Site Usability Discussion and Feedback

Hi, My first post, and not too sure if this is the right place to ask the following question:
Is there any way of getting historical ranking data for stocks? I would like to track the direction of travel for the individual components of value, quality, momentum.
The idea being, I want create my own triggers and to see if there is a correlation between, say, value dropping as momentum starts to rise and so on.
Hope this is not too dumb a question.

Could I please return to a couple of previously raised ideas which seem to have gone nowhere.

1) We really do need an "ignore this poster" feature - without this trolls can hijack threads, pollute discussion and disincentivise participation

2) There need to be sanctions/penalties imposed on people who persistently engage in disruptive/anti-social behaviour - perhaps this could be triggered by negative thumbs - or perhaps it should just be managed by the Stockopedia site managers. The absence of such sanctions means that anti-social behaviour has no consequence for those who do it.

3) The league table of "top posters" needs to exclude those who make negative contributions - someone who posts a thousand inaccurate/dishonest/stupid/disruptive comments should not thereby get themselves at the top of the league table.

T

Ah ha cheers Murakami, That's perfect. Problem solved.

Mucho gratias.

Hi, the best (or rather the intended) way is to "follow" stocks and authors that you're interested in, and then click on the Favourites button at the top here (http://www.stockopedia.com/discussion/) to just see that list. Let us know though if the Favourite filter is not obvious enough or doesn't do what you want. 

Alternatively, if you click on the "Threads" button on that page, it will just give you back Threads. Also, you can click on each button to choose everything other than Research, if you want.

Best,

M

Quick question, although I suspect there is no solution.

Is there anyway, when selecting "Discussion-all activity" to limit one's feed to only those messages where there are comments and not just some brokers speel/research document.

Whilst it is occasionally nice to read some of what the input it does seem that they tend to post 4-7 such research reports all on the same day which, if one goes away for more than two days often means one has to trawl through endless separate posts to get to what one wants....Or perhaps there is a better way to keep tabs on th threads I'm interested in?Open to suggestions.

Cheers for suggs in advance

Can someone please tell me why my temporary password is not recognized when I try to create a new password

...not you fuiseog, obviously!

It would also help if there was an "always available" link for reporting bugs as there used to be. I can never remember the email address they should be sent to!

jseth123,

I concur with your queries.

I'm also finding the disproportionate us of capitals very distracting, bordering on ramping, or am I alone in this?

Sorry to rejuvinate an old thread.

Would it be possible to have a filter for TA-based discussion? Or a category for it such that it would be possible not to see it unless you wished to do so.

Or if this is possible at the moment can anyone kindly let me know how.

I'm with firefox and thumbs not working.

No thumbs up or down for me either, and I'm using google chrome.

Ah ha they have just reappeared...:)    they certain;y weren't there earlier..

No thunbs up/down icons for me anymore. Am using IE and Vista.

I have none with Firefox

Mine have just returned!

db

my thumbs have vanished (frostbite?)

db

Why when you click onto the next page do you have to trawl through posts you have already read?

i.e. Page one goes upto post 20 yet page two display posts 10 to 30?

Most annoying

Is anyone else having problems with the "show/hide all" toggle and the "View options" button, or is it just me?

My problems started a few weeks ago after some software updates and whilst I have worked around it for the moment, I still can't access the site in the way I prefer to. The buttons highlight as normal with underlining but then simply don't work.

Any suggestions?  I'm using Firefox and XP Home.

ee

Good to hear about the new version. Any rough idea of how soon it's coming?
Will we be able to trade all the FTSE 100 stocks in the Fantasy portfolios then?

Hi All, we're a bit swamped with a new version of the site that will be released shortly. Once that's out, we'll come back to these questions so do feel to add any further comments or feedback. We are listening! Best, M

Nice one tournesol !

I was hoping someone would be along with an answer and I might be able to buy today - ah well, maybe later in the week ....

Also, if I have say 30 unread posts in a thread and I click to read, it will display the first 10 of those (under my settings). However, the unread marker dissappears entirely at this stage, even if I navigate away to a separate page rather than reading the 20 posts that are unread. Can this quirk be looked at?

Is it possible to access favourites through the mobile version of the site?

Dunno

Why not wait until January then you can get a New Year's Resolution?

I'll get my coat.....................

Would be useful to have a thread title-block visible too when scrolling (but not all the header and banner adds, of course).

Two suggestions:

1) is it possible to keep the RH pane static whilst scrolling down the posts on the activitiy thread? So the price graph etc remain visible?

2) when the unread posts go onto two pages, when you move to the second, could it please either start at the next unread post, or from the last read post. At the moment it fills up a complete new page and you start at the top, which means you have to wade through lots to get to where you were.

db

Is there any chance you could squeeze a market capitalisation or, even better, an NMS into the quick numbers under the graph on the top right of a company page? IMO the bid, offer, 52w high and 52w low are fairly useless information and could go, but when you first encounter a company to see some indication of size and/or liquidity would be nice.

Wistman - trades have been executing this morning as per usual. There haven't been any trades entered for your fund this morning. Valuations will be updated overnight, and the chart bug will clear later today.

Thanks, we will take another look. 

If possible, please send any bug reports by email to admin@stockopedia.co.uk or via this Contact Us Form: http://www.stockopedia.com/page/contacting-stockopedia/

Hi, this should be fixed by tomorrow's open. Best, M

Is there a problem with the fantasy funds? No trades seem to have gone through in the last week?

arg

Hi, this is just a quick word to say that we have spruced up a couple of the main site pages - the Companies and Investment Topics pages:

• http://www.stockopedia.com/shares/
• http://www.stockopedia.com/investment-topics/

Comments are as ever very welcome.

Best,

M

There appears to be a bug when trading one's fantasy portfolio. I seem to be unable since around last Thursday to make any Buy trades. Trades do not go through and subsequently disappear from the "orders" list. I've currently got about £360K cash [wish it was real!!!] there and the shares I've been wanting to buy keep going up!!
HELP!!

Could you possibly add a favicon so that your site is more readily identified in tabs?

Slartybartfast

Murukami

On threads which one has previously opened, the number of new, i.e. unread messages, is presented in red.

On threads which one has not previously opened, the number of messages (which is also the number of unread messages) is presented in blue. Would it be possible to also give an unread message count, in red, on these threads?

In that way, it will be much easier to identify those threads which may be of interest but which one has not yet ventured onto.

TIA. Regards, Martin

I've just stumbled across something I do not understand.

Aminex Wiki was flagged up on my activity list as havibng been edited 21 mins ago, but when I go there and click on the link to see how the latest edit has changed the material, I get:

"Viewing the differences between versions 30 and 31 of the Aminex wiki.
Version 30 of 31 dated 2010-02-15 21:56:30
Edited by DearLeader (Contact)
""
? Older edit
edit type
Current version dated 2010-02-15 21:56:30 (edit)"

How can I tell that this new edit is current when it is apparently dated almost five months ago?

And another thing....

what is the difference between "contributors" and "commenters"?

the cloud that shows top contributors omits a number of the top commenters - it is not clear to me what the difference is and why for example Emptyend and DJ preston are not included in the cloud when they are at the top of the league tables?

Ah I wasn't aware of the time element :) thanks for the heads up

Not sure if this has been covered but an "edit" function would be superb so that posters can add to a post without having to make a completely new one.Particularly pertinent when there are several new stories hitting the wire in the space of 10-15mins.

One issue that has arisen recently (starting 3-4 days ago?) with the charts.

It used to be possible to click on the small chart on the right-hand side of the page (either directly on the chart itself, or on the little button on the extreme right-hand side) and doing so brought up the main chart.

That no longer works - in each case it redirects the user to the site's front page.

The only(?) method that still works is to get to a company's main page and click on "Share Price Chart" in the banner header.

Any chance of re-instating the other two? It was especially convenient being able to click directly on the small chart.

There are some discussion threads where individual posters become over-exuberant and make excessive numbers of contributions. This somewhat hijacks those threads and/or the whole subject, drowns out other people's comments, makes it difficult to follow the threads and generally acts as a disincentive for other people to read and/or contribute.

One of the behaviours that emerges in this context is the incontinent regurgitation of press reports. Where a topic is in the news there may be hundreds of press reports out there and whilst it can be useful for people to selectively highlight selected parts of selected reports, it is very unhelpful for masses of material to be posted without any selection being applied. It makes it more difficult/impossible to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Would it be an idea to have some kind of automatic limit aplied to the number and/or frequency of posts to individual threads. I'm not thinking of anything draconian here - perhaps 3 or 4 posts per thread per day per person? which would normally be enough for most circumsatnces?

This might make people think a bit more before posting stuff which does not add value and could certainly make it easier/more attractive for those of us who don;t want to wade through a torrent of comments which all say much the same thing.

It might also help avoid the situation where posters game the league tables for poster contribution/quality by posting their way up the ladder using quantity not quality.

Just a thought

T

Hi, as a partial solution to the issue raised by SirL, we have changed it so that, if you click on Popular or New, comments are automatically included rather than excluded.

We are having a think about the other issues raised in terms of the highest post rating being visible at the thread level, but hopefully this should help a bit in the interim. 

Best,

M

But SirL's point is a more general one. Showing the number of thumbs the header has received is simply not at all helpful on the Activity page because it doesn't give any clue as to whether a popular post has been made recently on a thread.

Your suggestion involves four further clicks for each thread where the viewer is wondering whether there might be something ( click on company, click on Popular, click on show replies, if nothing of interest, click on Activity again to return and the repeat).

This works, but just isn't a practical suggestion for an experienced user who would go mad trying to do it, let alone for a newbie or a more irregular visitor who would never think of it.

The ideal situation would be if you could show on the activity page the highest Thumbs up (ignore the thumbs down) count for the unread posts (including the header if the header hasn't been viewed) for the viewer. I know this means calculating this for each line whilst displaying the page :(

Next best would be if you could give two thumbs up counts against each line on the activity page. The first would show the highest rec's header/post on the thread. The second would show the highest rec's in the last few days. For newish threads these would of course be the same. These would be the same for all viewers, so you could just update the relevant record when a thumbs up count is given and have some batch method of aging them out . But at least you don't pick up large scale post processing every time the activity page is called up.

Third best would be to show only the highest recs on individual posts/headers . So only one lot of thumbs to display and no aging process. This will work fine for newish threads, but not so well for old mega threads where people want to concentrate on what's new.

Your current approach simply emphasises the thread headers massively too much.

re Broker Watch and Newswire. You will recall that I have previously commented that these clog up the Boards and add little value :) Can I suggest that they should be culled after a few days unless someone has added comments on them?

db

Hi, I'd suggest continuing the conversation using the site messaging system, as it's designed for this purpose, rather than on the Boards? Thanks. 

Many thanks, M

Sure, ee, but the navigation issues discussed were identically the same as and replying to the ones you were discussing in your post 47 or 48 on this thread!

Hi Murakami,

I've tried that and, yes, it does just about get the result I want, though going that route for all subjects I'm interested in might lead to quite a bit of duplicated reading. It would be helpful if the time periods in the Popular tab also included 3months and 6months possibilities - 1 month is a bit short and 1 year is sometimes a bit long. Is it obvious to everyone what the difference between Active, Hot and Popular is? (I think I'm showing my age here) Oh, and that Encore thread that has little to do with Soco is still Top of the Pops...

Thanks!

In reply to sirlurkalot, post #51

Hi SirL, thanks for the comments - always appreciated. Noted re: Broker Watch and Newswire  - as suggested, we have just manually removed those as they were very tangential but clearly that's not easy to do in all cases. 

In terms of the 2nd point, this is a way to get to this but it's admittedly slightly hidden. On a given stock or topic page, if you click on Popular in the Stream and then select the checkbox that appears called "show replies?", it will give you a sorted descending order by thumb count of both threads and replies. That way, you see everything that's highly rated without having to read all the pages of the individual threads. 

Give it a go and let us know if that solves the issue or if it's still outstanding.

Best, M

The Broker Watch and the Early Morning Report seem to have vanished from the little grey box list, but I think they were there just now, honest!

I think ee's right that the reason the Meet Roger Cagle thread doesn't appear on the front page of the little grey box results is that currently the Roger Cagle thread hasn't been replied to since 15 April, whilst every thread on the front page of the little grey box link has been replied to more recently than currently 17 May. Actually, I hadn't even noticed that there was a Read More and plenty of other older threads, but I should try harder.

Personally, if my thoughts matter, I think several threads on the front page of the little grey box list should be de-emphasised to make that list a better summary of the current most useful stuff on Soco. Things like the Broker Watch and the Early Morning Report are just getting in the way. But to remove unimportant links requires subjective thought and manual intervention which is clearly not optimal.

Another improvement I think would be helpful would be for the thumbs up numbers on the little grey box list to show the HIGHEST thumbs up rating of ANY reply on that thread, not the thumbs up number of the originating post. For instance, the Soco AGM Reports and Discussion thread started by MadDutch is currently showing 6 thumbs up, whilst I suggest the little grey box list should show 49 thumbs up for it, which is the number scored by doverbeach's reply some way down which is the most significant reply on that thread. If the grey box list showed 49 thumbs up for that thread, and the same for all other threads, it would be easier to pick out the threads with the most significant content on them. I subjectively know it's obvious that the AGM one is likely to be a good thread to read because of the title, but I'm not helped towards it by the Spedia display. With the TMF system one could flick quickly through pages of replies, only bothering reading the ones getting more than say 5 or 10 recs, but here the higher-thumbed replies are more hidden. The AGM thread mentioned looks like a boring 6-thumb one, and it appears that the most valuable thread on Soco is a 56-thumb one on Encore which is actually barely relevant to Soco. For all I know there may be highly-thumbed nuggets hidden deep into boring-looking low-thumbed threads on "Incidental Stuff" or whatever. It would be easy for the hard core Stockopedes to say that there's no problem if I read every post, but I haven't always got that much time and some system for picking out the hidden nuggets would be helpful.

hi Murakami,

I think SirL has found a bug here ... i think the Cagle interview http://www.stockopedia.com/content/meet-the-management-interview-with-roger-cagle-of-soco-international-plc/39617 should be appearing on the Soco page here http://www.stockopedia.com/topic/soco-international/1347/LON:SIA. Presumably you aren't picking up podcasts for those pages at the moment, but I can't think of a good reason why not.

db

Hi Murakami,
Yikes, are there videos, podcasts and "stream navigators" here? OK, I'll have a go at navigating around but I really haven't been here much. I know TMF has effectively died, but I've been off investing in HK and Singapore, mainly, and I've yet to learn the wonders of this site. Well done on building something with lots of exciting features.

"Odd. Thought I recalled you having said towards the end of last year that you were buying back in at around £13"
No, I don't think I wrote that, these are almost my first posts here for about a year. What I wrote in early 09 or so on TMF was that I expected the SP at Xmas09 to be around £13, which luckily turned out to be about right. Anyway, let's get away from discussing me and what I think or am up to, and stick to Soco. I'll only participate much here if I get a decent welcome.

Thanks. I had missed the Meet Roger Cagle link as it doesn't appear on the front page of the results you get if you click the little grey box saying Soco International. I find navigating this site difficult.

"And then perhaps you might be able to give a bit back to these boards by posting your thoughts?"
I haven't had many thoughts about Soco in the last year or two as I've been off investing outside sterling, but now as a result of the last couple of months election/coalition/Budget developments I'm feeling more secure about sterling so am partly returning. I've hardly been a leech taking much from Spedia recently, morally obliged to give back.