Quote from IBsoft:
They don't use the spell-check or complete sentences, yet they find enough time to pepper their bitch-fest posts with smiley face, confused face and similar. Sometimes I can't actually believe that I respond to them.
Anyway, we will continue to carefully listen to our customers and evaluate their suggestions. As to whether such dialog remains here, or we will move it our website/forum is now under debate. Moving the discussion there is tempting for several reasons.
IBsoft,
I urge you not to move the discussion from EliteTrader to IB's own forum.
I'm sure that doing so "is tempting for several reasons". I think that if IB gives into such temptation, everybody loses. Part of what makes the EliteTrader discussion so valuable, to IB and to its customers, is the fact that IB cannot control the discussion on EliteTrader. Control lies in the hands of an objective, disinterested third party, Baron. Baron's agenda is not running a brokerage; his agenda is to nurture the quality of discussion. I don't think it is possible for the same organization to do both at the same time. The benefits accuring to IB, from having this discussion publicly and on ET, derive, in great part, from the crucial ingredient that IB cannot control the discussion.
I am sure it is unpleasant for you, but I am even more sure that it forces IB to do a much better job of meeting customer needs. I am sure that by participating in ET discussions, which necessarily entails IB's partial surrender of control over the discussion process, IB captures a great benefit. This great benefit is that the partial loss of control protects IB from itself. I am certain lots and lots of very bad decisions, by IB, were prevented, or never even consciously considered, because of its participation in this forum. What seems like a painful loss of control is, in reality, a great benefit to IB.
I myself have had a few experiences where I had found a serious and ongoing bug impairing order execution, but I absolutely could not get any attention to the problem, until I went public with it on ET. Other traders gave similar reports backing my complaint. If IB had not responded at that point, then those problems might have festered for far longer, and might never even have been addressed. I feel certain that the quality of IB's order routing and execution would be much less, were it not for IB's participation in a public forum beyond IB's control.
The fact that these discussions are public, instead of on IB's own forums which cannot be read by non-customers, forces IB to pay attention to customer complaints in a much better way than it would if its public image were not on the line. IB's public discussion on ET conveys and demonstrates the quality of IB's offerings.
I think it would be very easy for IB to reduce greatly, or even to totally extinguish, the value of these discussions, after taking control of them. If IB were really capable of facilitating the quality of discussion which takes place on ET, then IB would already have done so in its own forums. The fact that IB never did so is just one more piece of evidence that IB should leave control of the discussion with Baron at ET. IB is excellent as a broker, but communication has never been its strong suit. Let Baron continue doing the job he does best.
The public nature of these discussions, re: IB, is often abused by those seeking to damage IB's reputation. Sometimes they are disgruntled customers. Sometimes they are competitors falsely pretending to be customers. But we loyal IB customers know that it is in our best self-interest to police such abusers, and we do not let them get away with it. Take a look at the threads started by ET user cscott, an IB competitor falsely posing as an IB customer, and look at how we lambasted him. Look at what happened when Option Trader, a disgruntled IB customer, tried to extort concessions from IB by making false statements. We customers, in our response, didn't let him get away with it. IB customers can tell the difference between legitimate complaints from real customers, on the one hand, and extortion attempts and smear jobs and shills on the other.
Some prospective customers, in reading these discussions, will be misled, and frightened away from IB, either because of the deceptions perpetrated against IB, or because of the exposure of some of the problems and shortcomings at IB. These, however, are the customers you do not want. These are the customers who don't have what it takes to function within IB's highly mechanized, minimal support framework of doing things. Many of these customers are bound to lose their money very quickly, without developing a profitable trading method, no matter where they trade. Many of them are lawsuits, arbitration cases, or bad PR just waiting to happen. The kind of customers you want are the ones who will read the discussions and recognize who is telling the truth, and that IB really does offer a great deal, and probably the very best deal for most serious active traders. Give your loyal customers some credit for their ability to sift through the lies and to find the truth, and to protect IB from shills and smear jobs. If you run away from EliteTrader, then you are handing a victory to your competitors, and you are reducing IB to become a little bit more like its competitors, instead of preserving what is unique and best about IB.
I am putting all this effort, into lobbying IB to stay on ET, because I think that helping to preserve and to improve the quality of discussion will benefit IB and its customers more than any specific suggestion for new features or bug fixes.
