Improving content quality, data cleanup, flagging misuse and other housekeeping activities

Forum Guidelines
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Since the VP community keeps growing and a large amount of content keeps getting added every day, there is a need for all active members to help to keep the forum content quality at the standard we expect it to be as users of the forum.

I am soliciting help from all active members in flagging questionable content. Here are some basic guidelines to help you decide what to flag and what not to.

UNACCEPTABLE CONTENT - FOR FLAGGING

  1. One or two line comments or questions which does not add much to the quality of discussion in the thread.
  2. Offensive language or tone of a post. Here, think if you would be comfortable if a child reads the post. If no, flag.
  3. Unnecessarily pumping up a stock. This one is especially important. All investors are expected to present their point of view, but pushing back on any alternate contrarian viewpoints is a definite question mark.
  4. Unnecessarily linking to personal website/blog for generating page views. If required the content can be posted on VP directly.
  5. Posting any copyrighted or paid material. (Magazines, news reports, articles etc behind paywall).
  6. Asking or giving buy/sell/hold recommendations.
  7. Creating a new thread when one already exists or putting content in wrong thread.
  8. Lack of disclosure while creating a new thread or making a strong case for a stock.
  9. Posting of technical charts in company threads. All technical charts are to be put in the technical analysis thread only.
  10. Starting a thread with little or no content. I am giving a basic template. One can add more but atleast the minimum information expected should be there.

ACCEPTABLE CONTENT - SHOULD NOT BE FLAGGED

  1. Any counter view of general consensus. For example, if members are bullish on a stock and someone posts a negative view with reasoning or asks pertinent questions.
  2. Fundamental news about a company or industry.

Please feel free to reach out to @manish962, @hitesh2710, @ayushmit, or me (@basumallick) on private message if you want to communicate any perceived wrongdoing by any forum member.

I invite all members to help to maintain the quality of VP content.

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Minimum content to start a new company discussion thread

Business overview
Industry dynamics
Risks
Financials
Management details
Investment thesis

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Thanks. These guidelines are helpful.

However, in some cases, especially in smaller companies, many of these details are not available online easily. I have seen in few threads where VP members are very resourceful in figuring out information (Eg: @phreakv6 in the Mangalam organics thread). My request is for the moderators to use their judgement in these cases and not ban the thread very quickly. (The thread initiator should call out clearly that either management info is not available or Industry info is not known well etc.)

Does it make sense to have a separate category for this? Where it is not a stock opportunity but interesting stock for the VP group to analyse and understand together?

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Slightly differ on this @alexander.

Starting a thread on a new company is not just copy pasting available information. If one is interested and is looking to start a new thread, he / she should be willing to put in best efforts to understand the company. It involves everything, right from company website (who doesn’t have one, now-a-days), exchange disclosures, Annual reports, Google search on promoters, scuttlebutt (trying /contacting company, distributors, competitors etc). Then only one would be able to form a view about the company, its management, business dynamics, competition etc.

I just want to say that one should do proper homework beforehand. And in today’s info-tech savy world, most of the above pieces of information will be available.

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Completely agree with @Advait_6270 on this one.

I have seen a few new threads where the initiator has simply put up past 3-4 years revenue, PAT and debt details (in some cases, not even these). No commentary on the management, competition, margins, future outlook, etc. In all these cases, I think, their only expectation is that senior/experienced members should dig deeper into the companies and provide them with insights. Such laziness should not be tolerated.

In fact, as pointed out by @alexander, we already have examples of companies, where information is not easily available and yet members have been extremely resourceful in figuring out details. We can simply point to these topics, to serve as a guideline for new members.

@basumallick In addition to the minimum requirements to start a thread, I suggest that we also include examples of threads where the initiator had put in a lot of effort. Here are some of the examples, which I liked (not an exhaustive list. I am sure there are tons of others which I have missed):

  1. Himadri Specialty Chemicals
  2. Indigrid InvIT (Disclosure: I started this one. It took me 2-3 weeks of reading and research to start this thread)
  3. Info Edge - Peter Thiel model
  4. 3M India: Stock to Postit in a portfolio
  5. Endurance Technologies - Quality focussed Auto component manufacturer
  6. Jiya Eco-Products Ltd. - Step Towards Green World
  7. Universal Autofoundry Limited - Melting Iron and Solidifying Trust
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@alexander
In case thread had being highlighted, first action shall be to hide the thread. Second step would be understrand objective of creator of thread. However, keeping thread alive during the time, may do more harm to community in my view. In second phase, if moderator and other members find things are fine, they do allow publishing the thread. I think this would be better approach.

I would personally like to share my example. When I created VST Industries thread, I did not provide full information of the company due to time constraint. Moderator immediately block the thread. Subsequently, I was provided with reason for thread being deactived and I added some more information. Finally thread become active.

I do agree with Abhishek that we are getting too many messages which are forward and not adding any value. I strongly recommend at least couple of line or a para, providing interpreation of that news to the poster. Also, comment like link followed with ???, or marked to other members seeking their thought does not make sense in my view.

Appreciate your view point and taking effort to communicate. Let us make this forum more meaningful to all of us.

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Also, if its possible to segregate the “so & so’s portfolio” discussion into another section (Portfolio forum), it will be good i.e. in the dropdown we should be able to unselect this one category from getting listed to skip them all.
Dropdown lists “All Categories” presently and allows for filtering & drilldown only, if it allowed for exclusions (select / unselect from multi-select option), it will be great.

I skip them ALL on “Portfolio Q & A” usually :slight_smile:

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My Suggestion for thread initiation posts.

I agree that thread initiation posts need to be detailed/complete up to the compliance level. However, the problem is that very few members have the patience or inclination to follow guidelines to write a proper post. So, most often we see thread initiation by very selected bunch of members, mainly the Top Contributors.

Currently, when moderators see an improper thread initiation post, they lock the thread and give the thread initiator time to comply. In case, he/she doesn’t comply within stipulated time the thread is deleted/hidden.

However, in many cases, the improper thread initiation posts actually have useful insights but are unfortunately incomplete.

My suggestion is to allow community editing of such threads to reach compliance level, like an Wikipedia page. In case, Discourse forum doesn’t have the capabilities of a Wiki page, something else may be done.

Moderators may move such posts to a different section of the forum for showcasing. Commenting needs to remain blocked. He may mention points left to be added to improve the initiation posts up to the compliance level.

Interested members should contact moderators for permission to improve such posts, and upon granted permission submit updated copies via private message. Moderators may update the original post after each correction, and then transfer the thread to normal section only after reaching the compliance level.

Reason for the suggestion

I can say from my personal experience that thread initiation is a very tedious task. However, when I see a thread being initiated on an investee company of mine, I get enthused, but many a times such a thread fails to reach compliance level and gets deleted / hidden. If something can be done on the above lines, I believe myself as well as many of us will contribute towards creating threads on some useful companies which are yet to have any threads.

Tagging @Donald for inputs. :slight_smile:

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The thread initiator needs to take ownership to do some detailed work. Everything can’t be left for incremental development.

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There is too much noise/ irrelevant posts from people across many threads resulting in important posts getting lost in the volume.

@pratyushmittal We need some automated cleansing for posts under a certain length or with only links etc. be automatically purged after some time. We can progressively add new cleansing rules.

We need to nominate volunteers with 5-10 threads each where they jointly work with admins and provide all post numbers (from that particular thread) to be purged to the admins. We need an automated script to clean specific numbered post from a thread. This way we can easily clean 50-100 company threads a week.

New joiners should have restricted posting rights - minimum post length, no of flags earned, no of likes etc till they are given freedom to post freely.

I believe these changes once incorporated would increase thread readibility, make threads more productive.

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  1. Short posts are not necessarily poor.

  2. Start by taking any thread you are reading and flag posts which do not add value to the discussion thread. Just that by enough people and nothing else is required.

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@basumallick Thank you for initiating this thread for guidance for the community.

Can we increase the reasons for the flagging when we choose flagging along the above suggestions? Current list of choices while flagging is rather limited and makes one wonder which category one should flag a post. Please note that I am referring to the posts with flagging reasons above.

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It appears that the website is little slow. This is being observed for last few days. I am reporting this after ensuring that Everything is ok at my end.
Did not know where to post. May be excused, if posted at wrong place.