Would you rather see users incorporate symbols like $ and # before stock tickers and specific topics to possibly help improve the search function for this board?
Yes
No
I don’t care what the board collectively decides, I’m going to do things my way
Another potential benefit to using a tag at least once in each post would be that the web sites could automatically generate a link to show the chart and financials. But this would require Fool to update their boards to be modern or semi-modern which I am not expecting them to do any time soon. They seem to be satisfied with the GUI version of 90’s era bulletin board or listserv.
I do think using it once per post would help with search and it doesn’t really make the post less readable.
If it is not 100% consistent, then it is not useful.
In my experience there will generally be at least one self-designated admonisher to try to keep the miscreants in line. (To me that is a good enough reason to avoid the whole idea.)
P.S. Zuzu, I wasn’t stating my preference, actually. I was just explaining WHY the idea has merit. I know that everyone interacts with search engines, but I figure most people haven’t written computer programs that interact directly with a search engine, so I thought I’d offer a semi-unique perspective, if somewhat dated. I was a relatively early employee at netLibrary, the company that first invented eBooks (back in '98). So I’ve done some work with full text search. We were kind of unique because most full text search engines were optimized for searching through a lot of small documents (think millions of e-mails), but we were interested in building a full text catalog for tens of thousands of scholarly tomes.
With all due respect, you missed option D: “I don’t care what the board collectively decides, I’m going to do what Saul wants”
I actually agree with the majority on the poll. I find those little dollar signs in front of stock symbols ugly and a bit ridiculous, and really am not interested in seeing them. I’d appreciate it if we would all leave them off.
Saul
PS Thanks to SurfNow who linked to a useful thread on the subject of searching in his/her post #29424