Stocko-hub metadiscussion

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1st Oct '12 by marben100

21 comments 11785 reads

A place to discuss usage, moderation policies etc of the Stocko-hub:
http://www.stockopedia.com/content/stocko-hub-68418/

I can incorporate any agreed rules, after debate here, in the header of the main Stocko-hub thread.

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About the Author

Marben100

Premium Member

I am a full-time private investor... with a little trading on the side (generally small-scale arbitrage in specialist niches). Previously, I spent 24 years in the IT industry, 13 of those running my own IT services firm. I invested as a "hobby" for 20 years before turning it into a full-time occupation in 2004. I really enjoy the "research" side of investing, finding out about varied businesses and industries and learning what makes them tick. Since going "full-time" I have learnt an awful lot from some very erudite investors & professionals who are kind enough to share their expertise in electronc forums such as this. I can now count a number of them as my friends, having had the opportunity to meet them in the real world, as well as this virtual one! I try to pay back the debt I owe by sharing what I've learnt and I always value constructive criticism to correct my errors and misapprehensions! I am a Director of ShareSoc, the UK organisation for individual shareholders. See below for details. more »

21 comments

marben100

1st Oct '12

Hi Ed,

Don't think you need to do anything development-wise... just let people post links on the Stockohub!

Let's try the "build it and they will come" philosophy... but some editorial input (as I've suggested in my e-mail to Dave & you) might help. ;0)

The Stockohub is open for business! [I'll be posting stuff there in due course, but must dash now].

Cheers,

Mark

marben100

1st Oct '12

In response to muckshifter here: http://www.stockopedia.com/content/stocko-hub-68418/?comment=1#1

We would then have to hope that the moderators could maintain sanity and ruthlessly ban trolls and grudge bearers!

That's one of the beauties of Stockopedia: moderation is primarily the responsibility of thread creators. Unlike ADVFN, there are no "blue" posters who cannot be moderated. Stockopedia themsleves will only step in in extremis. As you say, it would be nice to get to the point where this is an issue to begin with, so... get posting, folks!

SteveM

1st Oct '12

Hi Mark. This is not a bad idea and perhaps it is something that might develop. When I initially suggested the integration of Twitter with the TMF boards, I was hoping to see some sort of hybrid materialise, where we might see tweets appear as part of a more structured commentary.

My fear with this Stocko-hub is that it is all rather unstructured. A long list of links may be of use to some, but I would be looking for some more structure ideally, otherwise you become a slave to paging through a list of links. It's also yet another medium to have to use; I already use Twitter to post links, and wouldn't especially want to duplicate that here - perhaps we could use something like the #TMF approach to also populate this list? Same sort of thing with the Fool really, things posted there that might be useful here would again need to be duplicated.

So overall, yes, the investment 'hub' would be useful, but I'm not sure that this is it, at least not without some work.

Cheers,
Steve (Markus)

marben100

1st Oct '12

Hi Steve,

Sounds interesting. Would you like to expand on what you mean by "structured", any ideas you have?

The chief problem that has been expressed is that of fragmentation, which I can well sympathise with. Each of us has our own favourite place for posting (including blogs) and we can't expect others to change that, but as you say, we don't want to have to check zillions of different websites.

The limitation with Twitter is its transient nature - great in real-time but pretty hopeless for scanning for important stories you might have missed (even after half a day, in my experience!). Perhaps the ultimate solution will be individually trained "twitter-bots" that capture & save tweets of interest to the user, for perusal at your leisure. Will require powerful AI, however!

Cheers,

Mark

SteveM

1st Oct '12

By structured, I mean by theme, either individual stock or sector. I'm not sure that a simple list of links gives much value. For instance, I might tweet this morning that Renew Holdings had issued a trading update. Someone else might find that referenced here and respond to it with a discussion post. That might then be further linked to/from further tweets or other posts/documents. Still a hub, but rather more ambitious. I do think whoever can implement this probably has the ultimate stock market forum!

Cheers,
Steve.

marben100

1st Oct '12

Thanks. I think that could come, in time, by using tagging. The "discussion" tab. on S'pedia's stock report could reference all posts relevant to that company. It's partway there already, referencing tagged articles. Similar facilities could be provided for sectors, themes etc.

However ISTM that first we need to get the links to worthwhile articles in one place.

Cheers,

Mark

SteveM

2nd Oct '12

Unfortunately, that still means posting in at least two places i.e. Twitter, and here or TMF. At least TMF has a mechanism, albeit basic, for picking up tagged tweets and displaying them in a broad context. Personally I'm not particularly keen on duplicating posting, or effort. But I understand what you're saying, just not sure of the value of an unstructured list.

Cheers,
Steve.

emptyend

2nd Oct '12

Unfortunately, that still means posting in at least two places i.e. Twitter, and here or TMF

I would have thought that one of the advantages of such a hub is that one only has to post once - and if someone thinks they are worth reading then they will either get retweeted or linked to by others. That's the view I take. I rarely bother to copy anything in two places - only if I happen to make some substantive comment on ADVFN (about 4-5 times a year perhaps). That doesn't stop people finding posts when they think they are of some use.

SteveM

2nd Oct '12

Long time since we've debated anything EE. I remember us discussing Hyder Consulting a long time ago, and you decided to steer clear. They've done very well since, I'm pleased to say ;-)

Anyway, I take your point, but don't necessarily agree. Whether or not the link is worth reading is beside the point. It still means that 'someone' has to repost the item or link, which is duplication. I prefer the way that TMF have implemented this - it's by no means perfect, but tweets and the associated links at least appear in the context of the board for which they were intended and can be referenced from within the TMF environment without further intervention. That's the system I intend to stick with, not to add another environment (which I don't habitually use at the moment) to the tools I use.

Cheers,
Steve.

emptyend

2nd Oct '12

Hi Steve,

I remember us discussing Hyder Consulting a long time ago, and you decided to steer clear. They've done very well since, I'm pleased to say ;-)

Good for you! I can't recall that discussion or the context/timing - but I think my view may have been a bit coloured by having known the MD of Welsh Water many years ago (that and the financial crisis, perhaps).

Anyway, I take your point, but don't necessarily agree. Whether or not the link is worth reading is beside the point. It still means that 'someone' has to repost the item or link, which is duplication

I thought you were complaining about having to duplicate it yourself? Surely 90% of the internet is content copied by "someone" from elsewhere (TMF's Jokers Corner being a good example ;-))?

That's the system I intend to stick with, not to add another environment (which I don't habitually use at the moment) to the tools I use.

Yes - each to their own. I tend to simplify by ignoring platforms completely. I can't see the relevance of Twitter, except for people interested in self-promotion, trivia or being bang up-to-the-minute on the latest news story or gossip. Facebook, Linked-In and many more minor platforms also get almost completely ignored. If one tries to chase everything then one doesn't have a life.

cheers

marben100

2nd Oct '12

Steve,

If I've understood you correctly, what you're saying is that you like the tweet window integrated with TMF? Certainly a nice feature and, I guess, S'pedia could implement something similar. The #TMFPP tag, however, only highlights tweets that TMFers have made, which doesn't really address the fragmentation issue that fredahad raised and which motivated me to try this experiment.

Cheers,

Mark

SteveM

2nd Oct '12

Hi Mark.

I suppose what I'm looking for is some form of content aggregation from a number of different sources. The obvious way of trawling content is by ticker code - the #TMFPP tag is a very crude and not especially granular way of presenting appropriate content from another source (i.e. Twitter) in the context of TMF. I think the strength of the approach is that it doesn't require duplication of posting/effort, and that is what I'm trying to avoid, whilst achieving a complete picture of content from a number of (possibly) approved sources.

I like the TMF implementation of the hashtag approach, because it places information from two sources in one context. I would like it better if (a) it was able to be more specific, perhaps by ticker, and (b) the external information was integrated with TMF posts in some way such that it could be referenced.

Of course, where I've specified TMF that could mean any form of aggregation system. I'm aware of the oddity in discussing use of TMF as an aggregator on Stockopedia - please excuse it!

Cheers,
Steve.

marben100

10th Oct '12

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this experiment is succeeding, as there don't seem to be any other contributors to the Stockohub. It's not something I can maintain alone and it doesn't serve its purpose if it only covers articles I've come across: we need good reads from a variety of investors.

I will continue to highlight links to useful material on my Twitter feed @marben100 and post longer comments on Marben's Misc Bits or relevant threads (using Twitter to advise when I've posted anything substantive).

Cheers,

Mark

Isaac

18th Oct '12

The problem is Mark on days like today when the site has been down all day - You have to ask yourself can you rely on Stockopedia to carry out this kind of excercise?

Unfortunately not - I think you would get more feedback on TMF - Have you considered opening a Marben stocko hub like paulypilots pub on TMF? I think your experiment would work over there.

I do wish the Stocko management spent more time having a reliable site rather then creating lots of features that no one really uses - Stocko has gone down so many times this year that I have stopped counting.

StrollingMolby

18th Oct '12

I do wish the Stocko management spent more time having a reliable site rather then creating lots of features that no one really uses

I'm sure there are many users of the screening features you refer to, which keeps the site going with their subs.

Stocko has gone down so many times this year that I have stopped counting.

Really? Today's was the first outage I've noticed since perhaps the last big move from beta to the all-new version currently in use - but maybe I'm not as regular as you (so to speak)?

marben100

19th Oct '12

Isaac,

Just FYI, the reason I chose to launch the "Stockohub" is because there was demand for such a facility in TMFPP. I posted on that thread that I'd be happy to post links there - but that TMF had, in the past, pulled my posts when I did that - hence I was reluctant to do so.

TMF then pulled that post. That's why I don't post much on that site any more: I find their overzealous moderation intolerable (i.e. censorship).

Personally, I am delighted with S'pedia's stock reports & associated tools. I've rapidly found them hard to live without! However, I do wish that the S'pedia team could find more time to bring more traffic to the discussion site.

As SM says, I have rarely found problems with the S'pedia site, so am surprised at your comments on reliability. Today was very unusual.

Mark

uncommon13

19th Oct '12

The only annoying issue on stockopedia which I get every couple of months is the red coloured, unread, new number for a thread seems to get reset. Consequently, I have to try and find the last read post in the thread again or find out that there aren't really any new posts in that thread. Does it happen to anyone else as well?

Fangorn

19th Oct '12

Yes I have the same issue Uncommon.
I tend to just recheck the messages on the front page then leave the rest to filter through to the top as new posts hit.

marben100

20th Oct '12

Agreed re the unread messages issues - I find the same thing, which is annoying but not devastating.

Thanks to contributors for revivifying the Stockohub... looks like the experiment may not be a failure after all. I'll do my bit to try to make it a worthwhile destination, as well.

nybor

21st Oct '12

I emailed Stockopedia support at the start of October about the red unread message counter and several other issues with the discussion boards. I got a very speedy reply from Ed Croft which included this: "We had to reset the red markers recently during a site upgrade. Unfortunately we lost the history but have put something in place to ensure it doesn't happen again." I have a feeling I've seen the issue recur since then, though.

I mentioned various other issues at the same time (including the fact that 'Follow' buttons were present only on contributor and topic pages, absent on article, thread, or company pages) and to their great credit Stockopedia produced a fix within a day. They also overhauled the page for editing favourites to good effect.

A post like this belongs on an 'Improve the discussion boards' thread; I can't find one, so apologies if I've overlooked it.

Thanks and kudos to Mark for Stockohub.

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Marben100

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