The new interface sucks

Stocks A to Z
102

To put it another way, there is no easy way to login and hit all my favorite boards, read all my favorite posters, and read the best posts of the rest. Can be done, but it requires a lot of karate.

I think if the new boards do succeed, it will be after you lose what made the old boards good, but there is enough of some kind of juice in the new boards that a new memosystem arises with new star posters and new star topics. In other metaphors, the new boards were an extinction level event, but new people are not like old people and may find niches in the new environment.

Which is of course a shame for the old people. It does not look like mungofitch will bother trying to figure this new mess out.

It is not possible for me to think that these new boards came about driven by anybody who had the slightest idea how the old boards were used. You have completely eliminated everything good about the old boards in exchange for a bunch of ā€œfeaturesā€ Why oh why oh why oh did you not just add the features to the old board structure? Prettily editable posts on top of organize by topic, easily sorted by user, date, and thread, easily scanned for ā€œgoodā€ posts, ie posts with lots of recs?

If you lose Saul, you will truly know you screwed the pooch. If I were you Iā€™d give him a full time concierge with a soft touch and eagle eye for editing, and Iā€™d try to think of some way to keep his readers too, although I believe many of them will put some effort into slogging through this new swamp to read him.

I do appreciate your point of view 38packard, and I suppose I will keep looking here to see if some sense is arising, and also to check my Saul port every once in a while.

10 Likes
103

To me it has become that every day is a new day, with no connections to what we may have read, posted, or were interested in the day/evening before. Instead weā€™re presented with a disconnected list of Unread or new Topics, no such thing as Replies, so, again, a whole new start, cruising through Posts to see if anything of interest has happened overnight or this morning in the Eastā€¦

Very disappointingā€¦ Iā€™ve a wide range of interests, built over the years, whether it was current events, political or scientific, technological, to home repair, remodeling to cars, travel, camping or computers, there was generally things of interest to find, share, or help folks withā€¦ Poofā€¦ Itā€™s blown to bitsā€¦

Sadā€¦ weco

6 Likes
104

Perhaps Iā€™m in the minority here but I am seeing more positives than negatives with the new boards - graphics, better tables, easier to embed content from other sources, can edit posts after posting, etc.

The main complaint seems to be how to read new posts. On the old boards, threaded reading made a lot of sense, but the big downside was that it was easy to miss new posts on old threads when reading in threaded view. That is entirely fixed in the new boards so we get all the positives of threaded view with none of the negatives. Every day, I just look at the tracked list. It shows me any new posts in my tracked boards and in each topic brings me to the first post I have not read in that topic. It is not a big task to scroll down and only read the posts from a poster I like or a post with lots of likes. When I get to the end of the topic, I hit the back button to get back to my now reduced list of topics with unread posts. When the list is empty, do a refresh as I think new topics donā€™t appear until after you have read the old topics with new posts.

I actually like it. I mostly read on my phone now too and I think it is great for that.

StevnFool
Neither young nor old. Regular on these boards since 2000.

9 Likes
105

If you take a look at the Saul board (category) you will see those posts are getting >10x the number of views topics on other boards.

image
image1086Ɨ200 16.3 KB

image
image1090Ɨ370 45.9 KB

Mike

3 Likes
106

Hi Mike. I looked at this too and was impressed with the number of views. The interest is still there, however the paucity of new posts could present a problem for the board. The risk is that viewers eventually slip away if new content isnā€™t provided regularly. Part of the problem may be the control Saul decided to exercise over who gets a voice, which makes it impossible for new voices to get heard even if they have something valuable to contribute (although they could go through the process of getting vetted first, whatever that process might be). Another part could be the non-intuitive nature of these new boards. How does a newbie even find the Saul board, or any other board, except by accident? Finally, it could be the absolute beating that the Saul method is taking at the moment. Nothing in a Saul portfolio is down less than 45%, with many stocks down on the order of 80-90%. Frankly, given the current market conditions, rising interest rates, emerging global recession, and a host of other macroeconomic problems, I donā€™t see investors returning any time soon to bid up the prices of money losing speculations to many multiples of sales (never mind multiples of non-existent earnings). There isnā€™t a lot of new content to excite board viewers because there isnā€™t a lot of evidence the method actually works (except as a momentum trading strategy).

My guess is that the traffic on the Saul board will fade as the results continue to languish. Maybe the brothers Grimm can dust off the rule breaker strategy when the next bull market takes root.

On another note, if high growth is your game, mungofitch recommended QQQE in the mid-$60s as a way to play a NASDAQ rebound and you can currently get it under $60. Six popular Saul holdingsā€“CROW, DDOG, DOCU, PANW, ZS, and ZMā€“are in the index, although they comprise only 6% because it is equal weight. Iā€™m tempted to invest in growth through this index. The entire index is currently trading at under 23 times EPS.

10 Likes
107

I do agree on the positives, which are new to MF, but kind of standard on FB, but the navigation here is the killerā€¦ Maybe we need more volume to somehow find that note we meant to add a reply, or to see if there were replies to some other post of interestā€¦ So it remains pretty chaotic, to me at leastā€¦ So I wander about, catching bits of this or that, spot some posters, see a few hidden markers, so I know the Ignored list carried over OK, that helpsā€¦

A work in progressā€¦

5 Likes
108

There are tools to easily do this.

Any Tracked topic with new comments will be linked in the sidebar. You can track or untrack topics with the option at the bottom of each topic. Topics to reply to get automatically tracked (but you can change that) And you can track a whole board (Category/tag). Itā€™s a little confusing at first, but very efficient once you figure it out.

You can also Bookmark any comment you want to come back to later. You can even set an optional date to be reminded when you want to revisit.

Iā€™ll admit there is a learning curve. And being thrown into the new boards with little guidance was chaotic. Some valuable posters left over this.

image

5 Likes
109

Great. Now tell us how you figured out how to do what Goofyhoofy (and innumerable others) have said they want/need to do: " Iā€™d like to open the MeTAR board and see if there are posts from Wendy. Or from Rayvt. Or Syke6. Or, well, itā€™s a good list, but now I open onto I donā€™t know what. Every post has equal weight, every poster is the same. I donā€™t want to read every post, but now I get no choice."

=================================

Letā€™s face it, the OLD BOARDS are not coming back.

Youā€™re probably right. Too bad. Because TMF just destroyed the most valuable part (and members) of the community.

ā€œItā€™s the darn dogs. They just wonā€™t eat it.ā€ https://www.joepastry.com/2012/the-dogs-wont-eat-it/

5 Likes
110

Yeah, and I was one of those who thought they should have never dropped the annual fee. If you contributed enough, they comped you your fee. The boards have been downhill since they stopped charging for it.

IP

8 Likes
111

Yes, the improvements in posting are good. But the improvements in reading are not improvements at all, they are a backwards step. I would guess most people spend more time reading than posting, so net-net, a ā€œDā€.

I donā€™t see advertising (yet) so maybe eyeball time doesnā€™t matter, except in the long run I tire of trying to suss out posts from posters I like and respect, and of scrolling endlessly past nitwits, so I am sure my time and involvement will become less. (That might not be true at first as I have spent more time trying to figure out how to learn the game and mold it to my preferences, a task I have not yet mastered.)

10 Likes
112

Hope you keep trying!
'38Packard

5 Likes
113

Some of the headaches here have been we just canā€™t always find the time to dig deeper. We just spent the last week and a half driving from the SF Bay Area, Sonoma County, actually, on up to Seattleā€¦ I did bring my little 11" MacBook Air, but 95% of my web wanderings were on my iPhone 11 Pro Maxā€¦ And this format isnā€™t so friendly in the browsers of choiceā€¦ In my case generally Safari, where dedicated Apps like Messaging, Facebook are a LOT more user friendlyā€¦ So I have a stack of Unread, New postings, likely other threads of interest, but it will take a while to work though 'emā€¦

All in the timing, I supposeā€¦

Rain came to Seattle just before we had to leave, cleared the air, smoke had been pretty bad, cancelled boat tours, sent construction guys home, etcā€¦ Then super clear, even a bit of snow on Mt Shasta, as it whizzed by at 77 mphā€¦ Great trip!

weco

3 Likes
114

Facebook friendly?! Thatā€™ll be the day! :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like
115

Heh, well, it has been for me and our friends & family, as you do, or can, control whatā€™s getting through via your preferences. Been at it many years, admin several Groups, so see the spammers/scammers, block & ban 'em, as well as members reporting scammers, keeps things just peachy! One group is nearly 10K members, others 4-5K, and to closer family, classmates are tighter, under 2 hundredā€¦ Not everyone is active, but itā€™s handy way to keep up on the old hometown or other interestsā€¦ In the case of old HS classmates, maybe really just sharing Obits i seemsā€¦

Twitter has never interested me much, but I do have a few, also old, friends there, but the lack of threading makes it near uselessā€¦

A few old contacts came about from common interests way back on the old Yahoo Zoo boards, many battles, no way to control the creeps so we moved on to a bit better environment, Raging Bull! When it collapsed, a few gave up, a few went to another private board, but it was pretty much overā€¦ I had found TMF by then, a few found Facebookā€¦ Weā€™re scattered from here in NorCal to SoCal, Tampa, Raleigh NC, New York, never met any face to face, but it would be a kick, Iā€™m sureā€¦

They all beat the old dialup message boards or AOL, time marches on, this MF move adds things, but also baffles more than a fewā€¦

Onward!

5 Likes
116

question, where are the premium boards? i cant find them (ok i have no subscription at moment) but there deleted or whats going on?

117

Paid subscribers only.

1 Like
118

Where did I hear these words?? Oh yeah, every one who cannot adapt to change.

119

I can and do adapt to change just fine.

Iā€™m also capable of making an evaluation of a platform and finding it lacking. Someone who just says ā€œOh yeah, this is greatā€ to everything isnā€™t deciding, theyā€™re just blathering.

10 Likes
120

The post I responded to was a cry against change.

121

It seems you have this figured out. I would love help finding specific company boards, like Crowdstrike. When I search under categories, no results. Tags, no results. Used full name and ticker, nothing.

I think I read that many company boards are under category Talking Stocks. When I search for that, no results

This is very distressing, esp with my companies reporting earnings.

What am I doing wrong. Oh ps, I do have Stock Advisor, in case that makes a difference.

3 Likes