Comment moderation

Many authors will recognize this

After spending time and energy carefully preparing a trade idea, you give it a final glance, publish it and eagerly wait to see how it’s received. The first likes are coming in, which is always a good feeling. One of your loyal followers compliments you on another awesome idea. You nod toward your screen as you sip your coffee. Suddenly someone criticizes your view and argues you got it all wrong. You squint your eyes. He even questions your whole trading strategy! You swear under your breath as you read the comment again. It irritates you that someone publicly casts doubt on your analysis. This may confuse your followers or get out of hand so you decide to report the comment…

Reported comments are not always deleted

Our community posts 600+ comments daily and some ideas can get upwards of hundreds over time. Every month, 60+ comments are reported by authors or their followers. However, many reported comments are not deleted. This may be surprising to some, so let us explain. We love it when members are active and engaged, when they respond to ideas, agree with them, but also peer-review them, criticize them, or argue an opposite view. This gives the community choice. The public discussion of ideas provides worthwhile insights as long as it stays within the House Rules. But to some authors, it brings anxiety. Some don’t take well to having their analysis publicly criticized. They may perceive a light-hearted remark as an insult or a probing question as an attack.

Why we are different than YouTube

As an author, you can like, respond to, disregard, or report any comment, in which case the mods decide whether or not it should be deleted. Please note that if you send false reports, you will be moderated yourself. We are often asked why the comment moderation is different than on YouTube where users can remove comments, block others, and even disable all comments to their content. It’s simple. These features go against our philosophy of being an open platform, where people can publish and criticize ideas freely. Even with good-intention tools, similar to what’s on YouTube, can be used to silence (constructive) criticism or alternate views. It is true that most authors are biased toward their own analysis. So not having a different approach is not an oversight, it’s intentional.

We encourage civil dialogue

When our spam filter flags a comment as suspicious, it won’t be visible to others. It’s not deleted, but held for review by a mod, who will decide whether or not to allow it after vetting the content. We sometimes see authors create and propose their own rules on how people should respond to their ideas and who is and isn’t allowed to. Please note that these are not official and can’t be enforced. We ask authors who reply to constructive feedback to do so with civility and to stay on point. Give a detailed answer, perhaps thank the user for their view, or just agree to disagree and move on. We plan to include comments in the Ignore feature, so you won’t have to see them from selected users, but nevertheless, they will remain visible to others.

Keep creating, sharing, reviewing, and commenting. It’s a great way to learn!