I've just caught up on this thread, having had my internet connection be unusably slow from Sunday afternoon to Monday afternoon, during which time this thread got
way ahead of my reading of it. I won't be replying specifically to anything in what I've read during that catching up, but will make some general points triggered by it:
* I cannot see an amalgamation of the two boards into one working. I wish I could, because it would solve problems such as where idpickering should post RNSes, but the fundamental issue which caused the boards to be split on TMF was that threads posted by HYPers who wanted discussion about practical issues such as what share to buy for their HYP or how to deal with one of their HYP's shares having a rights issue were being 'hijacked' by people who strongly disliked HYP strategies and decided to tell them not to run one. Which provoked reactions from those who found HYP strategies to their liking, or indeed just wanted those who did want to run them to be left in peace to do so. I see a lot of evidence in this thread that people who dislike HYP strategies that strongly are still around, and want to be free to express that view in
any thread that mentions HYP strategies.
* In case that doesn't make it clear enough, the "Practical" aspect of the HYP Practical board was
the driving force behind the TMF board split. The "HYP" aspect was really just there because it didn't seem reasonable to put discussion of practical issues about HYP strategies, practical issues about high-yield Value strategies, practical issues about high-yield Recovery strategies and various other possibilities to be discussed together on the same board - that would almost inevitably lead to a lot of mis-aimed advice (and likely friction, given the history) about how one should be looking for good opportunities to sell in a thread asking about a HYP decision, how one should be focussing on the income and ignore the capital in a thread asking about a high-yield Value decision, etc. So the plan then was that if other types of high-yield strategy generated enough interest, they would get "Practical" boards of their own (it turned out that none ever did, but that was the intention if they were to do so).
* I'm afraid I don't think I can provide very much evidence for those points, as even if the relevant TMF threads were archived, I have no idea how to find the archived copies. But I think it's worth pointing out that the
TMF guidance started with questions and answers that were mainly about the 'practical' vs 'strategy' distinction, and only got on to the question of what was needed to qualify as a "HYP strategy" rather than some other type of strategy in question 6.
* I find it very unhelpful to talk about "the HYP strategy" as though there were only one HYP strategy. It's a favourite ploy with strongly anti-HYP people - it's much easier to plausibly portray a single strategy as "dogmatic", "extreme", etc, than a whole class of strategies. I'm used to that - but it seems to have become part of some moderators' mindsets as well and that worries me. There
are variations between different users' HYP strategies, such as whether they ever sell voluntarily (LTB&H only requires it to be done pretty infrequently, not never), whether they use "strategic ignorance" or whether they invest in foreign shares, and decisions based on assumptions that there are single 'true answers' to those differences will needlessly drive users away from the HYP Practical board. As observed above, there are unfortunately users who cannot resist 'hijacking' threads about running HYPs in practice, and they need to learn to resist, failing which they need to be driven away from the board - so it's not IMHO a question of not driving anyone away from the board, but the number should be kept down where possible.
* I do realise that TLF is not TMF, and if TLF wants to strike out in a different direction to TMF, so be it. But please
say that that's what TLF is doing when it is, rather than claiming e.g. that foreign shares not being allowed in HYPs was agreed years ago when TLF hadn't even been thought of two years ago and the
TLF HYP Practical board guidance was published under a year ago! I have no strong objection myself to foreign shares not being allowed on the HYP Practical board as a result of its requirement for FTSE 350 membership, nor to that requirement setting an effective minimum market cap, but they
were something new (you won't find anything at all on foreignness or membership of indices in the TMF guidance, and the only comment about market capitalisation is that a high one might be used as a "safety factor") and should be acknowledged as such!
* A big problem in this discussion and others on the subject is that they become polarised, with people overstating their case and when later challenged on it, not saying something like "Sorry, I oversimplified there". So for example, in one post Mel said pretty categorically that shares that are not high-yielding should not be discussed on the HYP board. In later posts, she said that Unilever (which is clearly not a high-yielding share at present by the guidance) can be discussed on that board. When challenged on the
clear contradiction between those two posts, at no point did she say that yes, she'd said something a bit too categorical in the first post and was correcting that failure, and as a result the discussion about the contradiction went several more rounds than it need have done.
* Or as another example, in another thread I saw someone say that "potential share" in the guidance means a share that might meet the criteria in the future, with no mention of when in the future. That I objected to, since virtually any share might meet the criteria in the future, which would make whole business of placing requirements on the shares that can be discussed completely futile and best got rid of. And in this thread, I see something very similar in wording, but with the crucial addition of the words "soon", "near future" or similar - which is enough to deal with my objection. Or it would be if I saw the addition consistently, but I don't... :
-( I'm not at all sure it's a good addition, but I'm OK with seeing how it plays out. It is a change of course by TLF from the past, though, so what I say above about such changes of course applies. Essentially, if TLF doesn't
say these changes of course have happened, they can hardly be surprised if quite a few users continue acting on the old basis - and saying it buried in this thread, in moderator comments buried in threads that quite a few users won't be reading, etc, won't be enough to prevent that happening. It really needs to go somewhere
prominent, and to be
explicitly drawn out, to maximise the chances that people will see and act on it rather than continuing to act on the old basis.
* Last but not least, I'm afraid that I have had my view that the guidance needs clarifying reinforced by what I've read in this thread. The purpose of guidance is to guide, and when different users (and even different moderators!) are coming to different conclusions about how to interpret it, without any obvious stretching for bizarre interpretations, it's quite simply failing in its job.
Edit: I see that stooz posted the above while I was writing this - it did take me quite a long time, in bursts spread out over several hours, and I did quite a few previews and edits before submitting. The phpBB software probably told me about stooz's post during one of those previews - but unfortunately, when it tells one about a newly-appearing post on a preview, it does so very non-obviously and doesn't repeat it on finally submitting the post... In any case, I'll make this my final post in this thread.
Gengulphus
