IMPROVE WSO NOW, SAVE WSO FROM ITSELF / OURSELVES

Congrats on a great success story!

Just read another post called "Finally Got a Job" where the user talks of all the helpful things he / she found on WSO in order to help secure a job. Here is the post (below) and you will see lots of congrats, but there is one comment by "eyelikecheese" that points out that WSO can be helpful, but that there are more trolls than helpers on the site and these hurt / confuse / misinform and worse, slander.

//www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/finally-got-a-job

I think we ALL agree with "eyelikecheese" and believe that WSO is a great forum, except for mindless trolls that use the forum to their own selfish and vindictive needs (jimbojones / UBS, for example and many others). There should be a MAJOR effort by Patrick and the moderators to STOP those that troll to either hurt or shamelessly promote certain firms.

I do not know if WSO just likes the pageviews or likes making people irate or likes simply to provide a forum for little minds to rant about things that hurt the integrity of WSO, but I can tell you that many users have left or no longer use the site due to the negative or self promotional chatter on the site.

This type of behavior only KILLS the integrity of the site. Young budding professionals don't know what to believe and likely get very hurt by the negativity on WSO.

Patrick, you should make it very clear that you are going to clean up the site, clean up its act and strongly discourage and police bad behavior. I do not believe monkey shit will work, as no one has any to throw around and monkey shitting still leaves these posts up on the site and poison it.

Please take some action to save the site, providing more useful content and less useless content that taints anything good on the site itself.

Others agree?

 

Dude, for the love of fuck. People are going to be annoying. Welcome to real life. Jimbo annoys me as much as anyone else but I can live through the 2 seconds it takes me to breeze over his post. This site just killed it in terms of positive publicity this week and has been an invaluable resource to tons of people. In addition to the 40k users that are registered, there are probably 5 times that number who come here for information and resources. Who cares if a couple people want to make stupid comments. This isn't CapIQ or any of the other countless database type things out there that exist only for hard factual information. This is as much for entertainment and bullshitting with people in the industry as it is for learning more about the field. There is no way for Patrick to keep people for posting annoying shit. The accredited user symbol and post history are both ways you can sift through the nonsense. If you want a place to get straight information and stuff like that use other places. This site is a great place to get info as well as kill time at work, school, home, whatever. Grab some sack and stop bitching.

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses - Henry Ford
 

happy has a point in that we all need to police the site and patrick can certainly not read every thread, but i also agree with the orig poster in that the trolls on this site have really degraded things and provided a forum for assinine and worthless postings. die trolls and those that support them.

 

Hey guys - thanks for the comments. I think we will never be able to completely eliminate trolls 100%, and I think it is important to realize that people define trolling differently.

Every year around October we get a rush on new college students looking to break into Wall Street and our #s of "trolls" increase...and every year (so far) we have been able to still keep things under control.

While I agree we need to do better, I still think 80%+ of the threads+comments on here are either genuine questions or provide genuine, well thought out answers. Sure, we will have some threads asking to rank different banks which turns into a pissing contest, but where do we draw the line? Do we delete a thread just because someone asks to rank a bank? Then do we delete threads that are asking repetitive questions even though we just dramatically improved our search module (or lock them so no more comments can be posted)?

I think the line becomes very grey so it is not easy, but we are improving (may not seem like it because of all the new --and sometimes immature-- users). We just installed a new Spam filter called Mollum 3 days ago that has been working wonders to reduce the spam on the site.

I also have a great group of moderators that help keep threads in the right place, but we can always use more. Please PM if interested as I can always use help here.

In terms of "self-promotional chatter" can you be more specific? You mean people talking up where they work? I don't think we'll ever be able to police or change that. That is human nature. Just like we wont ever be able to fully eliminate the non-target vs. Ivy debates that occasionally pop up.

In terms of eliminating obvious trolls, we do that regularly. We have probably blocked over 100+ users since the site started. We don't like to over censor, and usually give people a few chances before blocking them, but it does happen. Again, it really is a questions of how much tolerance we give. I'm open to opinions and open to banning more of the "troll-like" members, but it's not so black and white. Some of our most vulgar users are also our most knowledgeable, so blocking someone because of language in my opinion is counterproductive.

Just some of my thoughts - I welcome others...

Patrick

 
Best Response

I'm a mod and here's my reasoning for NOT over-regulating troll posts.

Where does one draw the line between when someone is trolling and when someone is just being earnest and ignorant? Furthermore, overregulation of the trolls will lead to quick judgments that may lead to loss of information which is actually relevant.

On the next level, all troll posts are not create equal. I can maybe see the logic in deleting a thread that does NOTHING but bash UBS, but even then there's little need to regulate. It's everyone's duty to discuss each thread and to point out incorrect information. It's like capitalism for ideas, the best ones will be recognized and voiced en masse. If a reader deigns only to read the OP, it's his own fault.

On the other hand, some of WSO's most popular posts have been troll-like in nature. I enjoyed all the blumie posts and most recently thought that the Exeter resume was hilariously clever. As a frequent user, you can only watch the same EXACT questions get asked and answered so many times before calling it quits and realizing you've seen everything this site has to offer. I hate to say it, but the occasional troll post actually keeps things interesting and a lot can be learned from all the comments which follow. Besides, a lot of the entertaining trolls are so hilariously obvious that a person who falls for it probably isn't going to break in anyway.

Perhaps we should establish the specific type of posts you are referring to? I feel few would argue that the blumies of the world are doing damage to this site.

"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars." - J. Paul Getty
 

why not make a like/dislike button (or maybe "true that" / "bullshit" ) on every post, and set a certain negative threshold that will grey out the post so that you could still read it, but also it is apparently identified as trolling. They have something like this on engadget I think, and the new comments on dealbreaker. If buttons are AJAX and all visitors are able to vote, you should get a clear and easy indication on the quality of every posts. This is subject to trolling in itself, of course, but you can have some kind of smart system of weighting the votes based on your rank/silver bananas.

..basically idea being that this forum should be open to all kinds of content including bullshit, which I personally like, but also has a way of identifying quality posts not to confuse the visitors.

 
feenans:
why not make a like/dislike button (or maybe "true that" / "bullshit" ) on every post, and set a certain negative threshold that will grey out the post so that you could still read it, but also it is apparently identified as trolling. They have something like this on engadget I think, and the new comments on dealbreaker. If buttons are AJAX and all visitors are able to vote, you should get a clear and easy indication on the quality of every posts. This is subject to trolling in itself, of course, but you can have some kind of smart system of weighting the votes based on your rank/silver bananas.

..basically idea being that this forum should be open to all kinds of content including bullshit, which I personally like, but also has a way of identifying quality posts not to confuse the visitors.

I like where feenans is going with this. +1 SB.

"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars." - J. Paul Getty
 
feenans:
why not make a like/dislike button (or maybe "true that" / "bullshit" ) on every post, and set a certain negative threshold that will grey out the post so that you could still read it, but also it is apparently identified as trolling. They have something like this on engadget I think, and the new comments on dealbreaker. If buttons are AJAX and all visitors are able to vote, you should get a clear and easy indication on the quality of every posts. This is subject to trolling in itself, of course, but you can have some kind of smart system of weighting the votes based on your rank/silver bananas.

..basically idea being that this forum should be open to all kinds of content including bullshit, which I personally like, but also has a way of identifying quality posts not to confuse the visitors.

I think this is a great option, but would make it only available to specific users (those who add value, know what they are talking about, maybe just the certified users?).

 

New users would never understand who's a troll and who isn't at first, and people genuinely start believing that UBS is a bad firm (I did, until I checked out league tables / recent deals / analysts who go to places like KKR etc. after this year). It's not about the time reading a troll's posts its about how it spreads misformation to those who arent aware

 

Patrick

Just one suggestion.. This forum desperately needs organization.. Stickies on offer/interview advice, etc so we don't have a gazillion and one of these threads popping up every now and then.

 
MrSunKing:
Patrick

Just one suggestion.. This forum desperately needs organization.. Stickies on offer/interview advice, etc so we don't have a gazillion and one of these threads popping up every now and then.

stickies quickly become a mess. I prefer an FAQ section, ideally one that could serve as a wiki of sort. We have this here: //www.wallstreetoasis.com/faq but definitely could use more terms / definitions and guidelines. Working on this.

 
WallStreetOasis.com:
MrSunKing:
Patrick

Just one suggestion.. This forum desperately needs organization.. Stickies on offer/interview advice, etc so we don't have a gazillion and one of these threads popping up every now and then.

stickies quickly become a mess. I prefer an FAQ section, ideally one that could serve as a wiki of sort. We have this here: //www.wallstreetoasis.com/faq but definitely could use more terms / definitions and guidelines. Working on this.

Yes I've seen that and its great. But right now its little more than a glossary.. There have been posts by several forum members attempting to deal with general interview/offer related queries.. would be good if you could at least sticky those.. at minimum it keeps discussion of those topics to a single thread..

 

SILVER BANANAS FOR FANS OF THIS WHO HELP W SUGGESTIONS

I think the idea of flagging posts at Troll Posts is simply the easiest and most effective. It also happens to be exactly what most all other sites do, whether is is like the guy above said, Craigslist, or EBAY, or YouTube comments, or otherwise.

Guys like JimboJones, FTPiper, Fordammaster, PJChiang and others should have been knocked out long ago. But every single time I see a post about banks, there is Jimbo making an ass of himself and denigrating UBS.

For god's sake, I could not care less about UBS in particular, but his posts hurt everyone at UBS, anyone looking for a job there, etc. And it is more obvious on UBS, but there are other posts that are less obvious to readers, like on Piper Jaffray where you can't just look at league tables.

Flagging posts and active killing of them and the knocking off of certain users is the way to go. I also have read many of the site suggestions, and it is clear that WSO has to be run on a budget and you can't just have everything. HOWEVER, a simple flagging tool would be ALL THAT WAS NEEDED to fix this problem. This is cheap fix, easy to implement (although I am not a programmer, I am aware this is standard code). Users or firms themselves could go in and flag posts publicly or anonymously and flags could be along these lines (Moderators would tick down a list of flagged entries and decide to delete posts or entire threads; could also warn users / delete accounts). Simple as can be and it would be a quick and easy solution:

  1. Inappropriate language (would have to be really vile, as I don't think anyone really cares about the words, "shit" or "fuck", but if there are threats, sick sexual stuff or racism those should be flagged

  2. Inappropriate / repetitive baseless firm bashing (99% of Jimbo's posts and others)

  3. Inappropriate / promotional posts (where same person keeps bragging about his firm just to make him / her feel good; would have to be obvious and repetitive)

  4. Solicitations (people advertising, spamming or otherwise); lot of this in people's signatures, etc. and those should be flagged as well

  5. Other flags I can think of (Wrong Forum, Idiotic Post, General Troll Post Not Fitting Above Categories, Could think of more for sure)

Other features would include ability of people or firms to "pay" to have certain negative posts taken down about a firm or a topic. Much like Yelp allows certain stores / restaurants to delete clearly bogus posts by competitors.

This thread has been very helpful to me in thinking this through. Hope others agree the time is now to implement such a tool.

Silver Bananas for those that agree and take the time to chime in with helpful thoughts here. Especially helpful would be thoughts from new users on the effect troll / negative posting has had on your experience and thoughts on improving things.

 

I've been on other successful sites where moderators and/or site administrators enacted IP bans on people who repeatedly abused site privileges.

I don't know if such action is necessary to rid the site of its more notorious "trolls," but I think it's definitely worth enacting bans on people who continuously shitpost (i.e. jimbojones).

Trolling can certainly promote discussion (for example, if someone says Piper Jaffray is a better environment to be in than GS) because it enables people to talk about why Goldman may or may not be the better environment to start one's career. However, people like jimbojones don't promote any worthwhile discussion. Posters - myself included - are forced to either let him control the main board or to waste endless amounts of time responding to his personal attacks before offering points that are useful to the site's job-seekers.

The monkey shit feature is a start. It ought to be used to enact consequences like bans.

 

I am with Happy. Grow the fuck up. The site offers amazing advice and plenty of knowledge. If you are so naive that you believe everything on here I have a bridge to sell you.

Additionally, I am rather insulted that some rookie member would come out and condemn things as if they had any idea of the dynamics on this site.

Always love the people who contribute the least to this forum bitching the most.

 

FYI, just read through a bunch of jimbojone's posts an agree he was a clear cut troll. He has been blocked (both of his accounts) and all of his comments have been wiped.

We have a new module now installed that makes it super easy to mass delete any user comments, so if I see any trolls out there or if anyone just wants to PM me when they want to report someone, that is fine.

Just understand that the threshold has to be VERY high (repeated trolling, no helpful comments, etc.) for someone to be blocked and wiped off the database. Jimbojones was a pretty easy case, but the majority of users on here come nowhere close to that level.

-Patrick

 
WallStreetOasis.com:
FYI, just read through a bunch of jimbojone's posts an agree he was a clear cut troll. He has been blocked (both of his accounts) and all of his comments have been wiped.

We have a new module now installed that makes it super easy to mass delete any user comments, so if I see any trolls out there or if anyone just wants to PM me when they want to report someone, that is fine.

Just understand that the threshold has to be VERY high (repeated trolling, no helpful comments, etc.) for someone to be blocked and wiped off the database. Jimbojones was a pretty easy case, but the majority of users on here come nowhere close to that level.

-Patrick

Hey Patrick,

Thanks for making this well-oiled machine run the way it does. Unfortunately seems sidekickz is awfully similar to jimbojones or exactly the same person.

 

I finally get some respect around here!!! It's about time my advice gets noticed, even if it has nothing to do with my plethora of financial knowledge...

 

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