I completely disagree that reviews should be more atively modrated than they are now. (Reviews consisting of a single swear word and the like are being removed by moderators currently as we don't see any of those.)
The spirit of this Web-site is one needs to think for themselves and separate useful posts from pointless. If you want a short, balanced review (as if the reviewer was choosing the broker for you) Barrons magazine is a better source.
"Active" moderation, where only the most "useful" are kept and majority is deleted, has a number of serious issues. which would render review system near useless:
1) What makes sense to one person may not make any sense to another. A moderator, who is unfamiliar with a particular platform, may consider a post that points an actual problem useless;
2) There is a large space for favoritism, both towards brokers and reviewers
3) Actual number of posts is an imporant indicator of itself. It shows that a particular broker is used by many and any serious problems are likely spotted in one of the review.
4) Lack of strongly negative posts shows that most revews are likely disguised ads and very few people from the forum mebers ever used the broker in question.
Quote from jeb9999:
Nonsense reviews about IB deflect from real IB problems: TWS is bloated, TWS updates are buggy and IB futures commissions are much too high.
It would be much better to have honest reviews from knowledgeable traders that address the real issues, plus and minus, of IB as a broker rather than plain nonsense from those that don't know what they are doing.
I agree that informative reviews that cover more than one aspect are generally more useful for someone who just starts to learn about a particular broker. However, for reason described above removing less informative reviews is not a solution. It will actually dramatiocally decrease teh overall value of the reviews section.
A better solution would be a rating system like on amazon.com. Then one would start by reading the most useful positive review and the most useful negative review, then read half a dozen of the most useful reviews, then read the rest of the reviews if they wish to.
P.S. Not all complaints about "slippage" are biased or uninformative. Imagine the following hypothetical post:
I got seriously drunk before trading, forgot to check the events calendar, and opened a trade with a narrow stop just before non-farm payrolls. My stop got hit but the price gapped and I got executed a number of ticks below the stop. I blame the broker for unreasonable slippage.
P.P.S. I agree that actual ratings are not very uselful. Reviewers are forced to rate the broker in all of the number of catgories. You will notice that many reviewers are prepared to rate only one or two categories when you see the number of "category" ratings left at the "default" rating or set to the highest or lowest possible rating. Reviews that cover only a specific issue are still useful for anyone who actually takes time to read all reviews of a particular broker.
), therefore, it is very helpful if traders help each other out by posting their experiences with those brokers. This is what I call vicarious experience. In other words, a trader doesn't have to experience directly a broker by opening an account, deposting money, finding out its problems, then withdrawing money, and shutting down the account. It's a long process and it costs money if a broker's trading platform is bad, or a broker is simply front-running the customers' orders.