A plea to the members
Dear members,
I am not part of this board's staff, but I would like to make a request. When i first joined this board, it was after I had completed my internship at a lower BB and accepted their offer. At the beginning, this board provided a nice break from the junk cluttered Vault boards. At the beginning, people were receiving valuable advice from real bankers or people who have completed internships. As a result, there were numerous threads thanking the people and success stories of people who used the board to get offers.
With the increased popularity of the board, the quality has declined. Stupid, pointless, repetitive threads drove several helpful bankers away (Ghenghis Khan, BB.MandA.3rdyear, GSBanker etc.) There are very few real bankers left and those who are still here post less often (westcoasting). There are also some of us who will soon be bankers and are sharing their summer experience (myself, seanc etc.) However, even I am beginning to get bored with this board and feel less interested in responding to the messages and providing some advice to the best of my limited ability.
If you guys want this board to return to its previous glory and help numerous people, please refrain from stupid and repetetive posts. This will keep on this board those of us who want to help and in case any new bankers show up, they will stay.
Many other forums have FAQs or "stickied" posts at the top of each of the forum sections that cover topics commonly asked by new or unexperienced posters. I think this may help reduce the number of repetitive low content posts.
it seems to me that the stupid, condescending, and often, obnoxious posts come from a small group who post here. It's a shame that they are ruining it for the majority of us who are mature enough to handle a message board.
I'm really afraid that some of the members who post useful and informative stuff on here will stop , it seems like every thread MissInd, for example posts ends up devolving into insults and sexual innuendo.
I think the mods need to start banning some of the useless, wastes of skin on here.
You read my mind. I'm not going to lie, when I first found out about this website, I was excited about it, and on it everyday, looking forward to share my valuable experience and knowledge with people who were truly interested in the field. Lately, I've been really annoyed with the threads, many adding no real value to life. I'm also annoyed and the asinine comments and advice given to many people by college sophomores and juniors who think they know what banking is all about without ever stepping foot within an investment bank. I'm not going to beat a dead horse, because I think Salam clearly stated the concern shared by many, but it would be greatly appreciated if you could follow his advice.
Let the real bankers do the advising.
To add to this, for people who post questions looking for answers that simply affirm their own opinions, stop doing that shit. If you don't have a choice, don't ask whether the firm you are working for is good, because it doesn't matter. Stop asking questions about whether the school you attend or the experience you have or the gpa you have will be good enough in the future. If what people answer on this board will not affect your decision, don't ask.
I apologize for being insulting on several threads, but if you ask a dumb question looking for an answer that just supports your opinion, you're wasting our time.
Yeah but the real question is what degree do I need to get into a top tier bb to become a superstar and which business school must i attend to become a bsd and get into private equity after 2 years of being an analyst and why is good english and grammar important????????????????????????????????????????
oh also which is the best group to work in for hours, pay, social life, good looking women, culture, deal flow, client list and cafeteria at the following banks
Thanks these questions are vital and this board in no way WHAT SO EVER answers them.
You're right. The board really sucks now. And I miss Miss Ind too.
Ditto everything said so far. I think maybe there needs to be more moderators as on much smaller forums than this you often have 3 or so.
One thing that does actually get to me is that if you are on the board for a while and have a good memory you notice there are some guys who clearly have never set foot inside any sort of financial institution based on their posts but give responses to serious threads about career direction and the like without making it all clear to the ops that it is an unqualified opinion. That is just outright lying and those doing it ought to be banned.
Thank you for the input. While I wish this sentiment wasn't out there, I agree with a lot of what is being said here.
While I've given moderator privileges to 4-5 users, I will continue to give out these roles to users that are willing to help and have shown that they are mature enough to help.
I've also been very distracted on the upgrades to the site that has turned into a monster project. I want you guys to see the site as a useful source of information but also somewhere you can be entertained -- so I am working on developing some more original content as well.
I agree that the site needs improvement, but I am also confident I can make it into an entertaining and useful resource. One way is to get higher quality users from actual iBanks, PE shops, Hedge Funds, etc. I have been holding off on a marketing campaign that will drive more of these professionals to a board until after the upgrades, but please believe me that it will be done and the quality of users will improve.
The upgrade will also incorporate many of the requests that have been made in the past to make the site more manageable and hopefully encourage more users to use the Search function BEFORE posting a new forum topic.
I think my moderators have done a much better job in the last few weeks of locking up threads and deleting completely off-topic commenst and threads...unfortunately, i don't think we can ever eliminate 100% of the trash.
I just wanted everyone to know that I am aware of it and I am working on improving the site. I appreciate your patience with me and your contributions to the site.
Thanks, nychimp
i generally like the board...there's always a signal to noise issue and there's no incentive for ppl who actually know anything to bother to help others, who frankly can provide nothing in return. so people will do it out of the goodness of their hearts (or procrastination i guess) but sometimes enough is enough and you take a little break.
I feel exactly like gqbanker15. Joined, enjoyed posting at first, excited about site, but then saw many posts devolve into drivel and that initial excitement began to ebb, though it certainly hasn't disappeared. I saw the genuine banker/PE/hedgie voices frequently became lost in the noise, which has discouraged me from posting more frequently (as did my current deal work, frankly...god it's like a four alarm fire right now). Anyway, I'd welcome any change that might improve content quality, and will stay tuned. nychimp, thanks for working so hard to keep this site valuable...minor content hiccups aside, well done.
I think the main problems with the forum are as follows...
A) For some reason, some posters seem to make hounding personal attacks on other posters. Mis Ind comes to mind when I say this, for some reason a small minority had it out for her (Or Maybe I'm on the outside of an inside joke)
B) A large group of posters want to get into banking and constantly ask the same questions (What school, what b-school) as well as salary related questions and so on. These questions have been answered numerous times.
I think improving the search function would really mitigate the prevalence of problem B.
Also, nychimp, would it be possible to hand out a marker of verification or something certifying that a user is actually a banker/trader/afinancierofanykind by giving them out to guys who provide a valid work email? I recognize the fact that there are certain compliance issues with work emails being used in online chat rooms, but still, there must be something that can be done.
I really like that idea about validating banking status through email confirmation. I don't know anything about computers or programming a chat room though.
The problem with verification is identification.
For me (and other IBers I've talked to), if we run the risk of being identified (even showing the work email once in my case at least), we'd rather leave the board.
Check people's profiles or ask for their background if you want to put what they say into context. I don't think that many explicitly pretend to be in the industry when they're not, and these guys get weeded out and flamed.
As for runtothehills' point B / Prescott's search suggestion, YES.
I agree with the above comments. A good search function would make a big difference. Over the last few months, many quality posters have dissapeared, and that sucks.
You can add one more poster to that list
jamba...you're not even in investment banking
my friend, you're a sophomore going into alternative investments...that's wealth management
I have only been here a short while, but in my opinion one of the biggest problems is the vast, vast number of posts where students give their GPA/situation and ask what everybody thinks.
There are all sorts of variations on these questions. While personalized information is helpful to those kids, it is counterproductive when they drive off all of the people actually giving the good advice.
Perhaps create a forum or sticky thread for GPA related questions, that way moderators can delete them from the other threads without being complete dicks.
my sentiments exactly
Recruiting season is over for this year, so hopefully there won't be any more of the "Can i make it into IB with these credentials", or "Which bank is better?" threads until August or so..
Instead, we have hs kids asking which college is better in improving their chances of becoming an ibanker. Frankly I didn't even know what investment banking was until sophomore year. People really need to relax and have fun while they can.
Someone please sticky this thread.
EuroMonkey, I definitely agree that I would rather leave than be explicitly identified on the board, but what if only nychimp had to know our work emails, and from there he could put some sort of marker on the profiles of the guys who are actually bankers without making our emails/identities public?
Dont worry people I am here to help.
keep banning assholes
Why not creating an "FAQ" section for common questions such as gpa needed, targeted school....just like the salary database.
ibkarmino -- because there are such differing opinions on what is a good GPA needed or which are target schools. The reason these questions keep coming up is because there are no concrete answers and everyone has their opinion.
My personal thought on the quality of the board is that there are too many responses that discredit or insult without adding any useful content. I was recently reading and Zala Rules had the final post under three threads -- each post telling the OP that he/she was an idiot or to "shut the fuck up." I think this kind of attitude is what is really costing the board quality members.
Another thing: Stuipd threads die quicker if people don't point the above mentioned posts in them. I think there should be a "no bumping" policy in effect which should allow for uninteresting threads to phase out of the front page quickly.
Lastly: I feel some sort of "verification" method would be too large a risk for an individual's security as well as ineffective. I have been an i-banking intern and secured a full time offer, but all I have to show for it is my offer letter (and no such work-email, which I know I would not provide). Maybe this does not qualify me as an "informed poster" (but hey, sure beats the college sophomores), but I believe it puts some validity to my advice regarding issues of the application and interview process.
I know the following would be technically challenging (I was involved in the design of a national-level online social network that some of you may have used).
It would be great if there were a feedback system (think eBay) to keep people honest. The system would allow users to endorse or negate other users. Feedback from highly endorsed users could be weighted heavily and feedback from negated users discounted. The feedback ability shouldn't trigger until the user in question has earned X bananas and been appointed by Y posters of sufficient status.
This system could dodge the self-identification problems associated with email confirmation while allowing new members to quickly and easily identify the (historically) best posters. It took me about two weeks of heavy use to figure out that westcoasting and misind consistently post valuable (and SENSIBLE) information. I wish it had been easier. Simply counting bananas doesn't sort out the people who post 300 juvenile comments.
not sure if this is possible with drupal...but maybe something like combining justanotherbanker's idea with the feature on shoutwire of the thumbsup/thumbsdown. after x number of thumbsdown, a comment is buried. and after x number of thumbsup, a comment is enlarged/bolded.
I don't know what the problem is. The board seems to have lost a few quality members.
Also, I find the board very US. Hopefully there's some way to attract more European and Asian bankers.
Good call cafe, a banker who appreciates diversity is always welcome!
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