Yes, of course. The whole idea is to institutionalise this.
Make everyone put their hand up, be counted - ensure a VP Meritocracy - that challenges everyone to freely share, learn and contribute their mite to the VP Cause - help preserve and enhance VP Community Culture & Goals -: Making everyone better-informed investors
Getting a place in the Top 20 will become tougher.
2015 Top Contributors made it to the list based on VP Core Team nominations.
2016 onwards - Today we have the functionality to show us what contributions the VP Community values the most - individual posts, as well as aggregated likes, mentions, flags (housekeeping contributions) and the like. Current thinking - 50% weights to Community Votes & 50% weights to Nominations from Core Team
(so as to avoid “Gaming” - you know you scratch my back, I scratch yours!)
We will tweak as we gain more experience with the system
I really don’t mean to be party-pooper but it is my humble request to refrain from making this valuable school of learning called ValuePickr into a rat race where everyone is competing to gain a top slot in the hierarchal system. Let people learn at their own pace and contribute in their own style. Lets not create incentive bias in thoughts so that people’s action are guided by the likings of others. In schools ranking system does more harm than good, in companies we all know how the race for corporate titles drives down efficiency, and in societies ranking and hierarchy leads to quest for power and superiority. One can only feel superior by making others feel inferior, and that is the whole rationale behind “exclusivity”,“members-only”, “limited edition” kind of concepts.
Meetups with fellow members is a great idea but it can be done as city meets or meetups around companies annual shareholders meetings. Many value investors from around the world do such meetups around annual shareholders meetings of Berkshire, Fairxfax and Merkel etc.
These are my thoughts, but you guys being the founders of this valuable forum know better.
Great points … I fully agree to the ethos and philosophy behind your post. And my entire life philosophy is aligned to this. However, keeping the same principles and ethos in mind can you suggest ways to bring in fresh bloods (young or old) who may be new to forum, have shown tremendous potential, much better contributor than existing team to be incentivized in future? Don’t you think they need encouragement?
What Donald said, I guess, to be an evolving process and not a mindless competition to show one upmanship in the forum and I think they are smart, mature and honest enough to do a good job in separating “wheat from the chaff” in this investment community too.
However, your points are valid as far as I am concerned and should be kept in mind always for creating a great “community” … And I think Community is the operative word here; not a bunch of competing folks fighting to come to forefront jostling others … And I feel, Donald and others in the team understands this.
The key incentive and motivation for every participant is
Gaining knowledge to become better investors
Become better investors to achieve superior returns
These two incentives will motivate participants to work hard, contribute more and intellectually challenge themselves and others. If they focus on these incentives, other benefits such as respect from community and networking will follow. We all want to know and associate ourselves with people smarter than us and people we can learn from. That is why every year thousands of very smart and successful investors attend Berkshire annual meet. Now think for a second if Mr.Buffett or Mr.Munger said “From next year I only want to have the 20 most intelligent people, so go and prove yourself that you are worth it” it would kill the very spirit of Buffettism.
People who are on this forum for incentives others than listed above will eventually fall out and for other motivated souls it shouldn’t (though human psychology creates very many biases) make a difference if they are ranked as no body can take away the knowledge they gain by sharing and collaborating.
Donald and some other seniors already have the respect of the community and fellow members, so now it is up to them if they want to spread their wisdom in a free form or a constrained manner.
