For those unfamiliar with FundAlarm and for folks looking for a nostalgic rush, here's a snapshot of the FA discussion board from January 2011 and April 2005.
Roy Weitz launched FundAlarm 18 years ago as an antidote to the mindless hype that fund companies were getting away with. He combined a tart monthly commentary with a list of funds to avoid, then added a discussion board. About six years ago he felt himself running out of steam and asked if I'd write a new feature on small and new funds; after a year, Roy granted himself a sabbatical and I took up the monthly commentary. About four years ago he admitted that he'd written himself out; he felt he was stretching for content and made my role permanent.
About three and a half years ago, Roy's parents encountered simultaneous health crises and he let the community know that he was retiring FundAlarm to care for family. At Roy's prodding a number of folks encouraged me to launch "a site in the tradition of FundAlarm." Lacking any technical skills, I paid Brad Isbell, an IT colleague at Augustana, to design the site and prevailed upon my friend Cheryl Welsch (a/k/a Chip) to maintain it. We did a "soft launch" on April 1 2011 and had a sort of grand opening on May 1 2011. Our early look was ... uhhh, rudimentary. Anna Zolotusky, web designer whose mom was (is?) a fan, volunteered to bring us into the 21st century (and did).
We run two major software packages side-by-side: WordPress underlies the entire site and Vanilla underlies the discussion board. Chip frets rather more about WordPress, Accipiter - who taught himself programming for the purpose - frets rather more about Vanilla. Accipiter also wrote the Navigator program, which allows you to find a wealth of targeted information about any fund. As our discussion board software grew in complexity (Accipiter has written a bunch of custom programs for it), OJ generously wrote a really first-rate users guide.
Charles, like me, started as a member of the discussion community with a special knack. I'm not sure what my knack was. Charles's is making data sing. After reading one particularly fine post, I asked Charles if we might include it in the monthly commentary and had the pleasure, thereafter, to have him contribute pieces with a sophisticated statistical bent on a regular basis. As he thought about what the site needed, he also designed both our fund screener and the metrics behind it which led to the Great Owl designation.
Ed Studzinski, whose career included stints in the Navy JAG office and banking as well as co-managing OAKBX, had been sharing behind the scenes commentary on the industry and its players by phone. Eventually I persuaded him to address a larger audience about the dynamics of the industry and the way they affect our fates.
All on less than $700 a month.
Hope that helps,
David

Yes, I'm with you on that. I believe that Chip takes care of the more frequent day-to-day technical issues, and Accipiter comes aboard when there are major problems or software changes being made. My contribution to MFO was the assembly of the site User Manual, which can be downloaded as a PDF under the "Resources" heading. I had the pleasure of working with both Chip and Accipiter on that project, and they are really great to work with. That manual is now obsolescent, as the newer MFO software is much simpler than the last version. I hope to rewrite the User Manual if time permits.

Most interesting!
By the way, what is the difference between the role that Accipiter has and the role that Chip has at MFO? I think of them both as the computer and tech aces here.

"what was the inception date of MFO (roughly)?"
Sometime in March, 2011.
"Were you part of FundAlarm before that?"
Well, I was a poster, if that counts.
Actually, FundAlarm was quite a bit tamer than MFO because the proprietor, Roy Weitz, had no use for off-topic posts, and ran a very tight ship. Obviously there was therefore no category other than "mutual funds", and a great deal of imagination was employed and fun was had by many of us trying to "sneak" contraband under his moderation screen.
David assisted Roy in a number of areas, and then as now, was a major contributor with respect to the analysis of funds and fund families. As I recall, Accipiter participated in posting, but I don't remember him (or anyone, for that matter) being involved at the technical level. If he reads this I'm sure that he'll give us the story. Chip came to us when MFO replaced FundAlarm, as David is a technical doofus tyro.
The software construct of FundAlarm was completely different than that of MFO: a very simple line-by-line affair for topic headings, with a one-line response heading "tree" down from the original post, sort of like one of those genealogical charts that I can never figure out.
It was quite a site, and we are very indebted to Roy Weitz for the incredible amount of time and dedication that he gave to FundAlarm.

Thanks Old_Joe. By the way, what was the inception date of MFO (roughly)?
Were you part of Fund Alarm before that?
I never knew about Fund Alarm so was not a part of it.
David, Chip, Accipiter, Ted, were they all on Fund Alarm?
That must have been quite a site.

Yes, I believe so. There may have been a relatively small number of posts which were not counted in the very early days as the software was first being adapted, but I'm pretty sure that these counts go back to the beginning of the vanilla software now in use, as well as the previous version.
Chip or Accipiter will know for sure if they happen to read this.

Hi all! I don't post much, but lurk lots. It feels good to get back on the discussion board. Can some of you weigh in on these 2 questions?
Our newly-minted DIL with her newly-minted doctorate has investment choices at the college that just hired her. They are: MetLife, Valic, and TIAA-CREF. I'm just checking, although it kinda looks like a no-brainer at this point. In addition, the college has a contribution matching plan up to 9%. She is 27.
Which company would you pick? And then what sector or funds within the company would you go for?
Thanks in advance. What a great site this is with the tremendous work by David, Chip, Accipiter and many others.
best, hawk

Well Accipiter, we need to sensitize you to be more diverse in your thinking. Have you heard of Speciesism?
"The term is mostly used by animal rights advocates, who argue that speciesism is a prejudice similar to racism or se_ism, in that the treatment of individuals is predicated on group membership and morally irrelevant physical differences."
Speciesism revealed
All species have the right to vote, own property, not be the food of any other species, have copyright protection, the right to consent to marriage (both intra and inter-species) and take advantage legal tax loopholes. Remember they are never our pets or owned by us. It's right there in the 14th amendment. Join our movement Accipiter.
peta.org/
I'm going to go eat a vegan burger.

Not completely without reasoning: Animal Liberation by Peter Singer, perhaps the world's best known living philosopher, and a leading voice of the ethical school of Consequentialism. Aside from being a proponent of massive wealth redistribution of the sort that probably would make some heads here explode, the bastard almost single-handedly made me give up my graduate work in ethics.
I ate some burgers of the non-vegan sort instead.

@Maurice @Accipiter @chip
OMG, this means Maurice's suspicions were correct; he actually was censored, for his "foul language"..... literally, by the proverbial (and now not-so-imaginary) Ghost in the Machine.
The meta-real Hall Monitor has been found out!
Simultaneously quirky and funny, yet a tad disquieting, don'tcha think? A frozen half-smile results--- welcome to the future (gulp)?

The text of Maurice's note, with an _ instead of an x. Baffling.
-------
Well Accipiter, we need to sensitize you to be more diverse in your thinking. Have you heard of Speciesism?
"The term is mostly used by animal rights advocates, who argue that speciesism is a prejudice similar to racism or se_ism, in that the treatment of individuals is predicated on group membership and morally irrelevant physical differences."
Speciesism revealed
All species have the right to vote, own property, not be the food of any other species, have copyright protection, the right to consent to marriage (both intra and inter-species) and take advantage legal tax loopholes. Remember they are never our pets or owned by us. It's right there in the 14th amendment. Join our movement Accipiter.
peta.org/
I'm going to go eat a vegan burger.

Hi, @Maurice
I can replicate your problem exactly. It somehow seems to be related to the word "sexism" in your second paragraph. How funny is that? Beyond that I can't figure it out. If you have other cases where this happens, please send them on to me. I love a good puzzle.
@Accipiter
I've uploaded a text file with Maurice's message to your Falcons folder on the server in case you're curious to take a look.
I may also try to post the text here, with the letter "x" removed from the word sexism, to see if that works.

Crash- with respect to Accipiter's link (above) DO NOT click on that link: Copy it and then paste it into the "picture icon". (If you click on it it will take you directly to the picture, but it won't allow you to show the picture in your post.)

Yes, I believe that you have cleared that up. In fact, that's pretty much what Accipiter said, above:

all you do is click on the image icon and post a full http link to the image (which generally ends in jpg, png, or jpeg, or gif).

Thanks! OJ

....But I did just that, and it did not work. :(

Thanks Accipiter. Couldn't agree more.
It's really supreme irony. Here's [Ted] ... churning out hundreds of links a week, who doesn't understand some very basic copyright concepts ... and who displays an utter lack of appreciation for the intellectual value created by writers and thinkers like Lewis Braham and for Braham himself. I won't even get into he matter of the contempt shown to David, you and many others here.
[Lightly edited to drop the temperature a few degrees. David]

Yes, I believe that you have cleared that up. In fact, that's pretty much what Accipiter said, above:

all you do is click on the image icon and post a full http link to the image (which generally ends in jpg, png, or jpeg, or gif).

Thanks! OJ

Let's see if the ones I tried multiple times (prior posts, above) from Morningstar and the Wall Street Journal work
Here's the Morningstar graph of Pimco Total Return. Note that the graphic image does not have one of the endings [file extensions] that Accipiter noted, jpg, png, jpeg, or gif:
http://quotes.morningstar.com/fund/pttrx/f?pgid=hetopquote&t=PTTRX
So I'm doubtful it will work, but here goes:

Now one from the Wall Street Journal:
This also does not have a file extension typical of a graphic image, jpeg, etc
http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3021-peyield.html
I'll click the image icon on MFO:

Here's one from wellsfargoadvisors.com that does have a file extension of a graphic image, gif
I'm guessing this will work with the MFO image icon.
A bit of speculation, but I think that if the graphic image has a file extension ["ending"] of a typical graphic image, e.g., gif, png, jpg, jpeg, then it will probably work with the MFO tool. If not, it won't work. Pure speculation.
Let's try the wellsfargoadvisors one:

and OJ also displays the use of the code C button as well.
>it brings up Accipiter's magic box.
this trick of prestidigitation is not mine (it is part of forum software) , although, i've been known to do a few tricks. "sit" is one of them. haven't learned "paw" yet.
>some pictures simply won't work using this approach.
they might have preventions where you can't post their images on another site.

OK. one more time: for the railroad pic, above, I copied the following image location from the pic itself:
http://www.railpictures.net/images/d1/2/3/8/8238.1312815119.jpg
When you click on the "image" button at the top of a new post, it brings up Accipiter's magic box. You simply paste that image location (http://www.railpictures.net/images/d1/2/3/8/8238.1312815119.jpg) into the box. Not to depreciate the magic box, but all that it actually does is to add this stuff:
<img src=" before your image location, and
" /> after your image location
and sticks it all together to give you:
<img src="http://www.railpictures.net/images/d1/2/3/8/8238.1312815119.jpg" />
If, as some have mentioned, you simply get the word "image" instead of the desired picture, either you did something silly or (I've noticed) a few pictures simply won't work using this approach... something about the way in which the pic was embedded in the original site, I'm guessing.
OJ
-

Cancel.
Accipiter, Catch, the URL button is very easy to use. Nice tool.
Can't get the Image button to post a graphic image [although Jing does an admirable job]; tried it multiple times with multiple tweeks of the method. Even tried using simple HTML, without success
I tried the Code button only a couple of times, and it just highlighted the text.

Testing 123 Test Link To MFO Home Page
OK, I see what the second button from the right does, it just inserts the HTML code.
Then you just copy and paste the URL into the box provided by MFO. That's much easier than posting a link onto a Google blog......where you have to insert the HTML code.
Nice. Thanks Accipiter and Catch.
Let me work on the other two buttons next. Pretty clueless on the C button, even with Accipiter's explanation.
I'll work on the Image button first.
The current way that I use to insert a graphic image is to do a screen capture with Jing, then send it to screencast.com and use their embed code.