sharechat

[troyvdh]

aahhh, has this site shut down or is it just me

[Nimble]

Been on since 8pm and haven't had any problems.

[winner69]

Methinks the forum database is shot but so little activity over there that they don't notice

The database goes like this now and again

[airedale]

Yes, wondered if there is a problem with Sharechat. I havn't seen any posts for the past week. An email to the administrator produced no result either.

[glennj]

I just checked the site out and there are no posts showing since the 10th. The news however has been updated.

I've never posted on the other channel but check in every now & again to see what Snoopy has to say (the best contributor there IMO)

[stolwyk]

They need to keep an eye on this. I sometimes warned them that the posts were not showing.

Gerry

[winner69]

Even tried to subscribe and goy some wierd meassage sent back essentially saying broken beyond redemption

Snoopy will need to come here

[David Renwick]

Snoop Dog wld be more fun - the performer that is.

[Snoopy]

The refugee has arrived.

Snoopy

[Capitalist]

At last Snoopy--great news [8D]

And it saves us from having to come round to your house and burn it down :D

[Stock Man]

Snoopy - you are more than welcome!

Rgds

[stolwyk]

Welcome Snoopy!

Of all posters, you have contributed more to Sharechat than anyone else, in wisdom, FA and presentation.

Sharetrader is lucky to have you come aboard.

Gerry Stolwyk

[Contrarian]

Gidday
Welcome Snoopy & welcome back Gerry.
Enjoy your input.

Macdunk , you are welcome too...

[dinosaur]

I see Sharechat has a new Forum format http://sharechat.co.nz/forum/ and a moderator.

No, I'm not Philip Macalister.

[glennj]

Welcome Snoopy!

Hope you don't abandon this site now that it appears the other channel is back on air. I share your "value/growth at the right price" philosophy and am sure that a few others here do as well.
You may well find it more stimulating here than at Sharechat!

[Snoopy]

Thanks for the warm welcomes, although this may only be a brief stay. We shall see.

I am very disappointed at the forum format changes over at 'sharechat'. It seems there is no longer the option of receiving posts by e-mail, which is very frustrating for someone who doesn't like web based forums. Why do I prefer e-mail forums?

With e-mail forums it is much easier to archive on my own PC the wisdom of what was said. I can then use the search functions within my own e-mail package to locate what I am looking for. Having said that, if you *must* have a web based forum the one they have installed at sharechat looks like a good one. However, if I wanted to use a web based forum I could just come here couldn't I?

Another advantage of an e-mail forum is that before you send your posts it is a simple matter to put them through the spell checker.

A third advantage is that if you push the wrong button you don't lose the entire message as has just happened to me proir to sending *this* message!

The previous owner of 'sharechat', Ben Dutton, had tried to convert it to a web based format before. However, on that occasion, the sharechatters voted with their keyboards and refused to move over to the new format. The result was that most of these web forums were reintegrated back into the main e-mail forum.

I am extremely disappointed there has not been any consultation with the forum users before current owner Philip made his 'format changing' move. Did I say no consultation? Well Philip did mention to me in an e-mail on an unrelated topic that he was thinking of doing it. I told him it was a bad idea, but I see he has gone ahead and done it anyway. The lack of consultation was bad enough, but the lack of notification was almost unforgivable. I had one sharechat user e-mail me privately asking if I knew what on earth had happened to sharechat, as it had simply suddenly stopped working. Of course I did not know as there was no announcement as to why the forum was down or indeed if it would ever be back.

I suppose I should compose a private letter to Philip outlining my concerns rather than post dirty linen on this forum. However,
he is already aware of what I think of the web based format option, so what more can I do? Except go into 'outlaw' mode and hide behind my Joe Cool glasses on this forum until the e-mail format at sharechat returns.

SNOOPY

[stolwyk]

They may have buried it for good. Too unattractive; difficult to navigate. One can't beat an open system: Sharetrader, Hotcopper.



Gerry

[stolwyk]

Have been in contact with Philip and told him what was wrong.

Gerry

[silu]

snoopy,
I hope you stay on this forum as your input is invaluable to many investors. I always appreciated the time and effort you put into your posts. Especially your discussions with Phaedrus were always enlightening.

[stolwyk]

BTW, Contrarian, thanks for your greetings.

Gerry

[duncan macgregor]

Thanks for the invite Contrarian hope to contribute to the forum now that sharechat stuffed up. If you stuff up say so the worst thing to do is nothing and let the customers go elsewhere. SNOOPY YOU OLD DOG I am coming after you. I got to save you and get you out of the kennel
Sell your doggies RBD WRI and join the BRO and my goodself In the hire business. Question which company hits $1-30 first between WRI HQP. Answer WRI and HQP will pass each other at that point and that is my first prediction

macdunk

[airedale]

Duncan,welcome to this channel.I always enjoy your robust bare knuckle style of share picking.

[Snoopy]

quote:Originally posted by duncan macgregor

Thanks for the invite Contrarian hope to contribute to the forum now that sharechat stuffed up. If you stuff up say so the worst thing to do is nothing and let the customers go elsewhere. SNOOPY YOU OLD DOG I am coming after you. I got to save you and get you out of the kennel


Aw, you must be missing me Macdunk. Actually I have been busy with the WRI takeover rather than avoiding you. You wil be pleased to hear that I accepted the Norgate offer for my WRI shares. Now all I have to do is decide the fate of the other half of them that Craig doesn't want :-).

However, I have made no commitment to staying here at sharetrader. I really don't like these web based forums, so I may be on the move again. I'll get back to the focus investment group in due course (that has always been a web based forum) but right at the moment the action is in the non focus investment group shares I hold. I still have those RBD shares too. Actually I had Pizza Hutt for dinner tonight, for the first time in ages. I couldn't believe it. People queueing out the door and into the car park! Perhaps their latest Wednesday offer of two slab Pizzas for $10 is too generous?

SNOOPY

[Snoopy]

quote:Originally posted by Snoopy
I am very disappointed at the forum format changes over at 'sharechat'. <snip>


Apparently Philip at sharechat has tried to post here but is having some trouble registering. I don't think it is fair to criticise someone without giving them the right of reply, so here is what he sent me in a private e-mail. I wouldn't normally post what was sent to me in a private e-mail to a public forum. But in this case this is a draft of what Philip would have posted here, if he could.

quote
--------------

First point is that it wasn’t our intention to keep everyone in the dark.
Rather it was a combination of unfortunate circumstances (and if I am
honest some slow decision making). For that I must apologise profusely and sincerely.

The forum is an integral and important part of ShareChat and I am
determined to keep it going. Naturally I would love to have you contribute!

Secondly while the new forum is quite different to the old one I would
suggest it is not hugely dissimilar to others such as ShareTrader or
PropertyTalk. As I explain below it is safer for users, saves me hours a
day moderating all sorts of obscene junk mail and has some useful
functionality.

Most importantly though it has been set up so posts are emailed to
users.
The key difference between the old and the new site is that once can’t post by simply responding to an email. Such a system has significant risks for us if someone chooses to turn feral.
I hope this helps to clear up some of the mess.

Yes the new site is more complicated to use, but I would argue that it
is very similar to many other discussion sites on the web.

It’s also worth pointing out that ShareChat is far more than just a
forum. <snip the commercial ending spelling out the details>

---------------
endquote

Any other present or past sharechat users like to comment?

SNOOPY

[Contrarian]

Gidday
This channel rocks.
You soon learn to ignore the dipsticks, enjoy the opinions, laugh at the egos, absorb the genuine, marvel at T/A , lose a lot & make a little...
The free and easy private persona this site has suits me just fine.

Ps.
I need a ASX wine,mining, or Cochlear growth stock ..see the asx thread.

[stolwyk]

Snoopy,

I had an exchange with Phil. If you like, you can pull out some Focus Investment Group data from Sharechat and create special threads at Sharetrader. I created 2 threads for special purposes.

Perhaps not as ideal as Sharechat but perhaps you may find a way.

Gerry

[Capitalist]

Perhaps a better option may have been to have started an email group at groups.yahoo.com. These work very well, hide email addresses, send your mail in digest form once a day or as email arrives, and convert text to html if you want.Or you can specify no email and read it on the web. If you feel very strongly about it Snoopy you could start one yourself.

In terms of Sharechat being very similar to this forum, that will be its' downfall IMO.As the saying goes "There can be only one." Or only one very popular one anyway.:)

[skinny]

Snoopy - i never posted on sharechat but read your postings (particularly the focus investing group) with great interest.

Its a good forum here once you learn to filter the rubbish - with dimebag off to embark on his new career next year another quality fundie as yourself would be very much appreciated :)

[Snoopy]

more words from Philip

---------

I would have to say I am utterly gutted with the reaction from people.
I have spoken to some on the phone and once explained they can
understand what happened.

What annoys me most is that we have incorporated the good features of
the old forum in the new one. People seem to prefer to bag the new one
without trying it. Not really cricket in my book.

Secondly there are some sound reasons to change.
Under the old system people could harvest email addresses and spam them with objectionable material and viruses, hence people left the forum. I don’t believe ShareChat should be a conduit for that sort of behaviour.

As moderator of an email based system I spend a huge amount of the day
having to moderate (delete) spam sent to that forum. You users never see it but my inbox does.

That’s all for now.
Philip

[Capitalist]

What about Mailwasher Pro to delete spam b4 it arrives in one's inbox?

Anyways, you made your bed, so you can't grumble now you have to lie on it. C'est la vie.

[Snoopy]

quote:Originally posted by Capitalist

Perhaps a better option may have been to have started an email group at groups.yahoo.com. These work very well, hide email addresses, send your mail in digest form once a day or as email arrives, and convert text to html if you want.Or you can specify no email and read it on the web. If you feel very strongly about it Snoopy you could start one yourself.

In terms of Sharechat being very similar to this forum, that will be its' downfall IMO.As the saying goes "There can be only one." Or only one very popular one anyway.:)


I've never been part of a yahoo email group, so I wasn't aware they hide e-mail addresses. I'm a little confused Cap, because you mentioned something about the option of reading a yahoo e-mail group on the web. Wouldn't a pirate spider be able to walk over those yahoo group web pages and grab addresses, (even if the 'from' addresses were not sent out in the individual e-mails) ?

Philip said that the sharechat forum users did not have any idea of the amount of behind the scene maintenance required, vis a vis deleting junk mail. For those who posted to the forum I don't believe that is so. The addresses of sharechat posters have definitely been harvested by spammers and I can assure Philip that I get just as much junk mail as the e-mail sharechat forum does (around 70 per day)! The problem with unwanted spam is not unique to sharechat, as anyone who have ever taken part in a public discussion group, or put their e-mail address on a website will attest to. So it comes down to the detail of how you deal with the spam.

My reading of the situation is that Philip has thrown his hands up in the air and said it is all too hard and gone the web forum way. But while I don't doubt that some e-mail forum users have left because of spam, presumably those that remain have learned to deal with the spam. Could Philip learn something from this? I think so.

The first thing is that all e-mail forum new subscribers should be warned about spam. Something along the lines of:

---------
Warning: Posting to this forum will incur spam. Unscrupulous individuals will harvest your address if not sooner then later. Use a throwaway address when you subscribe to this forum. If you read the forum only, then you will not get spam.
---------

If people knew what to expect, they might not be so upset when it happens. The second thing to learn here is the ease of subscription. With Sharetrader I had to wait a couple of days before my registration was accepted. I think it is a little too easy to join Sharechat. I am sure that whatever scrutiny Sharetrader gives its applicants is a big part in there being so spam here.

It sounds like Philip thinks he is going to get away with much fewer spam posts to deal with in the new web forum. However, spammers can still join up to web forums. Take a look at the old 'Focus Investment Group' forum for the year 2004. There is not a single post that should be there. All posts are either spam or ignorant newbies who haven't bothered to read the group charter. If this is an example of Philip's ability to police forums, I can see his new one being overrun by spam quite quickly.

In summary, if you want to change or challenge an incumbant probably the worst thing you can do is to copy them. You have to have a product or service that is *significantly better* in features, or more accessable to use or significantly cheaper if you want to show some oneupmanship. The new message board system at sharechat looks technically good. But one needs to ask the question what does it do significantly better than sharetrader? The answer I suggest is nothing while it loses the advantages that the e-mail forum used to have. Therein lies the problem for the competing sharechat web forum

SNOOPY

[stolwyk]

Snoopy,

I sympathise but I don't know if Sharetraders will be interested that much in Sharechat after this change. One mustn't forget that we have an open forum here as well. One can read without logging in. Of course, the email addresses are not known.

But then I wonder if Sharechat could have dealt with that instead of making a complete change.

It is a fait accompli and if Phil wants it that way, then I am afraid he will lose most of his posters. So, I doubt if too many will be interested in Sharechat's problems.

As to the Yahoo board, it has its disadvanges as well. I sometimes post on the NRT board.

It is also best to keep the science inhouse, I believe. That way more people will learn more because it is easy to get at.

You can on Sharetrader suit yourself. You could eg create a "MAIN BOARD" where all subject lines are listed as you enter them. Then you can have a thread for each subject and link it to the MAIN BOARD and vice versa.

Whatever, it is up to you. Bear in mind that Phaedrus regularly posts here as well.

Gerry

[Capitalist]

quote Snoopy <I'm a little confused Cap, because you mentioned something about the option of reading a yahoo e-mail group on the web. Wouldn't a pirate spider be able to walk over those yahoo group web pages and grab addresses, (even if the 'from' addresses were not sent out in the individual e-mails) ?>

Snoopy, in most yahoo groups the archives can only be read by members, ie you have to sign in, therefore this eliminates the bots and google searches. Plus email addys are not available to those who read posts on the net,even members, only to those who subscribe to daily digests. Of course one can gratuitously join a group and spam it, but in my experience this is very rare. It would be highly unlikely for NZ sharechat since the numbers joining would be relatively small.

The yahoo groups I belong to are easily accessible by linkage through the relevant website.

PS You should download Mailwasher Snoopy. You can delete and bounce spam from your server b4 it arrives in your inbox. Do a google search to find where to download it from-- the basic version is free.