Okay, the New Year is upon us and I think it’s time we step up our game. Here are some of my ideas to better this fine community. Please post your own and hopefully Chad will weigh in.
A dedicated thread for site suggestions
A viable PM system
For the love of all that’s holy, some sort of god damn karma system. Even a thumbs up/down…anything.
Many of us begrudgingly accepted AF 2.0. It’s time we get 2.1.
hmm… i’m thinking… WATER COOLER 2.2
what about extending the AF rewards to outside of US? i want a mug/bag/cards/barbie for my AF points …also please implement a secret santa system (aka S3)
I think it’s about time Mattel made “Bespectacled Asian CFA Barbie”. They should update their product line to reflect the modern woman in finance research.
I think we should have a Binders of HCBs section so Frankie will come back.
Wait, Chad won’t send AF goodies outside the US? That’s cheap. If I become a boardmember I’ll change that for sure.
Suggestion:
In AF 1.0 if I click the “new” icon next to the thread it would put directly to the first new post that I had not seen. Now it seems to put me to either the second post or some other random post regardless of whether it’s new or not. My work CPUs browser suck so maybe that’s the cause.
Also, an icon free version would be nice. I like to browse the board at work but it dosn’t look good when my boss comes by my desk and it looks like I’m writing a letter to the Flavor Flav fan club.
I hope that the administrators would take a look at the discussion of obscene topics such as experience in strip clubs and escort service in Miami, etc.
http://www.analystforum.com/forums/water-cooler/91317041
http://www.analystforum.com/forums/water-cooler/91316606
There are plenty of sites available for the discussion of these topics but why here in Analyst forum?
No wonder why there are few posts from ladies when gentlemen are treating ladies as commodities.
Ladies please back me up.
You sir are a scholar and a gentleman
Maybe a jobpostings section? Could be helpful to many i guess.
This is a reasonable concern. I don’t particularly like when the discussion gets raunchy, but there is a part of the financial culture which involves guys thinking that finance is like the high school locker-room. Our policy has been to try to contain it, rather than to police and exterminate it, which takes much more work, many arguments about where the line is, and often ends up destroying threads that have otherwise useful value (such as when a thread topic starts on a legitimate topic, and then degenerates into something).
This is one of the reasons that the Water Cooler section exists separately from the Careers and Investments section. Previously, there was a “general discussion” section which included all three, and so people who were interested in general investment questions would have to wade through a bunch of this other crap. Our goal was to provide an area where people could let off a little steam and the rules would be a little more relaxed, because we didn’t have the money or time to be policing things and deciding whether one person’s “I’m offended by that” merits deleting someone else’s post.
By and large, the containment policy appears to have worked, in that the crappy stuff is largely isolated here, and not mixed in with the other sections of the site.
I am a proponent of encouraging people to push back and speak up when topics are offensive, rather than run to the moderators for help (informing moderators can be useful though, simply because no one can read everything and have time left to do anythign else). I think it is much more effective for lurkers to know that there are people who think what the others are writing is offensive and childish. On several occasions, when asked to nuke someone’s thread or possibly even ban a member for saying things, I have advocated replying to them inside the thread with a warning or a statement about getting close to or crossing a line. In general, they have understood and respected that warning, and we have had far fewer needs to nuke threads and ban people than before. I think it is more useful for other members to see where the line is, rather than have threads or members just vanish one day without explanation (which is what used to happen).
There are limits… outright attacks on members for their ethnicity, sexuality, etc. are not permitted, explicit pornography and clearly defamatory stuff isn’t allowed, people’s real identity are not allowed to be outed without their consent. I have been known to edit out vowels in profanities without deleting them, because - contrary to what some members have accused me of - I actually think it’s important to censor as little as possible.
I also think that sometimes threads are made while drunk or angry or something else. In these cases, giving a member a chance to back down and/or apologise for something said in an unfortuante state of mind is better than simply nuking or banning people for having said something.
It isn’t clear to me exactly where the line should be on things like the strip club conversation, which I see as threads in bad taste, but not necessarily nuke-worthy. I see our job as to protect members from exploitation and hate attacks, but not to regulate taste. And we have worked hard to try to keep this kind of discussion limited to a part of the site relatively isolated from other useful stuff (like exams, careers, and investments fora), and so people are not obliged to come to Water Cooler and put up with this in order to benefit from the things AF has to offer.
There is an aspect of “boys will be boys,” of course, and I do think that men should not have to apologise for being turned on by an attractive woman (or man, should that be their preference) and perhaps dream a bit, as long as they are not coercing her or advocating violence. I also think that the people who talk about all the fun and things they did at a strip club may ultimately be damaging their own reputations more than anything else. Payback may come years later when an employer or investor decides not to contract them because of the liability risk they impose, or something.
We can have a discussion about where the lines should stand for things like profanities, sexuality, religion, and ethnic commentaries in this part of the forum, which has a more permissive environment than the other sections. Remember also, pushing back on offensive material is both useful and important. You may find you have more people behind you than you think. Where do people stand?
There used to be a link to SimplyHired that had some AF relevant keywords in it. That seems to have been moved or dumped in one of the revisions. Maybe we can bring it back.
Nah, if there was a job posting section, I would go to eFinancialCareers anyway. I think the best thing AF can do is make it easier for new people to sign up.
out of curiosity bchad…how long does it take for you to write responses of that length ?!
That one took a long time to compose, but it was important.
I was a moderator for a fairly large male dominated forum for a few years. And needless to say, I find solace in the fact that all the nonsense I dealt with appears to be universal and not unique to that forum. And I know from that experience how hard it is to actually use an invisible hand to guide the conversation topics to constructive ones. It’s much harder to implement the fix than noticing the problem. It’s hard to do anything without people feeling like their free speech is being taken away. It’s like telling a Texan they can’t have their guns anymore.
bchad clearly takes this stuff seriously. That was a long post. It’s a good thing though. I raise my glass to you dude, yes even though we occasionally have our differences,
An ignore button would be great as I agree there is a lot of stupid stuff posted on this forum. The strip club, escort, and bragging about using hard drugs and being with multiple women threads are foolish and in reality most likely fiction.
bchad, respect for your post.
However, I gotta mention that there was one post in the strip club thread that kinda crossed a line and should warrant a warning or something. Telling your experiences is one thing, but that one was way too explicit, IMO. I’m sure there’s no need for me to point out which one. A system similar to WSO’s silver banana’s and monkey sh*t could be helpful here. You know, at least some sort of voting up or down for posts.