zero now

Well, to be honest, "site feedback" isn't a terrible idea. It in a way is a suggestion for a new feature of the site.

Maybe by site support we can also interpret it to mean that Baron would need money to set up such a change! LOL... Like I said, I would happily pay $10 per month or $100 for a year if through some means, we could see if a trader is in fact profitable or not. It doesn't have to be IRS approved, but just something. Even by having a paid section, you probably eliminate teenage kids who are on here since they don't have access to a credit card or dirty old men who can't use theirs because their wife would find out when she saw the bill. LOL

I want to converse with traders who are either learning, or are profitable and want to help, not some jackass who has some other motive and coming here is the next best thing to being on Big Brother, which more than likely turned him down so he needs to look for fame elsewhere.

 

[EPrado]

If you want to rid the site of the idiots/complainers/whiners then charge something like 10-20 bucks a month. I would guarantee that it would wash out a lot of the idiots. It would definitely rid the site of aliases (we all know certain long time members use aliases, they have to use them because nobody agrees with their views) I would pay the 20 bucks in a second, and I bet it would bring back other long time members, which would in turn get the site going again with real trading conversations. The problem is with charging a fee, it might drop the post count down a bunch, which is exactly what Baron needs on here...traffic....I can't blame him though from a business standpoint. He's here to draw attention, not create great content. Having much better content/less traffic is probably not part of his business model.

I suggested yrs back that Baron give the OP the ability to ban certain members from posting in the OP's threads. That would allow for long a meaningful threads. I know personally I would have started threads from time to time. It keeps the garbage out. You would have more threads like The ACD one. While they don't have the ability to block certain people, those guys wouldn't take any shit from people trolling with their anti TA stances or other complete bullshit. It's obvious because the clowns that post about trading is impossible/TA doesn't work are scared shitless to post in there. Which is great. Baron said he was going to start that feature on here, but I guess it didn't make sense from a business standpoint.

But again, at the end of the day Baron created this site to make $, so getting rid of the idiots would reduce traffic.

 

[Redneck]

so getting rid of the idiots would reduce traffic.

But significantly improve the quality - no tellin who it may appeal to / draw in

RN

 

[wrbtrader]

Having a private area for verified traders sounds neat on paper but its a misguided purpose if such is to weed out problematic members in hopes of viewing useful conversation without the distractions.

Why ?

If some of those trolls or problematic posters are successful traders and they show verification of such...they're then allowed into the private area and the same old crap will continue but just different types of arguing.

Seriously, I remember clearly a few ET members posting broker statements and one in particular posted an audited statement. The trolling and arguing did not stop and he was basically told he was just lucky by another trader that was verified.

A jerk in the public section will still be a jerk in the private section if he/she is a profitable trader.

If you think I'm joking...there was an article last year by Bloomberg about institutional traders (very successful traders) using the Bloomberg private messaging system for a lot of crap that forced many firms to forbid its traders from using such especially after some firms discover some of their traders trolling on sites like stocktwits.com

Simply, just because someone is profitable doesn't imply they are a nice guy and willing to share. Most do not want to share and most do not want to be identified as profitable at an anonymous discussion forum. Yet, take this opinion with a grain of salt because it is only just my personal opinion and others may have a completely different opinion than I do.

The other issue pointed out a few years back...successful traders that are verified aren't going to come year and tell you exactly how they do it. Instead, they will give you general tips that you most likely have already heard or read on the internet. In fact, I think they'll most likely start something in their own back yard like a blog and post their trading views because they can control its participants (self moderating).

Simply, if the sole purpose is to get rid of the trouble makers, thread hijackers, trolls or whatever...the only answer is better moderating and members learning to use the complaint button to help identify these people to the moderators because the moderators are not able to read every message at this forum.

Thus, I see to many threads started by members and they absolutely do nothing (do not complain to Baron until long after the fact when its too late) and allow their threads to be easily hijacked or thrown in a direction of debates. Then there's the other issue that some members bate or taunt these problematic members into showing up in threads.

In addition, maybe there needs to be education at the forum about the rules and more encouragement from the forum management to tell members that when they don't like what's occurring in their threads...they need to contact management.

Combine the above with members having the ability to moderate their own threads via any one on their ignore list will not be able to post in the member's thread should be a big boost in eliminating the noise at this forum in comparison to having a private area just for audited traders.

 

[EPrado]

But significantly improve the quality - no tellin who it may appeal to / draw in

RN

Would definitely draw in more quality people. Some of the guys I know still in the trading business posted on here in 2000 or so, before I was on here. Left the site yrs ago. All of them said they got sick of the bullshit being spewed on here by what they called angry failed traders. I would guarantee some of them would give it a shot on here again if Baron found a way to get rid of the morons.

I am on a big AOL IM with them during the trading day, about 30 traders on it. The guy who runs it has thrown off 2-3 guys for good over the last bunch of yrs when they became disruptive or constantly bitched. Keeps the content good. Keeps the guys on there. Too bad the same can't be done on here.

 

[cjbuckley4]

@wrbtrader are you an aspiring novelist or something? I've never seen someone with such consistently long posts. Keep up the thorough work. Even if it is mostly of little relevance to me, I'm sure a lot of people here appreciate your stuff.

 

[EPrado]

@wrbtrader are you an aspiring novelist or something? I've never seen someone with such consistently long posts. Keep up the thorough work. Even if it is mostly of little relevance to me, I'm sure a lot of people here appreciate your stuff.

The guy is one of the top people to post on ET. I don't know him but do appreciate his posts. He has way more patience then me. His taking apart Q3D on here was hall of fame stuff.