Managing the volume of the Investor's Roundtable thread

[mblakele]

Lately I've seen many proposals for "fixing" the investor thread by adding more ratings or other vote-based features. Folks proposing such things: please consider that any rating system can and will be gamed by bad actors. That's why reddit has human moderators.

Consider this recent proposal: (without intending to single out @dww12 — sorry!)

Or add an “off topic” rating. 10 or more and it’s removed. Get 10 or more posts removed and you are removed or timed out. Should make mods’ job a lot easier too.

Now suppose I take a dislike to you — maybe because I'm a TESLAQ shill, or maybe for no good reason at all. I get ten of my friends (or bot/sockpuppet accounts) to rate your last post off-topic. Gone. Do that ten more times, and you are gone.

OK, so we add patches to a voting system to fix specific problems; but it becomes a game of cat-and-mouse. Mathematically, probably the best attempts at a secure system are cryptocurrencies, where bad actors face the need to produce a "proof of work". But even the best cryptocurrencies I'm familiar with are still vulnerable to a well-funded clique of bad actors, who can afford to supply enough proof of work. Now pause and consider the money that seems to be behind TSLA shorts.

Ultimately there have to be trusted humans in the loop. Around here, we call them moderators.

 

[dww12]

Lately I've seen many proposals for "fixing" the investor thread by adding more ratings or other vote-based features. Folks proposing such things: please consider that any rating system can and will be gamed by bad actors. That's why reddit has human moderators.

Consider this recent proposal: (without intending to single out @dww12 — sorry!)



Now suppose I take a dislike to you — maybe because I'm a TESLAQ shill, or maybe for no good reason at all. I get ten of my friends (or bot/sockpuppet accounts) to rate your last post off-topic. Gone. Do that ten more times, and you are gone.

OK, so we add patches to a voting system to fix specific problems; but it becomes a game of cat-and-mouse. Mathematically, probably the best attempts at a secure system are cryptocurrencies, where bad actors face the need to produce a "proof of work". But even the best cryptocurrencies I'm familiar with are still vulnerable to a well-funded clique of bad actors, who can afford to supply enough proof of work. Now pause and consider the money that seems to be behind TSLA shorts.

Ultimately there have to be trusted humans in the loop. Around here, we call them moderators.

Not saying to get rid of moderators, adding “off topic” would seem to make their life a lot easier because they could initially sort by the OT ratings. The post could also be turned red at say 8 OTs so that everyone could see what is considered OT by the group. Additionally it would allow more flexibility on the weekend (when OT is generally more accepted) or stringent in a particular time of focus where OT by the group could be taken care of quickly. Who is the thread for anyway, those using it EVERY HOUR of EVERY DAY or the moderators. @Fact Checking and @KarenRei have the most informative, thought provoking post of anyone. They are the weight of the investor thread. Sorry but it is not possible for either of them to have an OT post.

 

[mblakele]

@Fact Checking and @KarenRei have the most informative, thought provoking post of anyone. They are the weight of the investor thread. Sorry but it is not possible for either of them to have an OT post.

I like FC and KR too, and I'd welcome both back to TMC. But let's not pretend they're superhuman. I'd say they both go OT on a regular basis. Some of those OT posts have been moved or removed, but it's easy to find recent examples — even with a fairly liberal definition of the topic, and leaving out posts clearly intended as comic relief.

• Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the 2019-2020 Investors' Roundtable
• Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the 2019-2020 Investors' Roundtable
• Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the 2019-2020 Investors' Roundtable
• Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the 2019-2020 Investors' Roundtable
• ...

Again, I like FC and KR too, and I'd welcome both back to TMC. They haven't been banned AFAIK, so it's up to them.

 

[tinm]

First thing to acknowledge is that the Investors Roundtable is not round.

Second thing is, as long as mods are anonymous and and their actions secret, they are unaccountable.

 

[ggr]

First thing to acknowledge is that the Investors Roundtable is not round.

Second thing is, as long as mods are anonymous and and their actions secret, they are unaccountable.

What do you mean, anonymous? I signed every single thing I wrote as a moderator. Literally hundreds of people started conversations with me about my moderation actions. Including you.

If you mean pseudonymous, well, you just haven't tried to look me up. It isn't hard. I'm not attempting to disguise my identity.

But I'm not acting as a moderator any more, except for emergency actions like deleting malware links.

 

[mblakele]

as long as mods are anonymous and and their actions secret, they are unaccountable.

Right, mods aren't accountable to the general community of users, because TMC is a privately-owned site. Mods are accountable to the site owner(s), who appoint them. I'm not even sure who the owner(s) are — which may be exactly how they want it. Looking at the list of staff, maybe Danny?

That said, I think it would be nice to have a list of mods for each subforum somewhere: maybe the site owners could add that?

List of moderators for each forum & subforum?

 

[JRP3]

Yes unless things changed along the way Danny is the site owner.

 

[bhtooefr]

So, here's a bad idea (it basically turns the whole forum into hierarchical meetings), but if we have to have a main thread, I'm going to throw it out there anyway.

Each topic has its own thread (as it should).

At the end of each day, someone is responsible for summarizing that thread's events for the day (up to and including copying whole posts from that thread), and posting them into the main thread.

Discussion would be strictly forbidden in the main thread, and replies would in fact be disabled for people who aren't the summarizers (this means that the main thread would need to be in its own subforum, or would need to be locked and the summarizers would need mod powers, but beyond that, this would require no actual modifications to the forum software, as far as I'm aware) - the main thread would basically be a "news and things to consider" thread.

 

[EV Promoter]

First thing to acknowledge is that the Investors Roundtable is not round.

Although the Roundtable concept should have been proper, is not how is perceived by the people, more closely intended as a bar coffee table.

Perhaps could be considered starting a new thread (or threads) with more precise reference to the financial, strategic and trading aspects with or without Elon's tweets discussions in a separate thread.

 

[sparcs]

I'm leaning towards the thread just being unmoderated even for off topic posts and it becoming a "Tesla Investor Daily Chat" with the suggestion people try to keep off topic to a minimum. However, everyone will just have to accept that some big event will happen like Coronavirus and just live with the noise. Unplug from the thread if some of these events or off-topic bother you.

Maybe mods should focus that new daily chat thread on asking members to politely distribute some of their more valuable posts over the forum voluntarily (without moving them). A reminder once a week wouldn't hurt. Then all the friction and moderation would disappear and they would only have to deal with people fighting with each other, spam, or whatever.

It's not a perfect solution, but at least the friction between moderators and forum members would stop pretty quickly. Status quo can't continue as there will only be more and more voices over time.

 

[dww12]

Although the Roundtable concept should have been proper, is not how is perceived by the people, more closely intended as a bar coffee table.

Perhaps could be considered starting a new thread (or threads) with more precise reference to the financial, strategic and trading aspects with or without Elon's tweets discussions in a separate thread.

No, the roundtable thread was/is perfect. I really don’t care that it is long, that is why I only check it and not 20 different threads. That is why nobody is in this thread. The Roundtable is special because of the quality of content, even if it goes OT we all learn something. For the most part the roundtable seemed to self regulate, if that is because of excellent modding then ok. But losing FC and KR is not worth it.

 

[VValleyEV]

Probably not feasible: a “threaded” view, perhaps optional or perhaps not.

As in email threads, posts would only show up in the top-level view that are not responses to other posts, with a visible control for “show replies”.

Both drastically reduces the number of posts to scan, and makes it easier to avoid re-posting a news item already posted.

I realize that such a feature is more difficult to apply to posts quoting individual sections rather than the a whole quote, but maybe there are straightforward solutions for even that.