Over the past days, we experienced a situation where we acted fast and deleted a thread. Our communication around it was not clear enough, sorry about that. We could have locked the thread instead, or handled more via DMs, or do plenty of other things differently. Mistakes happen (and will again), and the Mod team does its best to protect the forum’s core goal: adding value to each other.
To improve on both sides, we’ve made two changes:
The Guidelines have been clarified and are now displayed more visibly (pinned at the top of the forum). If you haven’t read them recently, now is a good time. They set the standard for this community.
One thing that really helps the Mod team: we highly encourage everyone to use the flag button when you see something that doesn’t belong here (flags are the built-in moderation instrument that comes with numerous useful features). Indeed, flags are private, they go directly to the Mod team, and they allow us to act early before things escalate. You don’t need to engage with a problematic post yourself, just flag it and move on.
If you have constructive feedback on the Guidelines themselves, you’re welcome to share it in this thread, or via DM. We read everything, but may not respond to every point individually. Let’s keep discussions focused and solution-oriented so this doesn’t turn into an endless meta-thread.
Thanks for being part of this community and for helping us make it better.
Thank you for acknowledging this. I also feel that, recently, actions may have been taken somewhat too quickly and without a clearly defined escalation path.
In my view, both deleting threads and — to a certain extent — moving posts to different threads should be handled with greater caution. While I understand the intention to keep the forum well organised, moving posts can sometimes remove them from their original context, both for future readers and for those who were actively engaged in the discussion.
I also believe that, considering the valuable contributions that @Your_Full_Name and @cubanpete_the_swiss have made to this forum (the former over a number of years, the latter more recently, but still — in my view — with very interesting input), and given that this forum — although virtual — should, in my opinion, be regarded as a place where “friends” meet, it would be a constructive and responsible gesture (not an admission of fault nor a sign of weakness) if you or the moderation team could reach out to them privately, to clarify intentions and explore whether the situation can be resolved and have the two guys back with the community.
I think that’s a good thing. I don’t believe I have seen any other forum that is so well organised. In other forums, there are often hundreds of new threads for the same topic, whereas here they are simply merged. However, as always, it depends on the situation/context/topic.
I have not been active here often. Recently, I tried to contribute more, but the experience was not pleasant or welcoming. I joined a discussion about managing savings and replied to a suggestion from @Butch (a senior member, I think). He suggested using options to get premiums on cash. The replies I received felt like “wise guy” comments in a very “male bro” tone.
The senior member explained his method. I shared one example of how I trade options. My mistake was asking a critic if they had real experience with options trading. After that, I was lectured by others. They told me that having no experience does not mean they are wrong. Then they lectured me because I do not have a long “track record” or seniority on this forum.
Next, they asked me to explain my strategy in detail and compare it to others. In the same message, they assumed I did not know enough about DITM options (professionals usually say LEAPS, but okay). They asked if the spreads were too wide. If they had checked the data, they would see the spreads became very good that day because the underlying price dropped. This is basic Implied Volatility, if they want to learn more.
They also asked how much time I spend learning and executing these trades. Later, the thread was moved or split. It is difficult to follow because the topics move so much.
I have a deep background in options. I already said this is not a strategy for beginners. It was just one possible option for parking cash – maybe for someone with more experience than the original poster. Another member suggested options first, but I am the one who was “roasted.” Maybe it is because I am female, or because I am not a “senior” member here.
I do not want to search for all the reasons why this happened. However, it is enough for me to stay silent for now.
Thanks a lot for your efforts and your work. Happy to add some (hopefully) constructive feedback:
Overall: I find the guidelines too long and too non-binding. However, I don’t want this to be the focus of my post, therefore happy to give examples and continue this topic via PM.
My focus should be on a few specific points:
Thanks for adding the ‘Moderation escalation process’. However, it is my impression that you are focusing on a less relevant part. From my understanding in the past months, the emotions were never about the process of banning (or not banning) a member. No one was asking to make the banning process more explicit. Instead, some people (including myself) were complaining about the lack of transparency when removing threads or posts.
My suggestion therefore is to add something like the following sentence: “In order to maintain our community, moderators reserve the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time. *Unless deemed inappropriate by the moderators, the moderators will publicly inform about such removal in way that the moderators deem appropriate.”
As for the ‘flag’ feature: I personally have a hard time using this feature. On the one hand, the guidelines seems to emphasize the responsibility and contribution of each of us to contribute to the forum (“Let’s try to leave our park better than we found it.”). Using the flag features seems to hand of this responsibility to the moderators. Also, when I see a post that I deem less appropriate, I hope that no one will react to the post which would solve the problem. A less appropriate post in many cases only becomes bad if it is followed up. And once there is a whole chain of posts, it’s hard to identify the one post that would be worth flagging. This is just a thought, I don’t have any specific suggestion for a change in the guidelines.
This is where flags come handy. A user gets a system message when a post is flagged and sent to staff review, and another one when the flag is resolved.
Since you throw around accusations wholesale, I think it is right to set a counterpoint.
At least I perceive you as very aggressive and falsely claiming to be wrongly persecuted. This not true and certainly not for reasons like being, apparently, a woman. Additionally it feels that you think everybody that doesn’t share your point of view must be dumb.
That makes it very difficult (at least for me) to have a normal conversion. From my side, I can not more than try.
PS: LEAPS and DITM (months to years out or otherwise) options are not the same.
No, your mistake was to get defensive and start personal attacks which basically de-railed the discussion into a series of personal attacks which thankfully was cleaned-up.
I think this reinforces that the ‘be civil’ and ‘no personal attacks’ is important to prevent threads spiralling out of control.
Don’t know if we are referring to the same examples. But I did not flag or did not intent to flag any posts in the exploiting employee thread because I didn’t have a problem with these posts. Maybe other users flagged the posts and that’s the reason why they were deleted. But without communication from your side this is just speculation.
Following up on increasing posting of web apps build by AI and post in the forum with the request for feedback. Currently the forum guidelines state:
Hence we don’t accept advertising, self-promotion, solicitation, or spam.
I would tend to see such self-vibe-coded web apps as self-promotion, therefore being part of the Wednesday Self Promotion thread.
This is not a statement for or against such web apps. While some have proven to be very useful, others seem more trivial or less useful. Feedback on a posting in the Wednesday Self Promotion thread can help to establish a usefulness. If considered useful, the discussion can continue in a dedicated thread.
These are my thoughts, up for discussion.
No joke, I had exactly the same thought 60min ago, but I wanted to wait until I got home to write it (I hate typing on my smartphone) and now you’ve written exactly what I wanted to write
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