There you go, the Sierra Chart example. A perfect example. If the Sierra chart guy wasn't forced into his own little box, the Tradestation guy might be able to help him out, but they will never see one another because they're forced from the beginning into their own personal forums. And what kind of a "forum" is it if each user is stuck into his own little section by himself. That's a perfect example right there, the Sierra Chart forum.
And here's one more example, with my personal experience and point of view. I go to elitetrader thinking: "let's see what the Automated Trading folks are talking about lately", and/or "let's see what's going on in automated trading". I do this once every 2 months or so. It's not bad for elitetrader to get users to go there, just because there's a section with people writing stuff on it. At Elitetrader's this is normal. Everyone does it. They're bored, and they go check out their favorite section.
Here it doesn't happen. Or if you do it, you get disappointed and you don't repeat the experience next time. Because you find nothing happening when you go to the 3 equivalent places (3 categories that belong to Mechanical Trading):
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/t2w...w-feedback/t2w-feedback/mech...stems-trading/
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/commercial-systems/
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/free-systems/
So, here, as an automated trader, I don't have a place to go. So it's one less user. I suppose many other users are doing the same thing.
And I ask myself, why, with all the users trade2win has, can't they keep alive a small community of automated traders? And the answer is by all means: dividing the automated traders into 3 subgroups does not help.
If you apply, as they did, this same principle to all forums, the problem grows exponentially (and you get t2w's 150 sections vs ET's 30 sections), you add sub-sections and sub-sub-sections... and so basically you can see how harmful this thing can be.
The Technical Analysis section is the same. The Fibonacci guy goes there, sees nothing is going on, and never comes back. The Candlestick guy goes to his specific sub-sub-subsection and finds nothing either, and never comes back... this way no community is ever created, because no one gathers when there's no place to gather or too many places to gather at.
Sure there are still visitors, but how many times are they coming back? And how many more would they be if there were 30 good living sub-communities rather than 150 sub-sub-communities of which 10 living and 140 dead or dying?
If instead you didn't force the Fibonacci guy into his own box, and the Candlestick guy into another box, they might meet and realize they have things to discuss together, and other people would join in. But hell no: they have to create 150 boxes to stick one or two users into each one of them, so the consequence is that we're all separated from these walls they created. This is the opposite of assembling and grouping people -- this is unnecessarily dividing people.
I'd say it is evident that 30 boxes are numerous enough for creating order and yet not so numerous as to cause unneeded separation and isolation (which contradicts the meaning of the word "forum" itself).
