So I wanted to start this thread to get feedback / opinions from the community on how WSO is doing???
We've put in a lot of time and $ recently into site performance and layout, but there have not been any HUGE changes I think for a few years now. Every few months I like to ask you guys how we are doing and what we can do to improve. So here I am again...let me hear it.
I know there has been a huge influx of students over the past 12-18 months, which is why I am so focused on making sure our Certified Users are happy (and we continue to develop our FAQ section...which now also has Recommended Readings for each industry)...and that we keep recruiting new Certified Users to help out the new chimps.
Over the past year we have also put in a lot of focus into growing the network of professionals for Wall Street Mentors and building out the WSO Video Library (//www.wallstreetoasis.com/wso-mock-interview-video-library) which we hope will be just another way to gain an edge for your interviews along with our popular set of interview guides.
I know some of the most recent requests have asked for WSO Apps for the iphone and android, so we are looking into developing those (anybody know a good developer for that...or an out of the box app template we can drop in some RSS feeds and it will make it look nice on your mobile?)...also, chat has been an ongoing request, so I will do some research into Drupal to see if any of the modules have improved since the last time (it was a buggy mess).
Anything else? Where would you like to see WSO go over the next few years? What service / product do you want to see that we don't already offer? Any other affiliate deals to give you % discounts like we have with Wall Street Prep and Veritas Prep? Any ideas on how to get WSO more attention / PR (I have some funny "guerilla marketing" strategies we may have some fun with in the next few months)??
Thanks Guys,
Patrick
how much do you make off this site per month? You should tell us in the interest of transparency and pure capitalism.
The website is good. The only problem I see is the huge amount of trolling. It's hard to find useful informations sometimes. Certified user is a very bright idea.
Hey man, thanks....we've actually cracked down on a lot of trolling, but we can always do better. One of the way to identify the worst trolls is (usually) to look at the Soiled Monkey list. (but not perfect because the most active users also get hit a lot by default). Maybe we come up with a new metric "Most Valuable Monkeys" which has some sort of threshold like 50 silver bananas, and it looks at the ratio of Silver Bananas / Monkey Shits...so those giving the best advice and not trolling (or getting into annoying debates) would rise to the top of that list.
Have you tried using the Search function to find information? There are a lot of great discussions in the archives that are still relevant today.
Thanks
1) It could be a title prior to the existing title based on regular bananas. For example, if the user had more than 250 silver bananas, you could add the title "Elite" to their normal title. In Patrick's case, he would be an "Elite Neanderthal" rather than just a "Neanderthal."
2) Alternatively, you could put an additional symbol next to the username. For every 100 silver bananas earned by the user, you could put the silver banana symbol next to that user's name. If a user has 350 SBs, they would have three silver banana symbols next to their name. The only problem would be this might create spacing constraints.
RE: trolling - I think there should be a button to report a user's post as spam. I'm not talking about someone trolling, but literally spam. Like advertising watches, or clothes, or some other service. I feel pretty strongly that this could be a really useful feature, because even though you have a spam filter, stuff gets through. I know nothing about Drupal so I have no idea how viable this is, but would it be possible to have an option if (for example) a user has under X bananas, a button would pop up to allow you to report their post as spam with just one click.
This might get abused, but I think if you limit it to people under a certain low number of bananas, that would cut down on the ability to abuse it, since most real spammers I see have under 10 bananas. I always wish I could report their posts without having to forward to you their username, as often if I'm just skimming WSO I don't bother, as I don't have enough time or am busy at work or whatever. But, if I could report a spammer in one click, I would definitely use it more often.
Just a thought!
Search function is shoddy.
hey Oreos, can you give us an example? Something you were trying to find that you used search for but couldnt? It's actually very powerful with multi-faceted search, so you can sort by date, content type, industry, etc...
Thanks
I take it back. Did a little test of my own (not a totally independent test obviously) and it proved me wrong. I have memories of times where i'm looking for a thread i know to exist but can't for the life of me find. I think that's due to the nature of finance and it's interchangeable and frequently used buzz words (e.g. credit - Credit Suisse, Credit Agricol, credit card, credit trading, cds...) and internet searching is a skill in itself, no worthy of a line on a CV but still an art.
WSO iphone app!
The search function is better than it used to be. I don't really understand how it could be made better. I am not a huge fan of the new tagging system, but the pickup in speed was well worth it IMHO. The lack of a blog post function other than going to an old blog post, clicking MMBinNC's Blog, and then post new blog topic is tiresome. Also, just for my own interest, I think it would be nice to see your banana points (like the old banana graphic and a number) next to the unread messages if possible. Other than that I am a fan of most of the new upgrades.
On trolling, the line between "cracking down" and eliminating funny posts is thin. I delete troll posts every once in a while that say stuff like "U Jelly?" but mainly I think trolls are beneficial to a degree. There was a noticeable uptick a few months ago, but that subsided with the banning of ekudekud and other trolls. No where else on the internet will you get answers to questions like "How Good is Morgan, Joseph, Triartisan?" or stupider/more fun questions even like "What car should I get?".
I personally talk a lot about politics and random stuff because I think that the resources like the interview guides, or modeling stuff is there and very accessible. I think it speaks to the success of the products that there are not 1000s of questions asking how to model, where to learn it, what is trading? etc. There are specific topics for specific problems, but it's good that it doesn't get overwhelmed with dumb questions. The intelligent userbase is great on here, and in general- even when I disagree with someone, they do it in a courteous manner.
If you are looking for more bloggers, you may want to ask the guy behind StockTiger to post his free weekly Technical Analysis and daily breakout stock list as a blog. His stuff is great, and I imagine a lot of the trading minded people would like to see how TA works.
My only question is, If I continue working for the man I hope is our next President, will I ever become a certified User? lol
Chat would be great, but I remember the old system and that was horrible. No one uses IRC anymore so that's out of the question, but maybe a link to an external chatroom would be a feasible option.
Not sure how practical this is, but I was wondering if there was some way to make it more obvious who is on this site to network (i.e. a way for employers on this site to know that a user posting in a thread is also actively looking for work). Since a lot of the questions on this site nowadays are fairly similar, I think the next real big step for WSO would be to make it a more active platform for people to network upon. I don't want to turn this into the next linkedin or anything, but perhaps there could be some way to make networking easier on this site. I know that I would especially find this useful and although one can argue that there already are means for this (such as linkedin), I think this site has something that linkedin can't compete on: anonymity. It's much easier for me to email an anonymous employer on here looking for someone to hire than to use my linkedin and immediately have them know who exactly I am.
Just a suggestion, feel free to tear apart my idea in terms of how practical it is.
What about some sort of strike system? I know we have the shits and nanners thing but those can be given for things people find funny, stupid, don't agree with etc. How about having something where a MOD can give a user a 'strike' for making a post that is universally decided upon as being a trolling (for the record I hate the fuck out of that word) post. (The decision could be made by a number of MODS or Patrick. Any system we agree upon.) This number could be displayed somewhere and after 3 OBVIOUSLY trolling posts that person would be banned, hanged, raped by blastoise, whatever.
raped by blastoise plz.
Just as a suggestion, have more subforums! For example, Investment banking could have a subforum for each bulge bracket/big name bank and the business school forum could have an undergrad/grad subforum and a nested subforum in each of those for each target school. Just a thought.
That's annoying. I wouldn't want to sift through a bunch of subforums.
I don't really have any suggestions. I like it the way it is.
But therein lies the problem...what is considered trolling by one may not be by all. One who trolls 90% of the time is blastoise, but I find him funny. On the other hand, some amy not, and I have seen some of his posts deleted by other Mods. Obvious ones like ekudekud or boutiquebank4life are different. It's really easy for Mods to ban someone, but I usually reserve it for people who are spamming. Idk, I always think that its toeing a line between not letting people be funny and professionalism.
I think a networking part would be great. But have no idea how it would be implemented. A networking chat room would be nice in addition to a main one.
On that note, I have no idea what platform StockTiger uses, but it's chat room is nice. When I'm daytrading I'm in there all the time because he and a bunch of other people are always posting about stocks that I don't follow too closely, TA charts from stockcharts.com, etc.
Finally on the monkey shit, if well obvious trolls should be controlled, there is serious risk of polarization. As a non-american, someone who doesn't care about hurting american's (or for that matter any nationality - religion - affiliation) feelings with a facts based critic, and a relative liberal, I am deemed to receive a higher amount of shit when take parts of the discussions in this community, largely american, politically (far) rightist and not always so open to criticism.
Cheers!
^^^^
That's why I am saying Monkey Shit shouldn't be a determinate. I think that it should just be more upon us mods to regulate the trolls better. And maybe some guidelines as ot what Patrick would want deleted. Look at awm...387 monkey shits...and he is def not a troll. So I think we should just set out some guidelines as to what will be deleted to the community, and have the mods enforce them better.
I am not a new user. I created my account recently but I read and learn more than what I contribute. I find this site very useful but sometimes its annoying you want to learn about a topic and a lot of the comments/posts are just dumb jokes or insults from one to another. Most of us here are adults, so lets behave. Another suggestion; there are some topics that are repeated, this can create confusion. OVERALL Excellent website. I love it.
Forum for Geopolitics please :( so that there is ah aven for intellectual discourse about it that doesnt necessarily get tossed in with the nonsense about girls/cars/bottles/etc that is in monkeying around
I think this site has made great strides. I'd love to see:
iPhone/Blackberry APP
Continued cracking down on certifications. As I began to actually network (successfully as a result of this site) I've heard first hand from people in the industry that ideas or concepts that I sort of engrained in my head were totally off -- making me believe that there's still quite a bit of people on here who are answering questions their not totally qualified to.
Keep up the great work!
I remember suggesting the Politics Forum before and it was shot down. I still am for it.
I'd like to see more feature articles from others besides Edmundo and MMM who have started to shift to "shock" journalism. Maybe Illini Programmer would write a personal finance blog??
Also, I'd love if you could better organize in-person networking events.
Great site!!
I agree, but I can summarize IP's finance blog...
SAVE, SAVE, SAVE, Line in NJ, eat cereal or PB&J only, SAVE MORE, invest in dividends, hang glide with your spare cash
All kidding aside, its a decent idea. However, I think I remember IP saying he cant disclose investment picks so I'm not sure how much substance could be in his blog. It would most likely just be ways to save $/
Some things I noticed:
The adv. at the top is sticking out more than the logo is.
I think the menus could be layed out different or better, but not sure how so.
The text is too tiny for the second set of menus.
I like the current theme because it is easy on the eye, however it looks dated.
Too many tags in the list box when creating a thread, many of which are silly. I think the textbox was better than the listbox for this reason
Chat If you can't get a chat function going, an alternative might be to have a widget displaying a list of users currently online (on chat). I occasionally think about signing into chat, but suspect nobody might be on, and don't like the idea of having to search for that chat thread, signing in and seeing who is online. Due to this, I have only been on there once.
Sections An academic section might be nice - with links to, and discussions of, academic finance-related papers.
Quality of posts User reviews - next to each comment's author's name, have a 1-5 rating system for quality that does not require SBs - perhaps SBs can even be earned by rating posts. Then display user's average score next to user name on posts. Perhaps same set of stars can be used - simply displays score until you hold mouse over, then allows to rate once using the mouse is over the stars.
I personally would like to see all the homophobia, bigotry and racism go. Why is that not counted as trolling?
Well because people (like you I assume) consider equal rights civil unions, anti-affirmative action, and joking derision of being poor as all of the above.
The chat feature is a double edged sword. Arguments will be taken on there and it will reduce post counts.
I would mainly focus on real life meet ups and stuff. That is when the site moves to the next level. This is a forum with a suite of other services/items.
The chat function could work, but it needs to be done right. It needs to be the equivalent of bloomberg---easy to use and the ability to set up persistent large group chats.
The think that the next focus of this site should move more towards actual trading/investing. Every once in a while there is a discussion about XYZ stock, but most of it is just people talking with not a lot of analysis or investment insight. I think you should reach out to sites like SeekingAlpha and get there writers to contribute here. Of course, SeekingAlpha is already a forum with a strong user base so maybe it might be easier just to create some kind of strategic partnership/link to their site where posters can discuss actual investment ideas.
In regards to the search, the actual function is nice. I would prefer a different, maybe simpler layout (see: Google search layout).
Agree that an app that makes posting from a smartphone easy would be huge, as I can't post from my work computer (can only read) and I assume others have the same problem.
I would definitely love to have an iPhone/Android app!
On the subject of trolls, I would love to see trolls eliminated even further but is more difficult than one might suspect. For example, some of the humorous posts on here is what makes this site unique. On the other hand we have posters who are giving false or wrong information. I was completely new to business and the S&T industry. So when I went on here to learn more about my situation I really had to try and filter out what was relevant and credible information and what was not (posts by monty and STW were helpful). I think the active Certified Users right now are great sources of information.
One thing I would like to know is who exactly is working in the industry and who is not WITHOUT disclosing where they work and keeping the anonymity intact. For example maybe implement a 2-tiered star system - one gold and one silver. The gold stars are those who are frequent, reliable, and work in the industry (or formerly worked). The silver stars are just those who work in the industry but may not have the experience or information like gold starred Certified Users (this is where silver bananas could come into play). I just think there are students on here who spout stuff as if they know but haven't worked in the industry. Not sure how'd you prove that you work for a place though (I have a work e-mail that I could provide as verification but other companies and industries might not have that. Or retired people on here might not have that).
Plus, that 2-tiered star system could help with networking. Regardless, trying to lessen trolls is a tough call.
EDIT: It seems like for Certified Users people do give their work email for verification (I might be wrong). But a 2-tiered could still be considered. I'm not worthy for a Certified User but I'd like to know if someone is really working where they say they are.
An App would be useful just for a content feed. Look into using phone gap, which basically takes the html/css/javascript and wraps them into an app to be used on any mobile operating system. This way you just write one app and then push to all platforms.
As a regular user, I agree with some of the above sentiments about future growth coming in the form of real world networking events. Extending the WSO brand beyond the web and into a real life forum would be pretty interesting.
I also agree with short that their should be a separate forum for economics/politics/news. These three things, thought not necessarily related, would work well together in a separate forum. I usually post them as "monkeying around".
but also people arent going go ahead
AND WTF IS WRONG WITH THE HAPPY HOURS IVE SET UP?!
first one i put up was too early for the banking crowd and people wahwah'd about that so i pushed it back later and then no bankers really showed up and i got more wahwah ;[ but both had pretty good turnouts and i went around and intro'd myself to everyone chatted it up tetc
hey guys, thanks for all of your suggestions.
About chat: We may have found a new chat module for Drupal that isn't free, but also won't break the bank. Hopefully we'll get that up and running next week and it won't blow up the site.
@Oreos - that's ok...I am used to people saying "Search Sucks" on here, without giving it a fair shot. It is actually a pretty bad-ass search module.
@onemanwolfpack -- We also have Jorge and In the Flesh (book reviews)...they don't post as frequently, but I think they are great. I will keep trying to convince Bess Levin to write for WSO and/or finding other talent to add some new voices to the home page :-)
@ Libor - thanks for the Phone Gap suggestion...looks like that might be the best option to start to get some WSO mobile apps out there (even if you cant post from them)
@tupsi - I think we do a pretty decent job at keeping the hate speech to a minimum given the # of users on here and the # of mods we have. It is considered trolling and we have banned numerous users who can't show enough maturity to respect others...
@Compbanker - I will think about this Elite status thing...just don't want to have so many tiers. starts getting confusing, but this may work
@ANT and Short - I agree more meetups would be great. Anyone want to help me set up a Boston WSO meetup? Unfortunately, I suck at planning events...but I would like to meet more of you in person (can't wait for the Energy Rodeo!)
@Inception...almost all of the Certified Users have verified from a work e-mail. The few that have not have displayed that they are industry professionals by the quality of their posts...
@El_mono - agree Groups could be strengthened...any specific features you'd like to see besides a way to set up events in groups?
@Gekko - I agree, a blogger focused specifically on investing / trading ideas would be a great addition to WSO. I know Eddie occasionally does this, but someone that is throwing out ideas more consistently might get the trading guys on here a bit more active
@brooksbrotha - what do you mean by "search layout"? you meant he search results and how they are displayed? thanks
@MMBinNC - we just went back to the old tagging system. We thought all of the tags was the main bottleneck on speed, but turned out to be something else...
@euroazn - have to agree with Mr. Hansen...I don't like the idea of more forums / sub-forums (people already have a tough time finding the right ones now). I will think about a geo-politics one, but WSO is not a geo-politics site, so for now it really just falls under "Off-topic" / "Monkeying around"...and I'd actually like to encourage more discussion on finance and Wall St., not politics :-)
Thanks for all these suggestions guys...hopefully we can get the chat and mobile apps going soon. Patrick
This isn't really a big problem yet, but it is something to watch out for. I generally only read the site through the rss feed, which has plenty of interesting articles. In general though, it seems this site is increasingly being filled with students and other guys looking to break into the industry. I don't mind answering their questions, but they are often repetitive.
I come here looking to hear from others in the field, but most threads have 20% of their posts from people with a job, and the other 80% are looking (and never had a job on Wall St).
Also, this is kind of inherent with any modding system, but the silver banana/monkey shit system encourages group think. I can predict with a fair amount of accuracy whether or not a post of mine is going to get a silver banana or not, and it is unfortunately based on the view expressed, not the quality of the post.
I would like to see some posts a bit more in the roots of dealbreaker (which sucks now, I think Bess Levin is checked out, she only wants to post about prostitutes)- bonus rumors, size of incoming analyst classes, hiring/layoff trends, etc.
Just my $.02
Agree with this 100%. Working on it.
Thanks, Patrick
How about adding a "report" button at the bottom of each post? That way legit users can report a trolling post.
on the list...we have a spam module but occasionally stuff gets through. I'll see if we can have a "Flag as spam" link on the comments / threads
Yep that's what I meant in my long-winded comment above. Just make it so you can't report certified users or people who are clearly not spamming.
Another recommendation. After we log in, take us to the page we were before the log in. I find the redirection to "my account" pretty annoying
good point, thanks...will look into getting this fixed asap
Consider adding a link to the blogs of Eddie, Midas, and the rest of your crew. You could put it above in the drop down menus.
Alternatively, consider adding a forum in which only the professional writers could start new topics. Right now it isn't apparent to new users that Eddie/Midas/Etc. all have a large share of great content hidden in their blogs.
Under "Recent" we have "Top WSO Bloggers" http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/top-wso-bloggers
...that links to a short bio page and that page links to their blogs....is that what you mean?
When I try to go on website on BB the fucking new user registration thing blocks my view and I can't close it ....I'm sure other people have that problem also.
Also, there should be away that when some one deletes there posts it doesn't move the thread to top of list
Also, there should be a font color thing!
No he is not a wizard
Can you drop this Drupal BS for versatile software like vbulletin?
no, since Drupal does a lot more than just forums and there is no easy way to port over the entire database...are there particular features on vbulletin that you'd like to see on WSO? Thanks
Quoting someone doesn't work (the message bubble below every post)
So I end up having to type out
[ quote = blah blah ] agasgasgsa [ / quote ]
every time
You are hitting the wrong button. The quote one is the one on the far right. The blue message bubble leads to registration if you are not a user already.
supplement eddy/midas' commentary with more relevant IB/S&T/whatever related news
I just want to say that I absolutely love this website and where I think it's going. Other than the trolling, which is sometimes quite amusing, I think WSO has a really bright future and you guys can really take it far.
I am NOT sure if you want to stay focus or expand the concept. But like there is a section for Consultancy which is not related to Wall street, there should also be a small section for F500 jobs and entrepreneurship. This site structure will be a huge plus for these fields too.
But may be you just want to stay focused.
But anyways great website , nice stuff, great people here. Wish you best of luck for the site.
Other Careers forum
I browse WSO without logging on it when I am at work. Every page I open has the pop-up to subscribe.
it's one thing to have the pop-up when I first open the home page, but it gets annoying when the pop-ups show up on each thread that I try to read. As a result I just stop browsing WSO until I get home
These excessive "suscribe" pop-ups might discourage potential users from exploring the forum.
The pop up is only supposed to pop up the first few times you visit WSO, then it should stop. I'll look into this. Thanks for the heads up.
this is gone now.
Create a feature where someone creating a post could require that commenters be certified users or users with a certain amount of bnana points to comment. Or, create an algorithm to limit the number of posts new users can make on each post: this will force them to think before they speak / pick a fight. As they get more bananas, they get more freedom.
Giving total access to every random person isn't the best thing because it reduces the entry barrier to a function of how much TIME the person has as opposed to how QUALIFIED they are to comment. Two comments per post until they hit a certain rank, then they get bumped up to five. This way, the users like ANY, MMM, or Eddie always get the last word and thus keep the discussions on track. If someone is a persisten troll or annoying socialist/statist (all fine and well, but this is a business forum for fuck sake, not a green blog) they will have a much harder time disrupting the whole environment.
ALSO: I think Illini has a lot more to offer than just how to save $$$. In fact, make it a stipulation that he not post cash saving articles. His risk mitigation and structural observations while typically not brilliant in their originality, offer much in the way of disciplined and accurate assessments of most situations, and their frank honesty benefits those who would consistently shit themselves and others, or operate in a fog of ideological ignorance.
As for being raped by blastoise, well, shit, I just don't even know how to react to that statement. I will agree with him, however, that an index of HTML that works on this site be published.
I disagree with the this thought. When I joined the forum, which is not long ago, I sticked around because of the welcoming nature of the forum. Sure new users may make a mistake or two but than they learn quickly by reading other peoples posts who diffuse a fight instead of instigating it.
I imagine that rape by blastoise feels very much like getting an enema.
I don't agree with limiting the number of posts a user can make. It would limit spam, yes, but at the same time it would make more people lurkers, post less, and make the forums less active in general.
One thing I just thought of. Not sure if it is possible, but is it possible to have it so users who post forum topics within a set time frame have to do a confirmation on another page, which warns that posting the same topic on different forums will get it deleted. I realize that this sounds obvious to long-time users, or anyone with a touch of netiquette, but I have deleted so many of these multiple postings lately, it just struck me as a good idea. Happy's idea of limiting posts seems detrimental, but no one needs to post many forum topics in quick succession, and this doesn't stop them- just delays/warns them.
Also, maybe mods could have the option to label posts as spam, and people with enough spam messages are limited to X posts per hour/day/week for a certain amount of time depending on the egregiousness of the spamming/trolling.
I have no knowledge of programming, so neither of these may be feasible.
I have a lot more free time these days so let me know how I can help in anyway.
I am new to the site and realize there is a lot of commentary around the markets and the firms surrounding the markets but fairly little discussion on current market conditions. Maybe the mods could start more market and trading discussions. Just my 2 cents. I like the site though. Well laid out.
I also agree with the posters above to not limit the amount of posts that could be made.
Main thing I'd want to see more of is discussion of investment ideas. Maybe a forum for sharing ideas and having them critiqued / discussed? I do this over a seeking alpha, but I imagine a lot of users would like to do it on here as well.
This seems to be a theme...not sure if we need a new forum, but we could use a lead writer that trades a range of products to discuss his/her personal trades and encourages others to do the same. I think these discussions would be fine under Traders Train.
I will start searching for a writer that can start giving us more specific trading ideas. Or if anyone out there knows anyone that they think would be a good match for WSO, please pass along their info.
Thanks, Patrick
My rationale for suggesting a forum is because there are so many investing strategies. My interest is very much in value investing, long-term stuff, but I imagine a lot of people want to talk about things like options trading and commodities and what have you. I imagine having a writer or two to drive discussion would be good, but I also think it'd be fun yo have an anonymous community to toss ideas back and forth and debate their merit.
Either way, keep up the good work.
Not sure if this can be done but "thread views" (how often a thread is clicked on) might be a useful metric for some people in weeding through threads. Good threads aren't necessarily getting tons of posts but they might be getting read a lot.
Chat is here: http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/new-wso-chat-lounges-here
...no promises this doesnt blow up again... :-)
...ok, chat seems to be working well -- will be updating our subscription this week so we can have more people in there at once.
So the real reason of this post is to update you all on some updates we made...from your suggestions in this thread...
1. We now have a small "Flag as spam" link on each post and comment so that if you see any blatant spam, you can throw it in a queue for us to review later. This is just to be used for BLATANT spam / self promotion -- usually from new users just trying to put up a link to their site and/or an SEO firm trying to link to their clients without adding much of value.
If you are a moderator, you can still just go ahead and block the user and delete the content. But now, as a normal user, you can also flag it for review (since our mods can get overwhelmed and don't catch everything). +1 for power of the crowd...you only need to click once on the link and it will get stored. (this module is actually not 100% working yet, but by end of day tomorrow it should be all set...minor tweaking going on back end)
2 We added a new Filter on the Search Results called "Comments"...so now, when you run a search, you have the option to filter by # of comments as well (when you click on "Comments" in the Sort By block, the default is to list the threads with the most comments first)...if you still haven't tried the New Search, I highly recommend it.
Thanks, Patrick
Fantastic. I think this will be really useful, and hopefully doesn't get abused.
Ok, "Flag as spam" is working now...already caught some spam our mods hadn't...good stuff.
Also, the The WSO Business Lounge (chat room) now has a limit of 50 users which should be plenty of space for now (limit was 10 before on the trial).
//www.wallstreetoasis.com/the-wso-business-lounge
Given the comments in this thread, we are also making a big push to get more market commentary and trading ideas into the Traders Train forum (long & short).
Thanks, Patrick
This was probably said in this thread but forum needs to be moderated. Too many low quality/troll posts.
Miamithrice is the first one that comes to my mind. Pretty sure there are more.
funny, because I've been more active in the forums lately, and I have to say that given we are dealing with a forum of mostly 20-30 year old (anonymous) males, I think the level of troll posts are actually pretty low -- especially when you compare to other similar forums.
We have the Certified User program (which clearly seems to correlate with posting quality) which also should help new users identify which members to listen to carefully and which to ignore.
If any members are truly just trolls, we'd be happy to take a look at post history. Unfortunately, just because someone is misinformed or dumb, doesn't mean we should ban them. We've always tried to be a bit more patient / lighthearted here at WSO, and as I've said before, over-moderation can also hurt the community. The majority of threads are still finance & job search related. Of course, I will always listen to users if they tell me a certain member is just trolling.
Thanks, Patrick
Yes, forum is better in a last month or so. I only read one other forum and there mods ten to lock the threads quite quickly, if the poster is trolling or asking questions that are in faqs/stickies.
One way to improve forum would be to create sticky threads for the most basic questions for some common topics . For example, "Interview preparation thread", "Beginner networking thread".
Also, it would be nice if you would have more mentors that are from different regions than USA. Recruiting process is a bit different in UK, so it would be nice to have someone with the background in UK for monkeys interested in working in London.
We have a pretty extensive FAQ section, and we are in the process of making it even more extensive...in fact, I'm hoping to get some video tutorials on how to use WSO up there by the end of the week. How many people will actually watch it, who knows!
as some know, I am very much against stickies because I think it ends up creating a mess in the forums...over the years, more and more threads will get stickied until you get to the point of 10-15 threads at the top of a forum, instead of the latest discussions.
I am also against over moderating the forum...I think we have to remember the mission of WSO, which is to educate and entertain. While the primary focus is education, networking and job preparation, we also like to let the members have some fun from time to time.
As far as more mentors in different regions, great suggestion. We'll work on that!
Ok, so now we have:
Flag as Spam button....this seems to be working well. Stuff doesn't get cleaned out right away, but with 24hrs any blatant spam is getting cleaned out
Chat Room: People seem to be enjoying this and it works fairly well...there are usually between 4-15 people at any given time.
We are working on getting some better "investing idea" bloggers / content to the home page soon
We are in the process of significantly expanding our FAQ section so that we define evne the most basic terms. These will then be hyperlinked throughout forums so that if newbies don't know what a CDO is, they can just click the word CDO and be brought to an explanation (this will take several months, but we are hoping to have several thousand Wall St. and market terms defined by year end)
Working on getting some mobile apps developed for WSO across all platforms without breaking the bank. If any of you have experience with http://www.thesmartpilot.com , I will be talking with them to see if the cost is reasonable.
Working on some other stuff you guys mentioned here...my developer is back in action by October 3rd, so after that expect to see some more movement here.
Thanks for all the feedback, Patrick
Would it be possible to get a print button that would allow people to friendly print entire threads/discussions?
+1 on this. I've printed a few WSO threads and they definitely are not printer friendly. Or maybe like a button that puts the threads and comments in a PDF file or something that you can then print, or just save on your computer for easy reference. Don't think this is a major concern, but if it's not too difficult this would be a really cool and useful feature.
Ok guys, you will now see a little printer icon that puts whatever discussion you are reading in a printer friendly form. If the thread is multiple pages, you'll have to print each of those pages (50 comments each) individually...was no easy way to get it to print out the entire thread....enjoy!
will look into adding a print-friendly version, but we're already getting push-back from our IT guy on adding yet even more modules...the site is pretty complex already and we don't want to compromise performance.
As far as mobile apps for WSO are concerned, I've kind of hit a roadblock...every development firm I speak with is like $5k+ if I want an app across platforms...liek smartpilot.com I mentioned before.
Isn't there a "do it youself" mobile apps template that is cross platform and also provides hosting / metrics...I wouldnt mind paying ~$1k and like $20-100/month to have a decent platform to manage the apps across platforms and all us to build something fairly basic that runs primarily off of RSS feeds.
Thoughts? I'm really lost here on who to go to. I don't want just an iphone, android or BB app since we have a pretty even cross-section (I would think) of all 3.
Thanks, Patrick
Agree with both the Geopolitics and Investment strategies forum. I've started a blog that kind of mixes both (waiting for a big geopolitical event to happen for my first post) but I would rather have it as a forum format.
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