What has happened to pboyles?

[Shakone]

Alright, I think it's time we clarify this issue since it hasn't been already.

Yes, PB is banned. This may seem unfair given his service in ferreting out scammers and other detective work, but the truth of the matter is he was more disruptive to the forum than a beneficial contributor. His posts stifled discussion, he never worked with T2W to ferret out said scammers (and rather revelled in the attention this got), and broke his word on not doing things we'd asked him not to.

Whatever his reputation with the membership, I can assure you this was not a decision we took lightly, and one that he did indeed deserve. On balance, he was more of a troublemaker than he was a good contributor.

As for ferreting out scammers/multi-nicks, etc., our internal team is already excellent at doing this.

He didn't disrupt any thread of mine, or any thread on trading that I've seen really. As rsh01 asks for, perhaps you can direct to some threads that were disrupted by him that were not breaking the rules or didn't later turn out to be someone who broke the rules?

I don't really buy the disrupting threads reason (sorry), because there is plenty of disruption to threads going on for months and nothing done about it.

He was bad for business. He exposed a lot of dodgy practices which deterred some vendors which lowered the post count.

 

[VielGeld]

Hmm, even if you know!.... really?

Believing it's someone is not the same as proving it.

He was bad for business. He exposed a lot of dodgy practices which deterred some vendors which lowered the post count.

He was, though not in the sense that he was bad for page views.

Steve may have mentioned this previously, but scammers can sue for libel, etc. and get away with it because of grey areas in the law. T2W has no choice but to remove "offending material" or risk bleeding money in court fees. It's not a pretty situation.

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As to the rest... I'm really not well-placed to say as much, so think it's better if I let others speak against PB as I was against him being banned. Though he could have worked with T2W rather than be against the site, I still think he was more useful as a contributor than anything else. Bad for business, sure, but he did out scammers. Maybe I shouldn't be saying all this.

Anyway, the larger issue behind this is that the industry as a whole has declined. T2W page views are down by half. Even EliteTrader has suffered an 80% decline. All that's left are the hardcore traders and scammers, and this has evidently reflected on the board and it's not anyone's fault.

Hopefully 2014 will be great for the economy and we'll see an influx of newbies who will rejuvenate the site, eh?

 

[Splitlink]

As I said, I respected him because I respected the consensus of opinion about him. I did not agree with everything that he said and, most times, I went onto another thread and at other times I objected when I considered that he was over the top. That's ok, everyone has his opinion and I am the last person to object unless I feel that it is unjust.

A lot of his posts were not right, though, and it is, in my view, one reason why lurkers hesitate to post their ideas, or queries, on here. No one likes being shot down as soon as he starts his first post.

Many of his posts seemed to be an incentive for his followers to jump onto the bandwaggon and have a bit of lultz.

But, in any case, if he comes back it will not matter to me because I take posters as I find them.

 

[random12345]

Anyway, the larger issue behind this is that the industry as a whole has declined. T2W page views are down by half. Even EliteTrader has suffered an 80% decline. All that's left are the hardcore traders and scammers, and this has evidently reflected on the board and it's not anyone's fault.

My opinion on this is that you'll never see a resurgence back to when lots of bright eyed people got lured by ads in the Metro due to new and easy accessibility via broadband and narrowing spreads, even with a turnaround in the economic outlook. These days there are more ads than ever (almost every train station in London has an IG poster), always a sign of an industry with slowing growth. I compare it to online poker, remember when it was "the" thing and everybody was buying in for a few hundred quid, but nowadays I gather from the couple of people I know who do it full time that there's a lot of old blood exchanging money with each other and new accounts have seen a massive decline, narrowing the skill gap to tiny levels. Some of these people are even considering getting a job.

I think trading is going through the same thing, there can't be many people left who would try it at all who haven't for a few hundred quid already and don't fancy losing more. Obviously this doesn't mean there won't continue to be a turnover of clients, but I can't see where the new money is coming from any more. More stable minded friends have a dabble on Vodafone and then withdraw their money back the dayjob. Even if brokers intend to shear rather then skin their sheep, the market skins them instead and they won't come back for the most part. I've had 3 calls from IG in Dec alone almost pleading for me to come back...

Plus, pile onto that that trading in general is in systemic decline and bank revenues are shifting focus toward other products (having already shifted to fixed income when prop revenues came slamming down and we all know how that ended) and it's not the best situation for a growth market.

 

[counter_violent]

My opinion on this is that you'll never see a resurgence back to when lots of bright eyed people got lured by ads in the Metro due to new and easy accessibility via broadband and narrowing spreads, even with a turnaround in the economic outlook. These days there are more ads than ever (almost every train station in London has an IG poster), always a sign of an industry with slowing growth. I compare it to online poker, remember when it was "the" thing and everybody was buying in for a few hundred quid, but nowadays I gather from the couple of people I know who do it full time that there's a lot of old blood exchanging money with each other and new accounts have seen a massive decline, narrowing the skill gap to tiny levels. Some of these people are even considering getting a job.

I think trading is going through the same thing, there can't be many people left who would try it at all who haven't for a few hundred quid already and don't fancy losing more. Obviously this doesn't mean there won't continue to be a turnover of clients, but I can't see where the new money is coming from any more. More stable minded friends have a dabble on Vodafone and then withdraw their money back the dayjob. Even if brokers intend to shear rather then skin their sheep, the market skins them instead and they won't come back for the most part. I've had 3 calls from IG in Dec alone almost pleading for me to come back...

Plus, pile onto that that trading in general is in systemic decline and bank revenues are shifting focus toward other products (having already shifted to fixed income when prop revenues came slamming down and we all know how that ended) and it's not the best situation for a growth market.

Pretty much agree with this sentiment, which is why T2W needs to get other stuff going. There's always an angle...T2W just needs to find it, then get on with it.