Decline
I’ve always said i’m cool with being a boardmember or not. pros and cons to both.
I’m not trying to stir trouble here… but I just realized something. Isn’t it a conflict of interest for a tutor sponsor that gets business through AF, given the power to be a mod on AF?
I think to remove any biases at all, they should be independent. After all, would you want a Scheweser rep who makes money from Schweser sales to be a mod on AF?
itera brings up a very good point.
I Thes 5:22.
Are you a Schwesser rep? If so, then it would be a conflict of interest to the extent that you use board/moderating powers to make the sale.
Usually this can be fixed by appropriate disclosure, so the question is whether the person is trustworthy to make the disclosure and smart enough to know when it is appropriate.
I’ve worked for Stalla as an instructor and as a marketer. I was always pretty up front about being happy with my experience with Stalla and where I thought Stalla was strong and weak compared to Schwesser, but I never edited a post to get a member to do Stalla or implied that AF as a forum prefers Stalla to Schwesser. Of course, I didn’t get paid for “conversions,” so that made it easier.
^I’ve never heard S2000 try to sell his stuff on here, at least not any more than some of us. I proudly proclaim that Schweser helped me pass. And I have zero financial interest in it at all.
Plus, S2000 doesn’t hide the fact that he works for Schweser.
Plus, he seems to be on top of the Level 1-3 boards, where some of us rarely, if ever, go. He could help keep them policed.
I think S2000 is a good pick for moderator. I also second Numi, who has remained silent about it so far.
Eskimo doesn’t have 500 posts, and I was certainly kidding about PierreWoodman_fan. That’s guy’s more annoying than Stormy and Blake put together.
Asking me? No I’m not a rep for anything. All I got is my charter and a membership with NYSSA.
It took me a moment to see that you were questioning the appropriateness of S2000. It seems to me that as long as he doesn’t use a board or moderating position to solicit for Schwesser in ways that would not be possible were he not in those positions, and to disclose any incentives or relationships when doing so as a regular member, there is no real issue here.
S2000s contributions here seem in no way contingent on the recipients supporting Schwesser, which is what makes them uncontroversial.
Then I’ve failed miserably.
Sigh.
True. But that’s the same with accounting right? as long as an accountant who manages the books and controls the cash doesn’t do anything shady, then all is well.
But the functions are still separated as a means of good practice
Moderating is mostly upholding existing rules, right? So, as long as he justs goes around looking for plagiarism and people posting inappropriate material, there seems to be low potential for conflicts of interest to arise. In terms of policy making, as long as everyone knows the situation, it doesn’t seem like it would be a problem. s2000 doesn’t seem like a guy who would abuse his authority anyway.
^ I think Eliot Spitzer said the same thing about Bernie Madoff.
So are you guys genuinely suspicious of s2000, or are you just getting yourselves off on conspiracy theories?
For now, the policy is that it’s ok to have another job, even one where you might find clients or employees at AF, as long as there is appropriate disclosure that these are not AF-sponsored and that there are financial incentives behind specific recommendations (if there actually are such incentives). If it turns out that a board member is abusing their powers, then AF members can report them to other board members or Chad and we will decide if a new policy is required, if existing policies have been violated, and what to do about it.
It’s not like board members control a lot of money anyway. If someone’s posts start getting deleted because they didn’t sign up for Schwesser, that’s something we can adjudicate later, but that seems both unlikely and petty.
I think the sentiment is that yes, there is a potential conflict of interest. However, who are we kidding? This is an internet forum, not the board of IBM or something.
I think I plug Schweser products more than S2000 does.
FWIW, I had no idea S2000 was associated with Schweser, but I don’t go into the level specific forums. I knew bchad had some association with either Stalla or Schweser, didn’t actually know which, and don’t really care.
I taught with Stalla before Schwesser acquired them. It never really became an issue for me because I never did marketing with them while I was on the board here (one activity ended right around the time the other started) and never said any opinion I had was anything other than my own personal opinion. I never collected referral fees from them either, being paid only to present in live-format presentations.
To be honest, the only way I could see a conflict of interest coming up is if Stalla were to pressure or pay me to get Chad to stop advertising for any other provider, or perhaps to get me to get chad to release AF names to their marketers (which I think would violate privacy policies here, though I need to check). Anyway. None of that happened, but it is highly likely that any eligible board member would potentially face these things and so the answer is presumably to insist on disclosures when appropriate, and make it possible to report abuses should questionable activity come to light.
If a post has already been adjusted or deleted then there’s no way to report it, and catching it by regular AF members will be essentially impossible.
Isn’t it easier to separate the roles completely and totally avoid any appearance of conflict? instead of making a list of what if’s and to-do’s if it may or may not happen?
I think you’re being too academic here. There just isn’t all that much at stake, and the consequences of being that academic about things is to become so restrictive that one ends up saying, essentially, that one has to be 1) unemployed, and 2) not looking for employment in order to be a board member or a moderator, because for pretty much everyone else, one can imagine some way that they could try to abuse that tiny extra degree of authority. We are not in charge of prisoners or children’s safety here, or even a sum of money. It’s an Internet forum. The only real sensitive information are people’s real email addresses, and right now Chad is the only one with access to that.
Better to state expectations clearly and offer a way for abuses to be referred or reported than to narrow the pool of candidates so dramatically.
So . . . my evil plot is working!
(Hehehe.)
Honestly, on the forums I was a moderator one of the benefits was the name recongition. A few people used it for their private endeavors and it never messed with the forum as a whole. I couldn’t personally care if S200 gets more business as a result of modding. The only thing I could see being a problem is if he started editing peoples posts who talk about the competition. And I think you’d catch wind of that pretty quick as people would notice their posts changing.
I wasn’t around for JDV, but S2000 seems like he’d fill that role nicely (being active on all forums, not just WC). Plus in threads that he has been met with adverserial posts, he remained cool and calm headed (like his horse pedestrian thread). Seems like a good choice to me