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Re-Ordering Investment Roundtable

Formerly "Lemon Fool - Improve the Recipe" repurposed as Room 102 (see above).
gryffron
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Re-Ordering Investment Roundtable

#158478

Postby gryffron » August 10th, 2018, 11:35 am

Amongst much strife, there has been a pretty good suggestion on the Farewell Dod thread, to re-order the Boards on the Investors Roundtable to avoid HYP-Practical being right at the top and luring in too many unsuspecting newbies.

My proposals for discussion.
How Do I Invest first (tick)
Investment Strategies next (more suitable for newbies to ask general questions)
(FIRE?) (Portfolio review?)
...
somewhere much further down
Put HYP-General ABOVE HYP-Practical.

Any thoughts?

Gryff

PinkDalek
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Re: Re-Ordering Investment Roundtable [aka Investors' Roundtable]

#158491

Postby PinkDalek » August 10th, 2018, 11:52 am

This might end up being a very long topic and I'm not really answering the specific suggestion.

What I've said on this board previously includes this relating to alphabetical order, rather than where the High Yield boards are placed:

Not a major problem I know and I've mentioned it before but is there a reason why the individual boards are not, on the whole, listed alphabetically?

It is not as if they are listed in most active order or similar, although I can see the order in Biscuit Bar is sensible as is. Similarly, as is having Other Investing at the foot of Investors' Roundtable but if you look there viewforum.php?f=5 the ordering does appear to be mainly random.

Prior mention of this below:

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=6&p=6231&hilit=alphabetical#p6231

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1706&p=16064&hilit=alphabetical#p16064 where stooz said They can be in any order.

The problem is, I think they are. ;)

gryffron
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Re: Re-Ordering Investment Roundtable

#158493

Postby gryffron » August 10th, 2018, 11:55 am

I think with a few notable exceptions (like Other Investing at the bottom), the boards appear pretty much in the order they were created.

Gryff

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Re: Re-Ordering Investment Roundtable

#158499

Postby PinkDalek » August 10th, 2018, 12:08 pm

gryffron wrote:I think with a few notable exceptions (like Other Investing at the bottom), the boards appear pretty much in the order they were created.

Gryff


Yes, I appreciate that, as in the appearance of being mainly random.

Another example would be the Travel Lounge viewforum.php?f=36, which is in this order:

London lovers
Around the UK
Airport Lounge
Cars, Driving, Motorbikes or any Transport
Cycling

If that were in alphabetical order, it would make that section appear less London centric. Bearing in mind of those who've voted here viewtopic.php?f=37&t=11595, some 31% aren't primarily based in England, let alone London.

I'm taking your main point off-topic, so shall leave it there.

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Re: Re-Ordering Investment Roundtable

#158502

Postby GoSeigen » August 10th, 2018, 12:20 pm

gryffron wrote:Amongst much strife, there has been a pretty good suggestion on the Farewell Dod thread, to re-order the Boards on the Investors Roundtable to avoid HYP-Practical being right at the top and luring in too many unsuspecting newbies.

My proposals for discussion.
How Do I Invest first (tick)
Investment Strategies next (more suitable for newbies to ask general questions)
(FIRE?) (Portfolio review?)
...
somewhere much further down
Put HYP-General ABOVE HYP-Practical.

Any thoughts?

Gryff


Just reminding that the wheel has already been invented: on TMF many of these problems were avoided by having a prominent list of "favourite boards" and a prominent list of "most recommended posts" from the past 24 hours (or longer at the reader's option). These very effectively channelled readers to areas they were interested in and to active, popular discussion areas respectively. Adoption of these tried and tested techniques would enhance the site; similar methods are used by successful sites like youtube and others.

GS

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Re: Re-Ordering Investment Roundtable

#158509

Postby GoSeigen » August 10th, 2018, 12:26 pm

GoSeigen wrote:
gryffron wrote:Amongst much strife, there has been a pretty good suggestion on the Farewell Dod thread, to re-order the Boards on the Investors Roundtable to avoid HYP-Practical being right at the top and luring in too many unsuspecting newbies.

My proposals for discussion.
How Do I Invest first (tick)
Investment Strategies next (more suitable for newbies to ask general questions)
(FIRE?) (Portfolio review?)
...
somewhere much further down
Put HYP-General ABOVE HYP-Practical.

Any thoughts?

Gryff


Just reminding that the wheel has already been invented: on TMF many of these problems were avoided by having a prominent list of "favourite boards" and a prominent list of "most recommended posts"(**) from the past 24 hours (or longer at the reader's option). These very effectively channelled readers to areas they were interested in and to active, popular discussion areas respectively. Adoption of these tried and tested techniques would enhance the site; similar methods are used by successful sites like youtube and others.

GS
EDIT: **Just to head off some obvious objections to the above: the current Best Of is not fit for purpose because 1. The posts it lists are stale and 2. It is not prominent enough. Should not be difficult to put a link up in a clear position: there is a "Donation" link so why not a Best Of link too? Perhaps even put the donation stuff on the same page below the Best Of list??

PinkDalek
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Re: Re-Ordering Investment Roundtable

#158518

Postby PinkDalek » August 10th, 2018, 12:36 pm

GoSeigen wrote:EDIT: **Just to head off some obvious objections to the above: the current Best Of is not fit for purpose because 1. The posts it lists are stale ...



The Best of criteria was recently changed by stooz but was not discussed in the Biscuit Bar, afaicr. I've found the discussion over at Beerpig's:

viewtopic.php?f=29&t=12199&p=147451#p147451

stooz concluded Yes I am trying to add in a pull down menu to pick a [date?] range....

ps You were in time to edit your first post btw.

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Re: Re-Ordering Investment Roundtable

#158539

Postby tjh290633 » August 10th, 2018, 2:04 pm

Use alphabetical order.

TJH

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Re: Re-Ordering Investment Roundtable

#158604

Postby melonfool » August 10th, 2018, 5:58 pm

I like the idea of starting with the most general and funnelling down to the more specific, like a maturing of investment style.

Alphabetical makes no sense at all if you are new to the forum and don't know what will be there, it's the same as random in fact. Random is pointless.

Most used is horrible because it would change and they would jump around, I hate software that works like that, it makes me click on the wrong thing all the time as it has moved. (plus HYP would be at the top of its section)

And, for GS - the board software IS NOT THE SAME AS TMF HAD. We have had these discussions many times. TLF cannot do the same things TMF did.

Mel

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Re: Re-Ordering Investment Roundtable

#158622

Postby Gengulphus » August 10th, 2018, 7:34 pm

I think this may well be a case for dividing and conquering, to make it easier for people to find what they're after. Looking through quite a long unstructured list and looking for a name that matches what you're interested in is not a wonderful thing to have to do... Alphabetical order can help if the user already knows what the board name is, but it's by no means obvious that the user will already know that! For example, someone who is interested in a board about unit trusts won't find one where they expect it to be in alphabetical order, and might well jump to the conclusion that there is no such board - so a list that was in alphabetical order would probably actually be a hindrance to them.

A first attempt at dividing and conquering the existing Investors' Roundtable boards:

INVESTORS' ROUNDTABLE - Techniques
How Do I Invest
Technical Analysis

INVESTORS' ROUNDTABLE - Strategies
High Yield Portfolios (HYP) - Practical
High Yield Shares & Strategies - general
Investment Strategies

INVESTORS' ROUNDTABLE - Types of Investment
Venture Capital Trusts (VCT's)
Property Investment Discussions
Gilts and Bonds
Investment and Unit Trusts
Passive Investing

INVESTORS' ROUNDTABLE - Other
Trading my way to a million
Retirement Investing (inc FIRE)
Portfolio Management & Review
Macro and Global Topics
International & Expat Investors
Other Investing

Note this is just a first attempt at dividing and conquering. I've made no attempt to order the categories other than putting Other last, nor at ordering the boards within each category (it's just the order in which they currently appear restricted to the relevant category). But I do think that the categorisation should help considerably with finding sensible orders.

It's also a first attempt because I'm not familiar with what some of the boards actually discuss in practice. For instance, I've put Technical Analysis in the Techniques category because to me, technical analysis is a technique that can be used in just about any strategy, just as fundamental analysis can. Even in a HYP strategy, with the HYP strategy telling you what to buy (and possibly what to sell) and the technical analysis used to attempt to find the best timing of the resulting trades (though note that I am not recommending trying to discuss that possibility on the HYP Practical board - it would IMHO be on-topic, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't encounter a sympathetic audience!).

But I did see the Technical Analysis board described as a strategy board in the "Dod's farewell." thread, and not being familiar with the board or all that familiar with technical analysis, I cannot say that's wrong.

Lastly and leastly, the pedant in me has noticed the inconsistent capitalisation of a couple of the board names and the greengrocer's apostrophe in one of them, but I haven't fixed them! ;-)

Gengulphus

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Re: Re-Ordering Investment Roundtable

#158638

Postby csearle » August 10th, 2018, 9:04 pm

Gengulphus wrote:...
I like(d) Geng's suggestion. I really don't think it will make an iota of difference to the issues we have been having (which are more related I feel to some people simply not agreeing to the point of the board as expressed in the guidelines) but I like categorisation generally, and believe this area of the site could benefit from sub-divisions.

I'd support this experiment/improvement.

Regards,
Chris

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Re: Re-Ordering Investment Roundtable

#158643

Postby MDW1954 » August 10th, 2018, 9:35 pm

I agree with csearle above. I'm not convinced that it will make any difference to recent issues, but it is certainly a potential improvement, and one worth trying.

MDW1954

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Re: Re-Ordering Investment Roundtable

#158648

Postby GoSeigen » August 10th, 2018, 9:52 pm

melonfool wrote:And, for GS - the board software IS NOT THE SAME AS TMF HAD. We have had these discussions many times. TLF cannot do the same things TMF did.


No need to shout Mel, I'm not stupid or deaf.

TLF can be enhanced. A Best Of facility has been added to this site already. It's just that for some reason it was done in such a way as to make it practically useless. Changing it into a useful implementation requires minimal changes -- I've suggested some practical improvements.

A Favourite Boards facility might well require a bit more work but shouldn't be too difficult: similar functionality is already present in the Friends and Foes tab, for instance.


GS

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Re: Re-Ordering Generally

#158652

Postby PinkDalek » August 10th, 2018, 10:00 pm

melonfool wrote:Alphabetical makes no sense at all if you are new to the forum and don't know what will be there, it's the same as random in fact. Random is pointless.


Understood but it depends what facility those new (or old - ahem) people use.

If you look at my post back here viewtopic.php?f=21&t=11251 you'll see I said:

If I were to use advance search search.php?keywords=, keying in my username under Search for author but with no keywords above, I'm then given a complete list of LMF [TLF] boards, in Forum order.

The problem to me is the individual boards appear to be in a random order. Ctrl F doesn't appear to work on the list, so one has to scroll down.


Looking again at that advance search page, I see the boards are listed without needing to enter any search item. The combination of no alphabetical or methodical listing makes it well nigh impossible to make sense of - thus more random than mere alphabetical. At least with the latter I could find the board upon which I wanted to search far more speedily.

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Re: Re-Ordering Investment Roundtable

#160434

Postby PinkDalek » August 18th, 2018, 11:05 am

It doesn't currently appear that much will change on any re-ordering at the moment.

What I would like to suggest, prompted by my currently using my smartphone, is changing the name of the High Yield Portfolios (HYP) board such that HYP appears first, followed by the three words in parentheses.

That is because, using this machine in portrait, I see a truncated High Yield first on both and if changed it would be more immediately obvious. It would also make sense in that many refer to HYP, rather than the full board name, when posting.

Merely a thought.

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Re: Re-Ordering Investment Roundtable

#160440

Postby csearle » August 18th, 2018, 11:23 am

PinkDalek wrote:...changing the name of the High Yield Portfolios (HYP) board such that HYP appears first...
This seems to me to be an uncontroversial nudge in the right direction. C.

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Re: Re-Ordering Investment Roundtable

#160448

Postby Gengulphus » August 18th, 2018, 12:13 pm

PinkDalek wrote:What I would like to suggest, prompted by my currently using my smartphone, is changing the name of the High Yield Portfolios (HYP) board such that HYP appears first, followed by the three words in parentheses.

I would prefer to leave out the three words completely, because they will inevitably give people the impression that it's for discussing any type of high-yield portfolio. That impression should be dispelled by the board guidance, but many people don't read such material no matter how much it's highlighted. If we're going to have a board rename, I think it would be much better if it just said "HYP", explained the term briefly in the board's subtitle and left the guidance to fill in the detail of the definition rather than correct totally mistaken initial impressions, i.e. something along the lines of my recent suggestion:

If a name change is wanted (and I'm not saying that it is, nor that it isn't), I'd suggest "Running HYP Strategies in Practice". The "HYP Practical" name's origins lie in that, but a software limit on board name length made it unusable on TMF (it's 34 characters long, just over the limit of 31 or 32 - I forget exactly which). With what "Practical" is supposed to mean spelt out more clearly in the board name, its subtitle could be made into a brief explanation of what the board guidance says in more detail without becoming excessively long, e.g. "HYP strategies invest in high-yielding FTSE 350 shares, on a diversified LTB&H basis".

Sorry to make it a bit more 'controversial', but I do think that we should try to avoid making board name changes 'little and often'! And just to be clear, I'm not particularly attached to the exact words of my suggested board name and subtitle - it's the objective of giving users (especially new ones) a first impression of what the board is supposed to be about that is rough but generally correct that I think is important.

Gengulphus

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Re: Re-Ordering Investment Roundtable

#160456

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » August 18th, 2018, 12:54 pm

As a newbie, personally, I think that TLF forum's home (i.e. where one lands) page lacks hierarchy. Mel and I have often pondered "where on earth do I put this question", which adds mental friction to the process of asking the actual question.

I've joined several forums in the past, namely one associated with power tool maintenance and another for bookworms. There are presented like this:

https://www.arboristsite.com/community/

and

https://www.bookandreader.com/

Matt

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Re: Re-Ordering Investment Roundtable

#160458

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » August 18th, 2018, 1:11 pm

Gengulphus wrote:I think this may well be a case for dividing and conquering, to make it easier for people to find what they're after. Looking through quite a long unstructured list and looking for a name that matches what you're interested in is not a wonderful thing to have to do... Alphabetical order can help if the user already knows what the board name is, but it's by no means obvious that the user will already know that! For example, someone who is interested in a board about unit trusts won't find one where they expect it to be in alphabetical order, and might well jump to the conclusion that there is no such board - so a list that was in alphabetical order would probably actually be a hindrance to them.

A first attempt at dividing and conquering the existing Investors' Roundtable boards:

INVESTORS' ROUNDTABLE - Techniques
How Do I Invest
Technical Analysis

INVESTORS' ROUNDTABLE - Strategies
High Yield Portfolios (HYP) - Practical
High Yield Shares & Strategies - general
Investment Strategies

INVESTORS' ROUNDTABLE - Types of Investment
Venture Capital Trusts (VCT's)
Property Investment Discussions
Gilts and Bonds
Investment and Unit Trusts
Passive Investing

INVESTORS' ROUNDTABLE - Other
Trading my way to a million
Retirement Investing (inc FIRE)
Portfolio Management & Review
Macro and Global Topics
International & Expat Investors
Other Investing

Hi Geng,

Given what you have contributed above, where would you suggest that the kind of questions I periodically ask should go? That is, Mel and I are looking at a couple of firms, and looking at their financials, KPIs, ratios etc. and one such ratio intrigues us. E.g. "interest cover", ROCE etc. and we'd like to ask a question regarding this, and we may ask the question, in relation to a particular firm or several firms, or no firm in particular. Furthermore, as such a thread/topic matures, other posters may contribute to the thread, by ref. to different firms, the quoted firm etc. etc.

Would you say in "INVESTORS' ROUNDTABLE - Techniques" -> "Technical Analysis" ?

Matt

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Re: Re-Ordering Investment Roundtable

#160465

Postby TheMotorcycleBoy » August 18th, 2018, 1:54 pm

Sorry to keep bumping this. I'll shut up in a minute.

gryffron wrote:Amongst much strife, there has been a pretty good suggestion on the Farewell Dod thread, to re-order the Boards on the Investors Roundtable to avoid HYP-Practical being right at the top and luring in too many unsuspecting newbies.


gryffron wrote:Any thoughts?


From the perspective of a newbie (i.e. almost complete newcomers to investing as Mel and I were back in March), the acronym HYP will always confuse newbies without any qualification.

That is, what is actually meant is high dividend yield* portfolio. It took a little while for this penny to drop for us. Yield to an outsider just means an amount / a produce e.g. the yield of a crop of wheat.

When we first looked at TLF, HYP just seemed to imply "it's a portfolio that makes a lot of money". But how exactly? Perhaps the shares are in growth companies, and the holder will actively buy+sell. Clearly in the case of TLF (and maybe investment sites in general) that is not the fact, and that HY == HDY. But appreciate that many newbies, may not see it that way.

Matt

(* From the board guidance page: If selected, such shares should have a dividend yield above the average for the FTSE100 index)


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