Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
What would happen if BMT switched to 100% pay model
why not allow non-elite to only posts in the journals section, and they can't start more than a thread a month or something like that? then they can continue to read the non-elite stuff. Though this might decrease the total number of posts on the site, but at least you'd keep the same # of people and and # of views (if that's something important to you). If # of people/views is not something important, then make the site elite only.
The non elite members would have to make a choice as to whether they wanted to stay on a site with well moderated civil discussions of trading related topics.
New membership would slow down; you might have to initiate some sort of low priced paid trial to attract new subscribers.
Spammers having to sign up with a credit card would be greatly reduced.
The moderator should have more time to enjoy life.
"The days when I keep my gratitude higher than my expectations, I have really good days" RW Hubbard
I think you have to to come up with more moderators....paid or volunteer. I'm sure there are some around here that would help out for free or for maybe a box of doughnuts and a six pack.
The site as it is now seems ideal to me. I realize that the spammers are a pain in the ass but the alternative solutions put forth so far would have detrimental effects in terms of less content and ideas, etcetera.
My preference would be that futures.io (formerly BMT) would restrict posting to paid subscribers only. Guests could view, and maybe only view certain parts of the site. I'd like to see the training presentations available only to subscribers, except for a select few that futures.io (formerly BMT) decides on. It seems to me that the non subscribers contribute a lot of mis-information.
I would keep the "Beginners and Introductions" forum open at least, maybe "Trading Journals" as well.. It gives people a chance to interact with the futures.io (formerly BMT) community before diving in. I definitely wouldn't have become an Elite otherwise.
If I were a potential new member I would look at 100% paid and walk away. Just from the external viewpoint that it would seem that the forum was created for revenue generation. Although it has been made clear that this is not the intention of the reason to go 100% paid, its hard for someone just clicking on the forum for the first time to see that.
I understand that moderation is difficult. But I think that there is a lot of content generation, visits and clicks that can occur from the non elites. But I think that the benefit of having our current model is that you can select your level and not be limited. You can pretty much get 90% of the content as a non elite which goes into the trustworthiness characteristic that futures.io (formerly BMT) is known for. I think that its removal would be a overall negative.
So the root problem is really just post moderation with a majority of problems coming from non elites. This is logical as they have no skin in the game if they get banned etc. There are a couple of options get more trustworthy mods, use crowd sourced community moderation tools, or place some daily post limits for non elites. Although crowd sourced community moderation or daily post limits will not eliminate the issue, it will reduce it. I think we should focus more on fixing the problem directly and more precisely, than just creating more barriers to entry.
Any model where a non-Elite user is allowed to make 1 post, anywhere, will not solve the problem. This is because that is where spam/self-promotion/vendor posts come from. It makes virtually no difference if they can make 1 post or 100, because of the moderation tools. And to them, it makes virtually no difference as well (won't stop them).
I am the only moderator. @sam028 is a site admin, and his assistance is welcomed, but he normally just "holds the fort" when I am on vacation or deals with any obvious over-the-top spam problems in Reported Post section. Unfortunately, virtually no one uses Reported Posts despite being asked to in the welcome emails and in countless posts on futures.io (formerly BMT). Most people send me a private message, despite it being in enormous yellow highlighted print to not do that. The issue here is simple, people don't read and/or don't like using something that isn't natural feeling to them (like report post).
Anyway, I am not taking on new moderators. I've had several in the past, all extremely good guys, several of which still frequent the site daily. There are numerous problems that were encountered, none of which I have a solution to, so it means there are no active moderators except myself. These problems cover many areas, from legal, to voice of the site/uniformity, to being attacked and harassed for their participation.
I don't think any of you have any true appreciation for how much I am attacked for futures.io (formerly BMT). It creates a lot of anger with vendors, and with trolls who get banned. Why is futures.io (formerly BMT) so different? Because with other sites 'money talks' and the admins bend to the will of the vendors, or bend to the will of 'legal threats' to remove content, and also don't aggressively prevent rude behavior like I do on futures.io (formerly BMT). So it is difficult for people to really have a good appreciation of how many problems this causes me because of how I elect to run futures.io (formerly BMT).
I believe the answer is to delegate more of the back-end responsibilities, those that none of you see on a daily basis, to other peoples or companies. Unfortunately that proposition is quite expensive, hiring just one employee would basically eliminate all positive net cash flow that futures.io (formerly BMT) generates, or even make it a losing business. While I don't do futures.io (formerly BMT) for the money, it is one thing to run it as a profitable business, and another to run it as a unprofitable one just for the good of "the people". I will consider all my options further.
I want to remind everyone, I am not making any changes. This was just to discuss the issue, but nothing has really changed or been mentioned that I hadn't already considered, and nothing mentioned solves any problem so far, but I appreciate the efforts.
I like futures.io (formerly BMT) as it is today, and what it stands for. I am not looking to make sweeping changes. I was just hoping to be able to find a magic solution to my biggest problem: lack of time.
Thanks for all the work you do. I didn't know you manage everything pretty much yourself. That brings another concern, do you have a contingency and business continuity plan if something happens to you? There are thousand and thousands of man hours invested in this site by you and all collaborators. I would hate see this thing going down 'God forbid' you get sick or something worse happens...
