Managing the volume of the Investor's Roundtable thread

[jbih]

Hi everyone,

I've given up reading every post in the Investors' Roundtable, and I'm certain I'm not the only one. I've found ways to deal with the volume and I'm curious if maybe there's something I hadn't thought about.

These are the ways to deal with the volume I can think of currently:

1. Only read the last few pages. I don't like this method because I'll still read lots of chatting and I'll miss many relevant posts.
   
2. Only read posts with a high number of ratings. A combined number of 10 ratings seems to work well. A combined number of 20 ratings results in just flipping pages and doing more searching than reading. The current volume is so high that even only reading posts with more than 10 ratings takes too much time. I disregard "disagrees" when counting, but I do count "funny" ratings, since frequently they are informative, and always funny! Disregarding the "disagrees" also gives me some satisfaction every time I skip the FUD posts.
   
3. Only read posts of my favorite posters. This method misses a lot of good posts by others, but at least the volume is more manageable. Unfortunately not everyone has their profile open, so it's not possible to selectively find all their posts. I have however written a script to circumvent this limitation.
   
4. Not read the Investors' Roundtable and only use twitter/reddit. I works somehow, but I just like the discussions here much better. Twitter has the most recent news, but the quality of the posts is limited. Even if I stay absent from TMC for a few days, thinking I won't be able to catch up with the Investors' Roundtable anyways, I always come back.
5. Read the Moderators' Choice: Posts of Particular Merit thread.

How do you deal with the volume?

 

[bhtooefr]

...do you have a Greasemonkey script or similar to automatically handle #2? Because I've been thinking, maybe only show posts with a net +1 score (with Disagree counting as -1, Funny counting as... maybe 0?), to reduce the volume...

 

[snellenr]

I retired in order to free up enough time...

 

[Sudre]

I block people who do not provide useful information with the ability to back it up when needed. Just added another the other day. If someone if going to announce, oh... say... longs are selling and shorts are covering, they need to provide some kind of proof that disputes the actual information I see. When they do not they simply get blocked. Too much good and bad news from people that can show references.

I don't mind short posts that make an attempt at humor. I even do that one.

I also skip every other page when it's a busy day. Typically if there is an informative post it will get quoted a few times and I can pick it up in the quotes.

 

[jbih]

...do you have a Greasemonkey script or similar to automatically handle #2? Because I've been thinking, maybe only show posts with a net +1 score (with Disagree counting as -1, Funny counting as... maybe 0?), to reduce the volume...

Just a script hacked together in a few minutes. Greasemonkey would be much better, but that would take a while, have to relearn the JavaScript syntax. I might do it.

 

[adiggs]

I block people who do not provide useful information with the ability to back it up when needed. Just added another the other day. If someone if going to announce, oh... say... longs are selling and shorts are covering, they need to provide some kind of proof that disputes the actual information I see. When they do not they simply get blocked. Too much good and bad news from people that can show references.

I don't mind short posts that make an attempt at humor. I even do that one.

I also skip every other page when it's a busy day. Typically if there is an informative post it will get quoted a few times and I can pick it up in the quotes.

I do a lot of this. I find the Ignore button particularly helpful for managing the load - people that claim things to be true but don't back it up, even if I like what they claim, when it happens often enough, at some point I realize that it's sort of like eating marshmallows. It might be tasty, but its not healthy. And my time is limited.

Here, people that I recognize as consistently wasting my time by making claims without links / evidence for making those claims - those claims don't make me smarter. They just waste my time.


People that post links with no description of what they found interesting / helpful / insightful, and do it consistently. I'll respond and let them know that. If it continues - it's another waster of my time, and another Ignore.

Anytime I'm away for very long, I just skip over everything and don't sweat it. And anytime I get bothered by that, I remind myself I'm a long term investor (5+ year investment horizon), and the best thing for me to do is to never visit the Investor thread. The rest of the Investor forum is great

 

[pz1975]

I think we should split the main stickied thread into 2 again like 2 years ago.

Thread 1 (market action): only posts relevant to TSLA, price action, etc.

Thread 2 (social): OT discussions, jokes, memes, etc.

I know it didn’t work perfectly last time but if people take half a second before posting, they should be able to select the appropriate thread and keep the signal:noise ratio much higher in the market action thread. Right now, it is awful and worse than it has ever been by an order of magnitude since I first came here in 2013.

I basically just skim the thread now and try to view each page in less than 1 minute. It is the only way to stay somewhat caught up now but I am probably missing some important info while skimming, but it is the only way to keep up without quitting my job or getting divorced.

 

[BrianZ]

I agree, the volume is so high that it discourages me to write informative posts because it'll just get lost in the noise. I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels this way.

I recommend starting a new market thread where the only posts allowed are market relevant news or posts with at least 10 likes, loves, or informatives. Everyone will contribute adding to this thread, but they have to make sure the beginning of each post is the original poster's name in big font to make sure the original poster gets credit.

Another recommendation is to get a moderator to approve a new moderator just for the investor's thread, and enforce a MUCH stricter rule on off topic posts so that all off topic posts get either removed or moved into a new thread. I'd be happy to volunteer, but I don't think that'll happen though.

 

[Sudre]

I will say I REALLY like the people who use "OT" when they feel their input is off topic.
It's a shame there is no way to title each post that is not a quoted post. I am thinking when I post in that thread from now on I will basically start with a sort of title then leave a few returns and type in my topic. This would give people a way to skip things they feel are not market movers. Quoted posts would not need it because you will see the title in the quote.

for example.....

ELON TWEET


Today I think when Elon tweeted (link) blah blah blah...

 

[mblakele]

I favor a reign of terror: brutal, unforgiving, scorched-earth moderation. Off-topic posts would be deleted without warning, and the poster banned for 24-hr. Strike 2: banned for a week. Strike 3: banned for a month. Initially this would make a lot of work for the mods, but I think things would settle down after a while.

I'd also limit post rates. Say, no one can post more than once an hour. That ought to be easy to enforce in software, if the forum software supports it.

 

[adiggs]

The idea of this thread has been working away at the back of my brain. It's finally resolved into a conscious idea of what I don't like about the big mega-thread, and the split that would be valuable to me. That split might also be valuable to others, and it might be community enforceable (and it might just be a puff of hot air )

I'm a long term buy and hold investor. I originally bought in 2012 with a 10+ year investment horizon. ~7 years in and my investment horizon has been updated to be 10+ years. Weeks go by and I have no idea what the stock price is. I'm largely indifferent to even the first digit of the stock price, much less the actual price.

However, I am very interested in the Tesla business. The markets Tesla is doing business in. The products Tesla is bringing to market, how those products compare to the incumbents in those markets, how the market incumbents might react and compete - that sort of thing.


If I had a magic wand that could split the mega thread into posts that are primarily focused on, and motivated by, the TSLA stock price in one thread, and posts that are focused on and motivated by the Tesla business and markets in the other thread, I would do that. That would be beautiful for me.

I wouldn't bother visiting the Stock Price thread - as I've already indicated, I'm indifferent to the stock price (at least on the scale of daily and weekly fluctuations).

I expect the Tesla Business thread would get 2 or 3 pages of traffic a day (instead of 2 or 3 pages an hour, or 2 or 3 pages a minute!), and I'd most likely read every single one of those posts.


I realize that in practice, the stock price and the business interact. There isn't a nice crisp line we can draw that keeps the two from polluting each other.

Here's a split that is consistent with not caring about the stock price - posts about deliveries are exciting and interesting, and they go into the stock price thread. Posts about production go into the business thread. It's simplistic, but I don't really care about quarterly delivery and in-transit numbers (because an in-transit vehicle is just an early-next-quarter delivery - Tesla's business is the same). If Tesla starts changing it's business practices in such a way that it's maintaining 3 or 6 months of sales inventory on hand, then I start caring a lot more about the deliveries as the deliveries become a better indicator of the business than production.

 

[neroden]

Where would we discuss merger arb and SEC investigations? onder:

 

[adiggs]

Maybe go crazy, and talk about the individual merger arbs in individual merger arb threads (so startup a Maxwell thread), and the current contempt hearing in an SEC contempt proceeding thread.

To the degree that one felt compelled to crunch their posts into one of these 2 mythical threads or the other, I think the theme above will lead to Mose of these going into the Stock Price thread. Most of these merger arb posts are really about stock price, and short term advantage trading, rather than being about the Tesla business.

To the degree that a particular post is really about the Tesla business and doesn't care about the micro impact landing in this quarter or next, then it goes in the other thread. So the MXWL merger arb - that's Stock Price. Maxwell as a critical technology acquisition for their dry cell / energy density / cost decreasing technology is a business discussion (which will also eventually have a stock price impact of course, but whether that impact is this quarter, next quarter, or next year is far from clear).

 

[ggr]

Speaking from the point of view of a moderator, but not ex cathedra, we would love it if those topics went into separate threads. There was a time when I was spending about 4 hours a day moderating, and could usually go back and split out a discussion before it became infeasible or impractical. But for the last couple of weeks (it seems to be settling back a bit at the moment, but a single tweet could change that) the volume has been high, the number of different topics has been high, and the moderation resources have been somewhat constrained. The real killer, what prompted my "you broke the moderator" post a few months ago, is when there are multiple topics that need to be split out. The mod tools just don't work that way.

What should happen is that the first poster who sees "Elon just announced Unicorn mode in the Model Q" should start a thread for it.

What does happen is that the second poster comments about it in the main thread, then the discussion gets split between the two threads, and by the time a moderator catches up it is literally too hard to move all the posts. This makes sense because generally everyone reads that main thread first, and the second (and third, fourth...) make the comment there because they hadn't seen it anywhere else because they hadn't caught up yet.

So, having typed this, I have come up with a suggestion!
When all'y'all wake up at 5 am and immediately start looking at the investor's forum, refresh it, and before you start reading the main thread, look down the list of threads to see if there's something there that looks interesting to you, and read that first. Sort of the opposite of "sticky" threads; they are sticky for the benefit of newbies and historians... not addicts.

 

[adiggs]

I like it!

I pledge to read the mega-thread last. Heck - maybe by reading it last, that'll get me enough of a fix that I'll just avoid it entirely

 

[Buckminster]

So, having typed this, I have come up with a suggestion!
When all'y'all wake up at 5 am and immediately start looking at the investor's forum, refresh it, and before you start reading the main thread, look down the list of threads to see if there's something there that looks interesting to you, and read that first. Sort of the opposite of "sticky" threads; they are sticky for the benefit of newbies and historians... not addicts.

I do something similar already. I prefer the other threads and only skim over the main thread now looking for posts with 5+ likes etc. The key is to get FC posting on the other threads - the rest will follow.

 

[Ocelot]

There is an inherent conflict off interest here. Who ever owns TMC wants posts, and traffic. However if you limited people to say, 2 posts or even less per day in the thread. Boom. Pages per day would be gone.


Edit.
Right after I typed this I went to DaveT’s thread. Ironically it was now locked directing MORE traffic to the main investor thread.

 

[mblakele]

There is an inherent conflict off interest here. Who ever owns TMC wants posts, and traffic. However if you limited people to say, 2 posts or even less per day in the thread. Boom. Pages per day would be gone.

Yes, I used to think along those lines. But then I considered google: they make money by selling ads, not by answering questions. These days they seem to have a pretty good answers for most questions. But they don't try to maximize ad revenue by pushing the best answers to the second or third page.

Apparently google thinks they'll make more money in the long run if they minimize frustration for their users, even though those users aren't paying customers.

 

[bhtooefr]

From main:

I think such an active thread as this one really needs a branching structure where a reply to a post shows up as indent of that post kind of like they do on disqus. That way you can read through the branch you are interested instead of wading through so many posts you are not. I do not know how difficult this would be to implement on this platform.

XenForo has no support for that, it appears. It's certainly something that has been done many times before, though, and I suspect could make things more manageable.

I suspect the "correct" method would be to not have a main thread, and just post new threads for each topic (and have moderators merge threads as needed). That would massively increase the thread volume, but it would at least make it easier to ignore irrelevant content.

 

[tmoz]

Yogi Berra might have said something like, "There's nothing to read here because there are too many articles."