There are few ways through which we can moderate the forum or make VP a better place.
- Like www.stackexchange.com or www.stackoverflow.com: These both websites are place to post your queries from engineering field and can get answers from fellow engineers. Now when you are new to the field (such as new investor or new to VP or just a toddler in investing) all you can post new queries (in case of VP new stock opportunities, portfolio etc) and can earn points on the relevance of question (no negative points here) and read the other topics but you cannot rate any answers or post right now. You can also write answers to queries but here it will have both positive and negative points depending upon the contribution made by your answer. These will be done by general public of forum who have little experience in the forum (off course we cannot judge the experience they have in real world), measured by threshold points they have in their account.
In this way:
a. The risk of loosing reputation points will discourage the member to submit inappropriate comments, stocks etc
b.The accumulation of points will serve as an appreciation from fellow investors and as a representative of their progress as an investor.
- Like www.Teambhp.com: This is again a public forum just like us but made for & by automobile enthusiasts. The way this works is that to became a member you need to fill up a questionnaire. These questionnaire is nothing sort of technical about automobile but solely talk about you and purpose to join the group and how will you contribute the forum. The answers are checked by the moderators and is granted membership based on the replies to this answer. If moderator feel unsatisfied with the answers they will mark it and will ask you to elaborate it or rephrase it.
Now let say you are denied membership from the forum, still you can read all the topics.
Also in teambhp has a rule about the comments or the post which is submitted into a forum like It cannot be one liner etc. (sorry don’t have complete list right now)
In this way
a. Moderators can control the quality of members of the forum. This control will decrease the possibility of unhealthy comments and self promoting guys. (I assure you filling that questionnaire is quite a pain in itself, but rewards are worth)