I was writing this for the Board member thread, but it was sufficiently off topic that I decided to separate it and put it here.
Some thoughts on “decline of quality” in AF posts.
First, let me say that some of this may just be percieved on my part, but I suspect that there is a genuine decline in the number and frequency of posts that make us better or more thoughtful financial professionals (aspects insights into companies, strategies, sources of risk, ways of managing entrys/exits, aspects of quantitative approaches, etc.).
It’s also true that as I’ve gotten more experienced, the bar for what counts as a “quality post” has likely gone up, so that may also be happening here.
The fact that the industry (and economy as a whole) is going through a tough time, is probably making both new and old posters more bitter about life, and so navigating through the bitterness as an AF moderator can be a PITA. And it’s true that financial people are not known for being particularly cuddly and empathetic to others, so when they are in a bad mood, they’re perfectly happy to let the crap fly and land where it may.
It’s also true that some of our better posters from the past have just moved on to bigger and better things, so don’t come by much anymore (SuperSadFace, and MattLikesAnalysis come to mind) or been squeezed out of the industry entirely and don’t come for that reason.
There are more and more people just out of college taking these exams, so the average age of posters is probably dropping, and the experience/maturity level along with it. No real problems with that - people are allowed to be inexperienced and perhaps a bit immature- particularly when one actually *is* young, but it does mean that our financial conversations don’t seem as good as they were a few years back. I suspect that the call for a place for crude conversation is mostly from young posters who figure that the real professional world should be more or less like their dorm-room conversations, and that any suggestion that others don’t want that sounds to them like socialism, or nazisim, or some other thing they don’t actually know much about.
On the other hand, there is a silver lining here, some of our long-timers have gotten a fair amount of experience and now have good things to add, at least when when they care to. I read some stuff that some of our long-timers write and I think “wow, that’s really good analysis from so-and-so.” And then I realize “well, we’ve been at it for 4-6 years now: naturally this guy says way more thoughtful and informed stuff than when we first met.” However, a lot of us old-timers know more-or-less where each other stands and don’t necessarily feel like rehashing old arguments, so we are a little quieter.
We also don’t like giving away too much of our hard-earned knowledge for free - although, quite honestly, most people either already know things that we’ve figured out, or they don’t know enough to grasp it, so it’s not quite as bad as we tend to fear.
