Speaking from my own experience in starting a thread on trading the ASX20, two moderators immediately messaged me very nicely saying if there were any trolls or ****fights to contact them and they would sort it out.
Like I said, very nice of the mods, but it should have been a warning sign for me off the bat that there was a problem on ASF in this regards!
There are definitely only a few archetypes of poster on ASF and only some of those are causing the issue. On review of the thread I broke it down to
1. The contributor: person or persons bringing new information/knowledge to the thread, no strings attached, for comment, discussion and didactic.
2. The empty cup: person or persons who may only have questions but nothing to contribute. These gain the most of everyone, and if they learn well, often will stick around to contribute in the future. This is the future user base of ASF.
3. The pro: successful trader who doesn't really contribute but wanders around nonetheless proffering their opinion of "how it should be done". This would be fine but generally "the pros" don't want to spoon feed anyone so all the empty cups get are useless cryptic one liners or even worse passive-aggressive short paragraphs. Just look at this thread of someone who already has their own experience of trading, asking for a small piece of advice, was treated by "the pros" of this forum
https://www.aussiestockforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=569855
I actually wrote a response here, answering the actual question of the poster, and the mods deleted it! But the people who did not read the question properly, and gave rubbish rude responses to the poster, are considered the respected members of this forum. They even ridiculed him and said "show me one person who uses this method to make money" I showed one, and the mods deleted it because "the one" was
<<removed by mods>>
4. The troll: You can look on wikipedia for definition of a troll. There are plenty here on ASF and they like to "come out of the woodwork" - they don't just hang around on every and any thread.
This breakdown is from my own experience, so it may be different for other people, but I would say from my observations that generally it is the same across the forum. In my case, even though the mods offered to take care of it, after I spent hours writing page-long responses to the "empty cups" only to spend twice as long being harassed by trolls and dealing with pro statements like "that won't work, but I won't say why" or just telling me I am out and out wrong on some demonstration that actually ended up being profitable.
It quickly became apparent to me that the reason mods messaged me so quickly, was because they had already dealt with this issue repeatedly!
Why would I bother to contribute in that regards? More and more these days, even in the General subforums, I find myself writing long posts and deleting them as soon as I click "Submit" because I know in advance the reaction and response it will bring. I want an intellectual grade discussion with mutual respect. Not to be treated as an idiot by those who purport to know more than me, nor to get into schoolyard arguments about topics the other schoolboy/girl is not even really interested in!
As the poster in the above linked thread noted "this does not seem to be the place for meaningful transfer of ideas" well first impressions last and I can't blame him. I remember when I joined in 2008, people ridiculed me for claiming "gold is money" saying you can't buy a loaf of bread with a bar of gold yet I see articles this year on Mike Shedlocks blog about counties in US using gold and silver for daily transactions. From the perspective of a new poster who wants to be a contributor, or from a new poster who is an empty cup, after being bitten once or twice, what possible reason would they have to return after receiving nothing short of scorn?
Do you know how this forum is perceived on other forums? On ForexFactory, ASF is well known as a forum full of arrogant grumpy old men who don't want to listen to anyone but want to tell everyone how it is. I received vitriol just for trying to dispute this perception.