Closing boards

Seems like, if one is going to close a board other than as part of a pre-announced mass realignment, that one would make a post to the board prior to closure, explaining why the action was taken.

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Free for all Economics

Looks to have been closed in the last 20 minutes without warning or notification.

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Weird, Fuskie’s query about which board has been deleted.

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I assume the “Free For All Economics (Closed)” board is the one of interest…

It was only a matter of time…

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Seems like, if one is going to close a board other than as part of a pre-announced mass realignment, that one would make a post to the board prior to closure, explaining why the action was taken.

The few times I ventured over to https://discussion.fool.com/free-for-all-economics-117500.aspx I found it to be political - which is because that’s what the board was designed for - a place to have political discussions that weren’t allowed on METAR. I suspect that the reason it was closed has been at the top of the announcements list on the board for several weeks now: https://discussion.fool.com/boards-no-politics-policy-35124372.a… since it was a mostly political board. Everyone discussing staying ‘under the radar’ in the last few weeks seemed to also expect that the board would be closed if it came to TMF’s attention, so it’s not clear why an announcement would be expected - especially given TMF’s proclivity to make changes without any announcements.

AJ

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so it’s not clear why an announcement would be expected - especially given TMF’s proclivity to make changes without any announcements.

Except that the most recent board closing I am aware of, was announced in advance and accompanied by notice.

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You guys were running a self-inflicted prisoner’s dilemma. Instead of flying under the radar, there seemed to be a contest to see who could FA the most posts. Somebody would get their post pulled and they would flag someone else’s post for retribution. But every FA requires involvement of a TMF staffer which means you were creating work for them. At some point, TMF decided they didn’t need the extra work.

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Except that the most recent board closing I am aware of, was announced in advance and accompanied by notice.

Well, I guess there’s always an exception to TMF’s proclivity to make changes without any announcements.

AJ

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At some point, TMF decided they didn’t need the extra work.

I always felt that the mods should have done more to eliminate the bad posters, instead of relying on moderation so much. Warnings, suspensions, bans, etc. But I was not surprised that the same types of discussions migrated from PA to a Free For All board.

It was only a matter of time…


wecoguy, I followed the putdowns at the folly in Washington Board…
Shrug…

The posters who migrated to the ‘Free For All Economics’ board had their
back and forth banter, but on the whole were civil to one another, unlike when
posting on the PA Board. The worst culprit’s from the PA did not follow to this Board.

The only ones unhappy with the Free For All Economics’ Board are mainly those who did
not post there, some dropped by to voice their disapproval and others took their tisk! tisk!
to the Boards they normally hang out at.

Other posters did their best to complain to TMF ‘why is ‘that’ Board still operating’?!!!

Posters at the FFAE did not spill over to other Boards with their politics, I cannot say the same
about posters from other Boards who just can’t seem to Live and Let Live.

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Posters at the FFAE did not spill over to other Boards with their politics, I cannot say the same
about posters from other Boards who just can’t seem to Live and Let Live.

Politics is politics, and TMF changed their mind and decided that they didn’t want politics in their forums any longer. Not sure why you seem to want to blame other posters complaining when it was posters who were breaking the new rule that resulted in the shutdown of the board. TMF’s house, TMF’s rules.

AJ

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Not sure why you seem to want to blame other posters complaining when it was posters who were breaking the new rule that resulted in the shutdown of the board. TMF’s house, TMF’s rules.

The key is TMF had been implementing a policy of ‘benign neglect’ towards the FFAE board. It had been dormant, but ended up being a landing pad for a lot of current events/public policy/political discussions after Boardmageddon. The assumption is that had everyone just kept their head down and played nice with each other, TMF would have continued that approach, and posters could have kept a board available for those discussions.

Instead, there was a rash of continual Fool Alerts. It’s not clear who was doing the FA’ing - but the presumption is that whether or not TMF would have allowed the ‘benign neglect’ to continue if everyone had behaved, they certainly didn’t want to deal with a stream of FA’s. So the board got shut down, when it might otherwise have been allowed to remain (at least until Boards 2.0, which has yet to materialize).

Albaby

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Instead, there was a rash of continual Fool Alerts. It’s not clear who was doing the FA’ing - but the presumption is that whether or not TMF would have allowed the ‘benign neglect’ to continue if everyone had behaved, they certainly didn’t want to deal with a stream of FA’s.

How do you know it was Fool Alerts? Just because someone’s post was pulled doesn’t mean that it was another poster that hit the “Report this post” button to submit a Fool Alert. Once (1) TMF personnel was freed up by not having to monitor all of the closed boards and (2) TMF decided to ban political discussions, TMF could have actually just increased monitoring of boards that they saw as potentially breaking that rule - with FFAE being a prime candidate to be the poster child for enforcing the rules.

Again - TMF’s house, TMF’s rules.

AJ

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How do you know it was Fool Alerts? Just because someone’s post was pulled doesn’t mean that it was another poster that hit the “Report this post” button to submit a Fool Alert.

That’s theoretically possible, but very unlikely. TMF has never really operated that way in the past, and it’s unlikely they would change that and start devoting staff time to directly monitoring a board. It’s very likely that they pulled more than just the FA post - once they’ve been reported, TMF can and will pull several posts from a thread when appropriate. But they’ve never babysat any of the boards in the past.

We don’t know whether TMF would have just killed the board even if no one had FA’d anything, but we can be pretty confident that the pulled posts were the result of people hitting the FA button.

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TMF has never really operated that way in the past, and it’s unlikely they would change that and start devoting staff time to directly monitoring a board.

Back in the dark ages, TMF did employ “board strollers” - people who participated in a couple of boards (or perhaps more at their discretion) and engaged with the community in general. They likely also functioned as board monitors for the boards assigned to them. So there is some history of monitoring boards, or at least having people read a lot of the messages on certain boards.

Then there is this post on an obscure backwater, but linked to in the boilerplate to the right of every post as “Boards - No Politics Policy”: https://discussion.fool.com/boards-no-politics-policy-35124372.a…

It outlines the fairly recent No Politics Policy. The end of the post leaves a lot of ambiguity in the monitoring system:
As we find them, we will delete discussion board posts that we view as being overtly political or in other ways disruptive and therefore violate our Terms & Conditions of Service (found here: http://www.fool.com/legal/the-motley-fools-rules.aspx). We’d also like to remind you that you also have the ability to ask for posts to be removed, via the Report This Post link at the top right of every single board post in our system.

Unfortunately, we do not have the resources to run a curated board system, where every post is read by an administrator and either left alone or removed.

So does TMF monitor/moderate the boards? Apparently yes, but not 100% of the time.

–Peter

We don’t know whether TMF would have just killed the board even if no one had FA’d anything, but we can be pretty confident that the pulled posts were the result of people hitting the FA button


Exactly. The constant FA brought too much attention to the Board. The Board was doing all right with the pro and con discussions with little to none underhanded remarks.

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Then there is this post on an obscure backwater, but linked to in the boilerplate to the right of every post as “Boards - No Politics Policy”:

Huh. I never even noticed that “Announcements” panel on the right side! I wonder what other great news I might have missed over the years…

Hi, ptheland.

Back in the dark ages, TMF did employ “board strollers” - people who participated in a couple of boards (or perhaps more at their discretion) and engaged with the community in general.

The dark ages are now. I’m a Premium Board Home Fool (among other roles), and you pretty much described my job in that role. Now it’s true I “stroll” the Premium boards and not the public boards, at least officially - I do hang out on some public boards. I am unsure whether there are still strollers for the public boards.

If I encounter a questionable post, I FA (Fool Alert) it and someone higher up reviews that and decides whether it warrants removal. I don’t have the power to remove it myself.

I rarely FA anything. Most of my job is engagement… like right now! :grin:

Bruce

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"TMF decided they didn’t need the extra work. "


The concept of TMF staffers all imitating Maynard G. Krebs is quite humorous.

Howie52

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I knew the FFAE Board was doomed when posts started showing up on the Best Of List.

We were taking too many spots away from Saul & Co.

AW

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