General Chat : I can get a broad range of viewpoints and arguments from fairly level headed contributors, but there sometimes a flaring of passions. I don't like name calling and if I see it, gives me insight of the name caller. Joe, I would not like to see General Chat go but if it causes you too much work Joe I will certainly respect that decision.
There's a very good reason why General Chat is still here and that's because I think it rounds out a community and allows people to talk about off-topic stuff in their down time. It's no fun to be all business all the time. We all need to let our hair down and post up our travel photos, talk about our hobbies or about being a vegan or whatever. It's a good thing. We all need to change gears.
What's not a good thing is when General Chat takes over a community that is focused around a specialised area (for example the stock market). Then it dilutes the purpose and focus of that community. It also makes it difficult for that community to grow because people show up with an interest in the stock market and see that most of the discussion is about Jordan Petersen, Islam or some other controversial topic and they promptly turn around and walk away. That is the damage I referred to in one of my previous posts.
I have only ever wanted what is best for this community. That has been my sole agenda from the word go. I'm not here to push political barrows or mould the community in any way other than to try and make it a place that people want to be. The problem for me is that I tolerate a lot that other people wouldn't, especially in these extremely politically correct times. I'm far more interested in
why people believe what they do then
what they actually believe. Some people mistake that for endorsement. It's not. I can assure everyone that I disagree with most of what is posted in political and religious threads in General Chat, I just let it go because I lean more towards free speech than censorship. Which probably makes me the worst possible person to be doing this, but I started it so here I am. Don't get me wrong, posts are removed and people reprimanded and banned but probably less here than elsewhere.
But I realise now that in taking such a laissez faire approach to forum management I have made a grave miscalculation. I let General Chat run riot and I didn't keep it in check. ASF has always had a very popular General Chat forum, right from the beginning. But from 2004 until 2009 there was much more stock chat than general chat. The GFC kind of blasted a lot of punters out of the market and the stock chat started to slow. The problem is that the general chat didn't. To me it was still activity and that’s how I rationalised it. I thought that things would eventually turn around and the balance would return. It didn't and it still hasn't. There are a variety of reasons for that, the two big ones being the rise of ETFs and passive investing and the rise of other discussion platforms such as Facebook Groups. A lot of people have thrown their lot in with Zuckerberg and that has definitely had a big impact.
I'm going into far more detail than is probably necessary but context is important.
So we've never really gotten back on track since the GFC and General Chat slowly started to take over. It's easy to say, well do something about it, but restrictions are hard to implement and believe me I've considered them all. Most of them just aren't practicable. You can make rules saying you can't talk about this or that or you can only post so many posts in General Chat per day. None of it really works. HC tried to get rid of political discussion years ago and that failed also.
Some of you old timers may remember we used to have a rule that you needed to post at least 100 characters in posts in stock threads to try and encourage more content instead of useless posts about a stock being up another 1%. It was well intentioned but it never worked. People just padded out their short posts with "blah blah blah blah" or "............................................". So I pulled the plug on the rule when I upgraded the forum software at the end of 2010. One of the great myths about controlling people is that it's easy. It's not. People resist being forced to do anything. You just get the middle finger in return. So you either have to be a complete dictator or try persuasion. I'm not a dictator so persuasion was my only hope. Needless to say, that has failed too.
So that's a bit of an insight into what I'm up against. I've realised that the only real change has to come from the community itself. I can't force people to change, people must change of their own volition. It must be voluntary and because they want to do it. So I'm going to try again with some persuasion because it's the only weapon that still remains in my arsenal. I just don't have an iron fist.
The way back from where we are is to have more stock chat, more trading chat, more investing chat, and more economics chat than general chat. I don't want to sound like a broken record but it's the simple unvarnished truth. So if anyone would like to lend a hand, I'd really appreciate it. Other than that, please be nice to each other and help those that ask for it if you can. The world can be a pretty ugly place, it's nice to have an oasis that people can escape to where people are actually nice and kind to each other. There's no reason why ASF can't be that place. Just don't bring your anger, frustration or resentment with you when you log in. Leave that baggage at the door.
That’s about it.