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Why Options Girl? 27 comments
The comment, which was clearly satire, suggested that the reason Frank was considering and audit of the Fed was because Ben Bernanke had bought a StairMaster and a had carved his glutes to manly perfection.
Frank asked Bernanke if he'd like to hang out in the House steam room and was rejected by Bernanke.
Sullen and rejected, Frank went on a binge of amil nitrate, show tunes and DC man whores and plotted his revenge.
I said that I couldn't prove any of it, but that was what I was hearing on the street.
SA pulled it down.
Freya was taken down for challenging an author.
What the hell did Options Girl say to get banned?
From what I've seen - nothing.
If anyone on SA is as angry as I am about this, please speak up. You could be next.
I'll ask SA to read your comments after we've had a day or two to discuss this arbitrary editing policy.
Instablogs are blogs which are instantly set up and networked within the Seeking Alpha community. Instablog posts are not selected, edited or screened by Seeking Alpha editors, in contrast to contributors' articles.
This post has 27 comments:
I am fairly new to this site. But I have to tell you what attracted me to it in the first place was that it seemed to be a good forum in which one could read fair honest and frankly some dishonest views on not only investing but issues that could have very profound consequences for the future of the US.
I have enjoyed and learned much from reading the comments in addition to the authors original articles. OG was a very good source (for me anyways) of what I felt was fair, blunt, and honest assessments.
Welcome back OG.
Here is another question for you David Jackson - what kind of operation are you running? Your people suspend a members account on suspicion? A top contributing member? Your officious staff thinks nothing about destroying a key node in an active social network. An act of destruction that destroys all of the information and knowledge contributed by the many members of that social network? Does your staff even have a clue? If they don't I suggest that you hire a business consultant that can explain the reality of Social Networks. I suggest you attend those meetings.
I suggest that senior management at Seeking Alpha start LISTENING to their members. Are you listening David? I also suggest that the act of an account suspension be THOROUGHLY REVIEWED before the account is removed. Mistakes like this are unbelievably damaging. Rules either need to be changed, or if the rules were not followed, then the person that did not follow the guidelines needs to be put on probation. That probation should not be removed until the individual writes up what went wrong, and delivers an acceptable plan to prevent a mistake like this from happening again.
An finally David, how about getting off the dime, and take some time off from your deal making, and get your staff going on the creation of a global 'member usable ignore button'. That gives the members the power to ignore another member or author at the click of a button. If your staff says it can't be done, get better staff.
Now I'm po-ed that I lost a good days trading in an up market because of some nincompoop making bad decisions. With the way I trade, this cost me a grand or two, or more. This is the exact kind of day I covet when I have a lot of sidelined money.
Hopefully, our communal rebel rousing helped toward this (maybe) alacritous solution of having OG fully restored.
On Oct 05 07:00 PM Mark Bern wrote:
> YH - Are you sure you were making all that up about Barney?
This should reduce your workload.
But since most of you use Windows-based systems, I'm not expert (heck, I'm no longer even "expert"[1] on *IX systems anymore).
Anyway, take a look at this and see if you find it *potentially* useful.
www.google.com/search?...
It offers the possibility for you to work on SA and then "back up" what you've done.
The directory structure on SA doesn't make this easy, but after a base is built, it shouldn't be too much work.
Once you have what you want on your computer from SA, you can look at/retrieve your local contents with your browser or other utilities.
If someone will play with it a bit and decide its worth the effort, I can fire up my sole Windows machine and investigate and report *if* y'all think it worthwhile.
There are other tools and ways to do it. Maybe we could even get SA to support a user-friendly way of doing this.
[1] "expert" = ex = "has been" + spurt="drip under pressure"
HardToLove
On Oct 05 07:20 PM User 192595 wrote:
> thanks everybody. just make sure you keep comprehensive lists of
> stocks on your home computer and maybe a hard copy too. i relied
> too heavily on sa to be my note taker, and i won't make that mistake
> again.
Years from now, I'll be able to summon them with lemonade in hand when I reflect about how some amazingly talented and dedicated cyber friends helped me put a beatdown on DC and Wall Street.
HTL: Did some SA staffer actually say the mini-violin routine toward you losing one follower? That's way out of line.
><snip>
> HTL: Did some SA staffer actually say the mini-violin routine toward
> you losing one follower? That's way out of line.
No. He was professional. But I couldn't believe that he misinterpreted what I wrote so severely. Believe it or not, I *can* be "a man of few words" and that was my summation of what he thought I was doing.
See my recent post to OG - might be a useful tool.
HardToLove
Now that things are (maybe) resolved, I have to put on my other hat. I'll check back in later tonight.
Check out these links about sunspots:
science.nasa.gov/headl...
www.10p.org/EJ/abstrac...
I'll try it again, if it doesn't work again, I'll summarize.
www.iop.org/EJ/abstrac...
"I'll ask SA to read your comments after we've had a day or two to discuss this arbitrary editing policy"
Before you do that, you might want to utilize the "power of the swarm". There are relevant comments among many threads scattered hither and yon and "in days of yore".
I suggest you start an instablog whose sole function is to coalesce relevant URL links to comments and articles.
The "swarm" does the work (easier for each of us to recall/find relevant posts) and posts links to whatever.
This then eases the SA manpower requirements, making it more likely they will actually undertake the effort.
Would probably need to allow more than a few days for this to come together.
I have mouse in hand and am ready to proceed (um ... after important things like resetting my BS meter which pegged today, dinner, sleep, updating my spreadsheets for the day's trades, etc.)
HardToLove
But either way, join up and send links via mail to yourself. Open up your Mail and link. Or Periodically Mail your comments to your self. Something of that sort.
We could agree to Automatically shift to another Insta after XYZ posts, individuals can mail themselves the Content if they feel its important.
You See, SA has not informed me about the Contents of the last 2 ToUs nor asked me to reafirm agreement with them to continue Usage of the Site. I figure No One Has been so Informed.
I was Not given a Reason for My Deletion nor was I given a Reason for my Reinstatment.
For the record, I did send you an email explaining what happened, which I'll copy below:
:::
We regret that your account was deleted. This happened due to human error when an editor misused the comment abuse dashboard. We have done our best to reinstate your account. All your comments and Instablog posts (I hope) have been reinstated, but we were not able to reinstate the comments other users made on your instablog posts, and the ID number for your posts has changed so links to the old versions will not work.
Please accept our apologies.
Eli Hoffmann
:::
I am not 100% positive, but I believe the same thing occurred with Options Girl. I will verify this, but at any rate we are currently in the process of reinstating her account. Thankfully, we recently made some internal changes that should result in a 100% correct restoration, which I regret was not the case with Freya.
These errors are not acceptable, and we regret them sincerely. Please understand that we are trying to keep the comment streams clean from a relentless deluge of spam, and on these two occasions, and perhaps others, we inadvertently deleted the accounts and/or comments of productive and valued members of our community. We do not take this lightly.
We are currently developing tools to ensure this doesn't happen again. In the meantime, thanks everyone for your forbearance. I can be contacted at {my first name} @ seekingalpha.com if anyone has any further questions.
Half of my frustration has been rectified by your usage of "Freya". The other half however, is not:
"We regret that your account was deleted. This happened due to human error when an editor misused the comment abuse dashboard".
My question would be: Was this Same Editor responsible for the Deletion of "Conan the Barbarian"? If So, It wasn't Human Error. The Circumstances were Virtually Identical.
I am not aware of the deletion of Conan the Barbarian and do not know by whom or why his account was deleted. In your case, I was in direct contact with the editor who deleted your account (I was livid about this), and after discussing the case with them, it was clear that it was a case of not understanding which tool should be used for which purpose. (In your case, I believe there was a single comment that was flagged as abusive, which instead resulted in the elimination of your account).
It's quite possible that the same circumstances occurred with Conan.
When I realized what happened with your account, I sent around an email to all editors with the power to delete comments and accounts, with very clear instructions as to how to proceed in any given case. I do not believe the current error with Options Girl occurred under similar circumstances.
At any rate, I'm sorry that we recreated you as 'freya' and not 'Freya.' I will have them fix that. Rest assured that we at Seeking Alpha value and understand the immense investment of time and effort made by commenters and instabloggers, and are trying our best to make sure similar problems don't reoccur, while vigilantly eliminating spam.
Too much 1984; really glad things are getting put right somewhat, at least.
OG, welcome back, I'm glad SA got the message about you and "fixed" it. But if the editor who did this is still employed by SA, it ain't fixed.
If the editor guilty of intentionally misusing authority deleted someone (or more than one) from SA, an "email sent around with clear instructions" hardly addresses the problem, does it?
That editor should not be employed at SA, and until SA makes clear, by publicly naming and firing such a bad actor, you may be certain that we will regard you with well-earned suspicion.
Regards,
Dr. Thomas G. LaCour
On Oct 06 01:10 PM SA Editor Eli Hoffmann wrote:
> Freya,
>
> I am not aware of the deletion of Conan the Barbarian and do not
> know by whom or why his account was deleted. In your case, I was
> in direct contact with the editor who deleted your account (I was
> livid about this), and after discussing the case with them, it was
> clear that it was a case of not understanding which tool should be
> used for which purpose. (In your case, I believe there was a single
> comment that was flagged as abusive, which instead resulted in the
> elimination of your account).
>
> It's quite possible that the same circumstances occurred with Conan.
>
>
> When I realized what happened with your account, I sent around an
> email to all editors with the power to delete comments and accounts,
> with very clear instructions as to how to proceed in any given case.
> I do not believe the current error with Options Girl occurred under
> similar circumstances.
>
> At any rate, I'm sorry that we recreated you as 'freya' and not 'Freya.'
> I will have them fix that. Rest assured that we at Seeking Alpha
> value and understand the immense investment of time and effort made
> by commenters and instabloggers, and are trying our best to make
> sure similar problems don't reoccur, while vigilantly eliminating
> spam.
If you are Really interested, Talk to Mary Hunt. She was shut down after Conan was deleted. He was called a Traitor by Michael Fitzsimmons and He was the One deleted for Protesting. His outrage was Deleted. The section where MF called Him a Traitor to his country was cleaned up as well. Conan sent a Letter to Mary H. protesting. After almost 40 Emails back and Forth, She never responded Again.
Take a Look at The Thumbs Up Rating For Conan The Barbarian. Seeking Alpha Deliberately and Maliciously destroyed Him After the Fact.
Sending Emails doesn't mean Squat. An Editor was shut down. Another Editor refused to answer.
When it looks like, feels like and smells like Crap, guess what?
The misuse was not intentional, it was a misunderstanding. Keeping the dialog open yet at the same time civil is challenging, and no doubt we will sometimes err, though I believe we're improving.
On Oct 06 03:30 PM Thomas LaCour wrote:
> Mr. Hoffman,
>
> If the editor guilty of intentionally misusing authority deleted
> someone (or more than one) from SA, an "email sent around with clear
> instructions" hardly addresses the problem, does it?
>
> That editor should not be employed at SA, and until SA makes clear,
> by publicly naming and firing such a bad actor, you may be certain
> that we will regard you with well-earned suspicion.
>
> Regards,
> Dr. Thomas G. LaCour
Glad to see you got your F back. (BTW, my name is Hoffmann with two Ns.)
As I said, I do not know of the details surrounding Conan's deletion, but I see his account is still on the site. Was it some of his comments that were deleted?
I'm also not sure what you mean when you say I should look at his thumbs up rating. Are you referring to a specific comment or the aggregate? At any rate, I assure you that not only don't we juice the thumbs-up/down ratings of commenters to accomplish some diabolical purpose - we don't even have the ability to do so. SA-editors get one vote, just like everyone else.
Just trying to keep the dialog on the site from devolving into a free-for-all mudslinging fest, as one often sees on unmoderated sites. As I said above, we will probably err on occasion, and appreciate the feedback.
On Oct 06 06:09 PM Freya wrote:
> Mr. Hoffman, I've talked with a few friends residing in Israel. In
> regard to Conan, I can Forward the Email he sent to Mick W. with
> a correspondence from Mary Hunt attached.
>
> If you are Really interested, Talk to Mary Hunt. She was shut down
> after Conan was deleted. He was called a Traitor by Michael Fitzsimmons
> and He was the One deleted for Protesting. His outrage was Deleted.
> The section where MF called Him a Traitor to his country was cleaned
> up as well. Conan sent a Letter to Mary H. protesting. After almost
> 40 Emails back and Forth, She never responded Again.
>
> Take a Look at The Thumbs Up Rating For Conan The Barbarian. Seeking
> Alpha Deliberately and Maliciously destroyed Him After the Fact.
>
>
> Sending Emails doesn't mean Squat. An Editor was shut down. Another
> Editor refused to answer.
>
> When it looks like, feels like and smells like Crap, guess what?
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