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New Website Project

After reviewing a bunch of options for the website and participation of folks in discussions I have decided to do an addition to the website.

I have asked Chad to add a new ‘forum’ to the site. This will not replace anything in particular now on the site, but will be a new addition–and I hope one which invites maximum participation by readers and participants.

So you ask–what is a forum? Think of the Silicon Investors website. A place where folks can start new topics and readers can skim down and decide if they want to read a particular thread. With premium add ons to the forum I think we will be able to search topics and authors.

You will recall I was researching new options for commenting a month ago–I still have that in my head and as a potential project, but the desires of the participants was not as clear which way to go. With the addition of a forum it may not be necessary to make changes to the commenting package–we’ll see–like everything I know this will not be the answer to all problems, but it seems like a low risk option (i.e. if it doesn’t work out I can just delete it).

Depending on Chads schedule and workload I hope to see this change in the next two weeks.

20 thoughts on “New Website Project”

  1. hi @tim i really like your site although not a veteran poster such as others, but i would strongly urge you to install a no politics policy across all topics.

  2. Tim – I think this is a good move. I trust the folks will respect the forum and not turn it into the wild west that was Yahoo finance. Speaking to myself here!

    1. !!! Somebody has to remind em that YTC is one of the most important #’s out there. (sarc)

  3. Very Nice Tim

    Si to me is a very good model for a forum. Clean, simple and it has the key components:

    1. a very good search function.
    2. a recommend post button.
    3. the ability for an individual user to keep a post so you can easily go back and refer back to it whenever you want without having to search.
    4. separate sub-forums devoted to a particular topic

  4. SI does have a good search function. They have something similar to a like feature in that you can recommend a post and those numbers are tallied.
    There is another real nice feature. You can put any post in a “keep” file and refer back to it, any time you want, without going through a search.

    1. oh. that is embedded in subject marks – keepers. Learn something new every day.

  5. “With premium add ons to the forum I think we will be able to search topics and authors.”

    That’s the one! Right now I run everything through Feedbro and it’s a poor substitute for a good search function.

    Whatever you do, though, you’re not gonna satisfy everyone and many will gripe and leave in a noisy huff.

    Still, I appreciate all the care and hard work you put in here and it’s very difficult to beat your cover charge. 😉

    JMO

  6. This is a good idea, Tim. Please let me make a suggestion. I have seen many web forums fail when the site owner, excited at the beginning, creates a huge number of sub-forums or categories or whatever you want to call them. The result is people don’t know where to post new topics, it becomes a pain to check them all, and the whole site never really takes off.

    So I would suggest for best results that to start out with, you have just a single forum, or at most a couple of sub-forums. If the forum is a success and there is demand to create new sub-forums to split up an abundance of traffic, that can always be done later.

    Thanks as always for all the work on the website.

      1. You will probably end up with close to a 1 to 1 correlation to your links that we already post in today. Canadian, REIT, General/Sandbox, Sock Drawer, Brokerage, Common, Alerts … Why? because over time you have you have created them to carve up comments already that folks have agreed to and have followed.

        1. Good point Mr. C! Maybe this site is a little different from the usual new site getting off the ground…

          1. I do like SI. It does have a good search feature. The only thing i think it doesnt have is a like feature, and then searching or displaying the most liked topics. How that can be used, is if someone for example goes through an intense level of detail explaining something, everyone can like it, and then you can always go back and refer to it. Other systems have a feature that store a comment for you personally so that you have a link back to that comment that you personally liked.

            There are smart people here and there are some great comments that need to be tagged so that they can be referred back to. That is the “missing link.”

        2. Agreed – those areas already identified with separate links would make the most sense as a starting point

        3. If there are too many forums some of them don’t get much action. So people, stop posting there and put relevant comments back in the busy forums. That’s already happening with some of the links now.

          1. Martin–yes you are correct. I think the key to do it really right is to have more moderation time (from me)–lord knows I hope that can happen.

        4. Mr C–yes I think that is going to happen–but maybe that is what we want to happen–and the ability of folks to add there own categories so others don’t have to look at if they have no interest.

          1. Tim,
            I was thinking about this topic the last couple days and I had to ask, what do you want from this site ? It is your site and if you maintain it, it should be what you would like.
            I see you had thoughts on illiquid issues or you wouldn’t of created a list of stocks you follow.
            I also see that the issue of interest rates is important to you from the blog comment you have made. In the back of my mind I find myself wondering about fixed to floating preferred and if there will be a day they will be the topic of discussion. I wouldn’t mind seeing a list of those stocks.

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