I'm sure these come up all the time, but figured it might be helpful to throw up a thread where people can give legitimate feedback to Patrick and his staff at WSO.
On my end, some thoughts/suggestions that come to mind for potentially expanding the site beyond its core roots...
1) Ideas for new forum sections/site services:
-Exams (CFA, GMAT, etc)
-Mentor pairing program (have people apply to be mentors and mentees, screen resumes, put people in touch)
-Section where advice threads that are posted which are especially timeless/generally applicable can be saved and kept up for future generations to read, I imagine lots of great threads fall into oblivion over time and are bured under the mountains of crap
2) Improve search function, easier to filter or sort by date, relevance, etc
3) Have moderators boot the spammers, noticed a handful of threads which are helpful linking to other sites, others where it's blatant advertising or trying to drive traffic.
4) Create a presence on linked in, facebook, etc for members and users WHO WANT TO (very important, since anonymity of the site is a huge asset as well) to connect outside just WSO.
5) Tag kids who are students. Not just the generic 'aspiring monkey' but break it down by grad students, undergrad (year), MBA, high school/middle school, etc.
You reaiize there is a site suggestions forum right?
1) A few more forums could be good, but you will also have a point where there are too many sub-forums and users don't bother with most of them. As for good threads fading in to obscurity, I seem to recall a best-of at some point. I've also pinned some of the better threads to the top of forums (eg, Pink Monkey's thread in the HF section), but agree this can't be done for everything 2) I know Patrick has been working on this for a while, and it does seem to be improving, but I agree it could still improve more 3) Mods already do this when we notice spam 4) Could be useful, would certainly take very little effort 5) Could again be useful, don't think it would take much effort
Sorry, let me clarify, I know there's a site suggestion area, just figured we could get together and discuss ideas in case people were interested in threshing stuff out.
there's also a linkedin group already, just btw
Facebook page exists as well: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wall-Street-Oasis/19415152515
We try to maintain the top notch threads through stickies at the top of the relevant sections. There was a forum for "classics" or the equivalent, but it has since disappeared. I don't think it was utilized that frequently. The best content is probably captured in the WSO Guides -- but unfortunately you have to pay for those!
Hey other mods, how do we sticky a thread?
As for a suggestion, I still think a YouTube channel is in order. You can post all the episodes of NSFW and Wall Street Mentors with the intention of gaining subscribers from YouTube and bringing new traffic to the site. Also, YouTube results often have really high priority in Google searches. I'd be happy to help with this project.
Edit, Publishing Options (bottom one), Stickied (can also be used to promote to front page)
Merci mec.
Hey guys, just stumbled across this thread. I'll try not to sounds too negative....A few things:
We really prefer keeping the # of forums down (if not remove some). As it is now, people now can't find the correct forum and with every new forum that is added it will only make that issue worse. The business school forum has many GMAT discussions and I like the idea of having CFA, CPA and other relevant exams discussed in the b school forum (so I just added that to the description - good idea)
We just made a major update to our Search function which easily allows you to search by date. Blocks on the right side allow you to sort by relevancy, date, title, type and author. Do you not see these blocks on the right? I actually think this was now one of our strong points...the multi-faceted search is fast and very thorough.
Two things with the spammers. #1 For the past 3 months we've had Mollum running which is a 3rd party software that monitors every post being submitted...it has resulted in some legitimate posts being blocked, but has also reduced outright spam by ~95% (no exaggeration) - this was a no-brainer investment. As for users plugging their site, the only time I have a problem with this is if they are not providing useful advice and/or are in direct competition with WSO (and/or trying to bash us). If someone is taking the time to respond to a discussion and add value, I have no problem with a signature that promotes their own site. As far as trolls go, we have dropped the BAN HAMMER much more frequently the past 2 months which has resulted in significantly less trolling. We still have some asshole users, but we cant ban someone for being opinionated unless they are just trolling 90% of the time.
This is already done and you can see links to our Twitter, FB, newsletters and RSS feeds in upper right corner...LinkedIn group also exists...havent been actively promoting it but it's there. Also, we literally JUST created a wallstreetoasis youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/wallstreetoasis?feature=mhum (let me know if that link doesnt work)....we are still getting some older videos up there, but we will be dropping our Wall Street Mentor Q&As and NSFW episodes on there in the future.
I think this is a good idea....issue is how granular to get. We have prospective monkey and business school as 2 options under Status...you think we shoudl add prospective (ugrad) monkey? prospective (grad) monkey? etc?
Also, I wanted to say to the mods, please do not sticky threads. Over time this will really just lead to a mess at the top of each forum and block any new threads from being visible.
I realize there are super useful thread that come up from time to time, but if they are given enough 5 banana rankings, they are not lost, but will float to the top of our Top Content page. Under the Forum Topics Block, if you click "Rank" and then the "more" link it will bring you there: //www.wallstreetoasis.com/rankposts
Thanks for all your feedback guys...I don't mean to sound defensive (maybe I am?), just want to make sure we think things through carefully before making any major changes.
As some of you may have noticed wolfy got that mentorship program going in the "Get A Job" forum. There's probably room to expand on that (I've actually sent him a few ideas, he's apparently very busy with work so I'm waiting to hear back). I think if Brian got in touch with him that could be a great resource for WSO members. I know you currently have the paid Mentor service, but I think partnering prospective monkeys up with others who have been successful in finding internships and FT jobs would be a great idea. Perhaps even go so far as to create WSO Networking events in different regions.
I also wanted to mention that, personally, I'd like to see the blogs a little bit more organized. Searching through them can be a bit difficult. I'm not sure how you'd want to go about doing that (if you did), just a thought.
Brian, You didn't sound defensive at all, we (yea, I'm taking the liberty of speaking for everyone) love what you're doing with the site overall. I think sometimes it takes people a little while to notice additions/changes, it happens to every website with user interaction.
Who is Brian?
lmfao, Im pretty sure I've done that about 12 times now and have kicked myself every time after. Sorry Patrick :-p
ha, no worries - was confused for a bit.
As for the events, definitely think there is potential there. Monty is throwing an Energy Rodeo in Houston which should be awesome (all of you should check it out), but it really is about finding someone that is well organized and can pull off something like that.
I think the first one should be in NYC since that is where our largest base of users come from, but that is also expensive and I have no clue how to plan these things. As for the the mentoring thing, I think that happens a ton informally all the time (especially through PMs), but will definitely give some thought to formalizing the process a bit.
how about a im service alot of us use aimz but MMM is being mean and not giving me his :(
I think Aim is a bad idea, because it makes it difficult to save conversations--or at least easily find them. Also, I like how the chats are in an open forum as opposed to one on one conversations. I have some people's phone numbers, if you get to the point where you can have a conversation with someone exchange AIM or phone numbers.
I'm talking to Blastoise on AIM right now just so I can check it off my Bucket List
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