Exactly.
We have seen this pattern repeat itself on this forum for years; some may recall similar situations with past members. It reminds me of the scientific community: holding a PhD does not make one immune to correction, nor does being corrected diminish one’s value or expertise. In my opinion, it is counterproductive to let ego dictate one’s reaction to the point of dismissing the forum entirely, especially considering the wealth of valuable information stored here.
I think you are mixing up 2 different issues:
I think the issue was more with the language/tone. While one can have a view on his tone/language in the post, I feel that most of the fallout was anyway not due to language/tone itself.
Taxation in .nl doesn’t seem particularly on-topic for forum that is very explicitly scoped to Switzerland?
Some discussions like global market moves are pretty universal, because basically anyone investing has exposure to them. It’s easy to see why they’d be relevant to the readers of this forum.
Others are incredibly country-specific. Anything to do with pensions, taxes, banking, process for buying real-estate, social safety net, processes for early retirement, etc. is only relevant to people in a given jurisdiction.
And this is a Swiss forum, so it’s pretty obvious what jurisdiction is on-topic. If it turns into a generic FIRE forum, or even a generic non-US forum, it will lose 90% of it’s utility at least to me.
I didn’t read the original thread, but cleaning it up seems like an obviously correct thing to do. Like, so obvious that I don’t even understand what the issue is.
I came up with this allegory to summarize the nature of the exposed conflict:
Almost all online resources are there to provide you with a dopamine rush. I want this resource to stimulate your frontal cortex.
I think you are correct. Case in point is the heated duscussion about capital gains in this thread. When some smart person opened a new thread to discuss it, noone was/is interested in doing that.
I would add that bad feelings are just as contagious as good ones. You cannot contain them in one thread, one topic. They are bound to reappear in other discussions, creating a toxic stew. There is a reason for diplomatic language being used when trying to mitigate/solve world conflicts.
Look two steps forward and you can see other countries implementing this and eventually it might reach Switzerland. This forum is for financial independence minded people, who happen to live in Switzerland right now. One of the reasons being that Switzerland did not yet implement some of the measures seen in other countries. So it is justified to be worried and to discuss.
The moderators are seeking compromise between the people who want to discuss controversial topics in a non-perfect manner, and people who get easily offended. It is clear who the moderators side with. It’s the easy choice.
But coming back to the covid debate, which was also pretty heated. I think it’s safe to say that the ones who didn’t take the vaccine and didn’t believe everything the media said, weren’t so stupid at all. But back then the alarmed forum users were like “can we please not allow these dangerous conspiracy theories in here? just find a different place to talk about it”. And usually that different place is nowhere. Where else do you find financial independence minded people, based in Switzerland, to discuss things that concern you, with?
It could be for some that have exposure to NL in some way or looking to return/retire there.
But it is also interesting in general as it points to ways that taxes can be raised. We already see the proposals in Switzerland to raise more money to fund things like 13th pension payment so experiences elsewhere inform.
Same thing for the Lux wealth taxes and scrapping of UK voluntary class 2 NICs.
The easy and likely correct choice.
This thread becomes so incredibly silly, if people who have threatened to leave, said bye, only to then come back to have the last word & in an attempt to lure their ‘followers’ to their other safe place.
I didn’t contribute so far to this discussion, but now it gets ridiculous. Can we just move on?
There should be a way to discuss things without ending in a consent, or not? IMHO it is not necessary to compromise, but it is necessary to stay calm and objective.This is how new insights are gained, controversial discussions are the backbone of both politics and scientific consent.
For me personally, the wording was harsh in the original thread, yes. I always think that it is not appropiated to judge one other countries political decisions - if we are talking about a democracy.
But I also think the topic was at least as relevant as many other threads to the community
I believe to remember a time when discussion where closed pretty fast when it was obvious it will end in the nowhere. I liked this approach. It also showed to new visitors the community is open to discuss many topics, but the a thread will be stopped if there is no productive outcome.
Anyway, I support that „be nice“ is a good guideline. For me this also include to give a warning if some members with a solid track of record oversteps a guideline. Maybe a thread could be closed until requested adaptation has been made? But I have no experience in moderating a forum. And I have to say that I always enjoy the technical/objective approach in the discussions here and I feel the overall atmosphere is polite, helpful and respectful. Which is without a doubt thanks to the mods and many fellow users here.
Deleting topics that are very controversial leads to an echo chamber and destroys the value of this forum.
Ultimately, this community is here for us to become effective investors, build out confidence in our (very personal) approach to investing, refine our individual view on what it means to be a productive member of society and thereby identify and build individual passion and purpose - so that we eventually become emotionally ready to retire.
Or in other words, Nest-Egg and super low SWR alone are not enough to actually fire. The better you know yourself and manage to re-define yourself an active, non-salaried life you consider worth living - the earlier will you be emotionally and mentally able to call it a day.
This process requires difficult and sometimes painful reflection on what role we want to assume on this planet, what our values and beliefs are. Such reflection can not happen if there was no tough discourse, exchange and sometimes heat.
We don‘t need to agree on things, not at all. But we need to discuss things so that we actually get the opportunity to propperely reflect on what our beliefs actually were, where they came from and if we want to turn them into full conscious beliefs, or change them. There is no right nor wrong.
Here comes the Problem. If a Mod says we all need to calm down a bit and e.g. applied a „no post within 10 mins policy“, thats actually quite good and moderating. But if threads are either just cut/pasted aka posts shuffled to other threads where they become invisible and the discourse dies out. We do a dis-service to the community. Even worse when we just block or even delete certain conversations. Because then, that community will over time only focus on the financial side of things and become ineffective in producing happy firee‘s.
In my view, we should ONLY sanction insultive language or posters that are not here to learn or grow, but to brag or on a mission to proof others wrong. Clearly, the question then is if some of the posts shall only be visible in an „insiders corner“ you only get to see after you contributed 50 posts or so, as otherwise the heavy discussions may deferr future joiners. We could (if possible) further define that within that provate corner, we by default had a (no more than 1 post per 10 minutes) setting - amd if possible as well something like more than 20 posts a week or so. Just to make sure that discussions don‘t become avalanches.
Wrong, we need mods to tidy things up and tell users how to use their brain.
There already exists the Lounge category visible to users who reach a certain status. Right now it doesn’t contain anything interesting. It’s an interesting idea to allow more loose discussions to senior forum members, while not disturbing the “general population”. Although enforcing that in practice could prove to be a headache. Sometimes a topic starts innocently and then it gets heated. You’d then have to move the topic to the lounge.
This is the approach I’ve seen used in other forums. I agree that it is better to have the noisy off-topic discussions less visible by default to new joiners. I thought that was what Coffee was supposed to be?
Hey, I’m with you since a very long time, but I’m more on consuming, than writing side (this is probably I’m not yet aware about special Lounges 
). Mainly, because I rarely feel that I have anything valuable to write about 
. But I value a lot your contributions (your = forum members) and I find it very sad, that we are losing very good/active contributors that way… I still hope it won’t be the case after emotions calm down a bit, especially that I don’t speak German 
.
Having that said, I would like to mention that for me @TeaGhost post (I’m replying to) is a very good summary of what I would like this forum to be 
. I hope we will be able to move into that direction 
.
I am in two fora, this one and one about pipes and cigars. The second one is probably the nicest online community I’ve ever been in. Sure, it’s mostly American codgers aged 60+, few crackpots who wear tinfoil hats etc and occasionally talk about “plandemics”, “Bill Gates hacking their brains”, or worry that a communist conspiracy is right around the corner and y’all gunna see our nation’s precious bodily fluids being poisoned, but the moderation is really iron-fisted so even they behave themselves.
Threads that veer off the topic of pipes, pipe tobacco and cigars, and uncivil posts get deleted near instantly, no discussion, cautioning, exceptions, or tolerance regardless of member seniority or contribution. There’s an open section for General discussion but, like in old American bars, “no religion, no politics”, so it’s pretty light, which famous person died this week, BBQ, photography, literature, films and series, music, antiques, bikes, cars, food and other wholesome codgery subjects, but strictly nothing even remotely close to forbidden subjects.
WTF? I didn’t quite catch that the first time I read it. I thought you were quiet as you were on holidays.
OK, OK. I admit I just read the first 4 words and skipped the rest.
So you’re going to leave just like that? Who’s going to criticize my stock-picking choices now?
Who’s going to throw up a FG chart showing my horribly over-priced buys?
I couldn’t even PM you as you’re not accepting PMs any more. 
Ja, I know, same here hey, I read the first line 
then that last sentence and thought, that’s a strange combination… so tried a PM (I think it was barely an hour after his post) , but already wasn’t possible any more. Gone in a picosecond, probably.
pity 
Let’s take to heart though, the mustachian message he left us via his last sentence, I’ll expand somewhat - "For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”
It’s really or the same without these two guys 
Both helped me a lot with their different approaches to be different than the mainstream. It’s sad to see this very valuable source and the great interactions gone. Does anybody know if they went on to Reddit or anything else?
The Artist formerly known as Goofy made an account on one of those two other forums, but doesn’t look very active(?)
I feel one of the two left because they weren’t “getting anything” out of this forum and used this “deleted thread episode” as a good reason to leave/move on, which is kind of “normal” flow of a forum, people come people go, who remembers @hedgehog, great knowledgable posts, somewhat often a bit of a (harmless) grumpy-grump in his demeanor and one day “I don’t profit from this place anyway, bye”. This time it was “thanks for teaching me the difference between “quite” and “quiet”, I’m off” or “bye and thanks for all the fish”…
It’s a pity they left, maybe one will come back, yes, but I also want to add I feel @Dr.PI or other mods did nothing “wrong” IMO.