TUK020 wrote:Suggestion: Rename "HYP Practical" board to "PYAD HYP".
I think this is a great idea, although for reasons mentioned elsewhere in this thread there are probably better alternative names.
It feels to me like (very often straw man) moderation “issues” will kill* the Practical board which would be a great shame. Therefore, although I don’t think that, by itself, a name change will fix the problem a change may be a useful line in the sand to try to reduce the current issues.
(*I doubt the board will actually die, but I believe that without some changes the number of useful, informative and entertaining posts from experienced and generous contributors will slow and eventually stop.)
I’ve mostly been a lurker on the HYP boards on TMF and TLF. When I first arrived (I think around 7 years ago) I read and re-read the dense content of the boards. I believe that I have benefited significantly from what I have read and learnt here. It would be a shame if “current local issues” stopped others from benefiting in the future.
I have these observations that I hope will help this conversation:
- These boards are so useful
because they are moderated.
- No moderation system is perfect. I can’t say that I agree with all of the moderator’s decisions but I can say that I’m
very grateful to the moderators for their time and without them I would not visit the boards and would feel very sad about that.
- In my opinion a strength of the “evolved version of high yield portfolio investment derived from some TMF articles written by Stephen Bland” is that is it based around some consensus guidelines and
not a strict set of rules.
- It seems to me that it is very difficult (although not impossible) to capture “consensus guidelines” in board guidelines and even harder (maybe impossible) to moderate consistently against them when there users of the boards who are emotionally attached to a particular strongly held position (see below).
- In my professional experience many people
hate the abstraction of guidelines and constantly seek “black and white” rules even when creating such rules is not to their immediate advantage. (Think of King Solomon cutting the baby in half.)
-
In general people are very emotionally attached to how they are perceived (even if “only” online)
and people are very emotionally attached to the groups to which they belong (regardless of how they became affiliated to any particular group)
and people are very emotionally attached to their money and investments.
- The point above makes the publically declared choice of any particular investment style a perfect storm for emotional attachment and argument (and for dogmatically following a style even if the evidence is that it’s isn’t optimal for an individual’s circumstances). For examples google “Value vs Growth”, “Active vs Passive”, “Charts vs Fundimentals”, “Gold vs Fiat Currencies”, “Equities vs Fixed Interest”, etc., etc.
- There are clearly some very long term interpersonal issues between some of the posters here (and Mr Bland who posts less often now). The change from TMF to TLF didn’t fix that so a board name change is
unlikely to fix that as well.
- The current local issues with “My HYP style vs Everyone else’s HYP style” is just a niche variation on all of the themes above and won’t go away with (on its own) just a name change.
In conclusion, I really feel that something should be tried to reduce the (pointless and distracting) spate of meta arguments on the Practical board while retaining board guidelines, moderators and as much of the board’s “traditional” character and purpose as possible. I believe a new name could be part of change but is unlikely to be a total solution.
If the moderators and/or owners can think of anything else that I could do to help (or anyone else that feels similarly could do to help) please let me know.
SDN