MFOHome About Commentary Discussions Funds The Best Resources Support Us!

Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

Sign In Register

Categories

In this Discussion

Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.

    Support MFO

  • Donate through PayPal

Hierarchy of the website as a Fund Site

beebee
edited September 2020 in Fund Discussions
It seems more and more the political / off topic discussions have crowded out "fund and other investing" discussion topics here at MFO.

It seems if we want to encourage the site as a fund site couldn't the hierarchy of the site be modified so that as a reader opens the website to only displays fund topics. If the reader wants to open other topics they could link to those topics using the side menu.

What do others think?

Comments

  • WABACWABAC
    Seems reasonable to me.
  • David_Snowball
    Hi, bee.

    That would be more possible if Accipiter were still around, since he did all of the programming for the discussion board. Chip and I have discussed options like making off-topic an opt-in board; that is, if your default view was "all discussions" it still wouldn't include off-topic discussions. You'd need to click separately to get over there.

    The problem is that Chip is a techno-marvel, but she's not really a programmer and, in particular, not a Vanilla programmer. We're looking at some of the legacy code that Accipiter left to see if it could be repurposed. For example, the Bullpen and OT Bullpen are accessible to everyone but immediately shared with no one. She's trying to see if we could modify that code to achieve your goal.

    Working on it!

    David
  • Old_JoeOld_Joe
    I guess that there's something that I'm not understanding on this. If the "Off Topic" section were excluded from the "Discussions +" compilation then the only way to access Off Topic would be to deliberately click on it. Is that doable?
  • davidrmorandavidrmoran
    I would leave as is, with categories clearly marked and posters forced to choose the category beforehand and also being increasingly informative in their headings (imo).
  • Ben
    I would suggest that the practice of making a post for the sole purpose of annoying people should be strongly discouraged. One warning to desist. If the person persists after being warned they should be permanently barred from posting on "Discussions". Those who post for the purpose of disturbing the peace generally make it clear that this is their purpose so it's not a "grey area".
    That should make plenty of room on page one for posts that are directly about investing. By the way I am not against political posts here. I am against obnoxious behavior.
  • Old_JoeOld_Joe
    Wile it's true that the individual categories are clearly marked, the "Discussions +" section intermixes all of the categories. If "Off-Topic" were excluded from "Discussions +", no one would ever have to look at anything that they didn't want to. Those interested in "non-financial" posts would simply select the "Off Topic" category.
  • WABACWABAC
    David_Snowball said:

    Hi, bee.

    That would be more possible if Accipiter were still around, since he did all of the programming for the discussion board. Chip and I have discussed options like making off-topic an opt-in board; that is, if your default view was "all discussions" it still wouldn't include off-topic discussions. You'd need to click separately to get over there.

    The problem is that Chip is a techno-marvel, but she's not really a programmer and, in particular, not a Vanilla programmer. We're looking at some of the legacy code that Accipiter left to see if it could be repurposed. For example, the Bullpen and OT Bullpen are accessible to everyone but immediately shared with no one. She's trying to see if we could modify that code to achieve your goal.

    Working on it!

    David

    Vanilla Forums is competing with every other forum package out there designed to let anyone administer a forum. They have dashboards to handle the sort of task being discussed here.

    I would be very much surprised if Vanilla Forums required actual coding unless you have something really old, or a broken install. This link takes you to a youtube on how to access the dashboard. Let the dashboard handle the programming for you.

    If you have some ancient version, or mangled installation, then it's time to upgrade. An operation like this should be on the opensource platform. So, other than Chip's time, it's free. Chip could probably do a sandbox setup to test things out.

    If you haven't browsed their support forums yet, you should give it a try. If someone hasn't experienced your situation already you should be able to get help there.

    And last, but not least, read the documentation, if you haven't already.
  • hank
    edited September 2020
    @bee - I’m sorry for whatever role I’ve played in the political mudslinging. I try hard to resist, but occasionally something I read here or elsewhere just pushes me to the point of speaking up.

    Urging 100% your supporters to cast two ballots? Any idea what kind of mayhem that would cause on election day as stressed-out poll workers try turning away throngs of angry people who showed up to cast their second ballot - on the instructions of the President nonetheless - some carrying guns? I fear for everyone’s safety. And all the poor struggling postal service needs is thousands of unnecessary ballots mailed by folks who intend to show up at the polls anyway. If you want to sow chaos in the election process, delay the results and cast doubt in everyone’s minds on the legitimacy, I can’t think of a better way to achieve it.

    All good ideas for restricting or eliminating the political stuff. Bothers me too. Just saying ...
  • carew388carew388
    +1 old joe
Sign In or Register to comment.