Retired at 48 recently announced at the Vanguard Diehards board that he has entered negotiations with Morningstar.com to deal with the abusive posting problems that have plagued the board in recent years. Set forth below is an e-mail that I sent to Retired at 48 offering to help out in this effort. I have received a response from Retired at 48. We have not made a decision as to whether to go public with any future correspondence.
Retired at 48:
This is Rob Bennett. I posted as “hocus” at the Vanguard Diehards forum from July 2005 through February 2007.
I saw your note at the board concerning your talks with Morningstar to open the forum up to honest posting by community members coming at things from various points of view. That’s good and important work.
I don’t know how much you know about my background. It was my honest posting on the safe-withdrawal-rate topic (and other valuation-related topics) that caused formation of the Bogleheads.org forum in the first place (the board was formed to provide the dogmatics an escape from Morningstar, which was not willing at the time to go along with a ban on honest posting). Here’s a link to an article at my site that provides some background re the thoughts of other community members on the tactics used to enforce the ban:
http://www.passionsaving.com/investing-discussion-boards.html
Here’s a link to an article that sets forth the text of an e-mail that I sent to my congressman on this matter:
http://www.passionsaving.com/internet-harassment.html
Here’s a link to a blog post setting forth the text of an e-mail that I sent to my local police department and that I discussed in telephone conversations with a Virginia state police official who deals with internet crimes (Mel often invited contributors to the Greaney board to the Vanguard Diehards board to help intimidate those seeking to post honestly and two long-time contributors to the Greaney board were named “moderators” for the Bogleheads board on the day it was formed):
I wish you luck with your endeavors. I believe that the internet discussion board is an important communications medium of the future but that to achieve its potential the right of contributors to post their sincere views must be respected; that is, site owners must honor the promises they make to those who build their boards to protect them from intimidation tactics. If there is ever anything that I can do to help move things in a positive direction, please let me know.
Rob
anon says
R48 did NOT say that “he has entered negotiations with Morningstar.com to deal with the abusive posting problems.” He actually said “I have been in communications with Morningstar on ways to make the forum(s) here better, inclusive, broader and more interesting..”
No “negotiations”, etc.
I think you ought to quote people correctly. To do otherwise constitutes abusive posting.
So, you were incorrect in saying
Rob says
There obviously is a group hotly opposed to the idea of permitting people to post their sincere views re investing at the Vanguard Diehards board and at the Bogleheads.org board, Anon. If there weren’t, there wouldn’t be any problem. To be in “communication” re these questions is to be in “negotiations” re them. If there were no power battle going on, there would be no need for communications — Morningstar would enforce its published rules and that would be the end of it.
What we need is to see some responsible people step forward and insist that honest posting be permitted. That one step solves the entire problem. Those who oppose honest posting suffer from the ban on honest posting as much as all the rest of us — they too have suffered huge financial losses. Opening the board up to honest posting benefits every single community member.
There is a power battle going on. But there should not be. The gamesmanship evident in your post does no one any good. The first step to solving the problem is addressing it with frankness (frankness must be combined with charity, to be sure).
Rob
Evidence Based Investing says
Hi Rob
Did you get any feedback from retired at 48?
Rob says
Yes.
He said that he was surprised by the extent of the abuse detailed in the articles at the links set forth in my e-mail to him. He said that several people had praised my contributions to him when commenting on his own contributions. So he was familiar with my screen-name. But he said that he started posting regularly after I was banned, so he had not been aware of how bad things had been during the days of the most abusive posting at Vanguard Diehards.
He said that he wanted to spend some time thinking things over (and perhaps spend some time checking out the material in the linked articles) before making decisions as to how to proceed. I said that that of course was fine and that he should take all the time needed to make good decisions.
I made my pitch for the two-prong approach you have heard me talk about before — that we need to be unyielding on the right of all community members to post their sincere views on investing questions but that we need to be as flexible and charitable as possible on all other questions. I explained my belief that many of the Passive Investing dogmatists are suffering from cognitive dissonance and themselves follow the investing strategies they are advocating for others (this goes to intent and is a factor that must be considered to put things into a properly balanced perspective, in my view).
I argued that absolutely everyone benefits if we open the boards to honest posting — “everyone” includes those who favor Passive Investing and those who favor Rational Investing and all the “experts” and all the site owners. I said that it is not only the future of the Retire Early and Indexing boards that are being decided, but the future of the U.S. economy (because the best way to restore confidence in the markets is to talk straight with people about why they have lost so much of their retirement money and what they need to do to be sure it never happens again).
I pointed out that we have seen strong community interest in learning about the realities of stock investing at times when honest posting was permitted. I expressed my belief that, if honest posting were permitted again at Vanguard Diehards, we could build that board into the most successful board on Planet Internet and that the success of this approach would force other boards to open up to discussion of the realities we have learned about from the past 30 years of academic research (the first research showing that valuations affect long-term returns was published in 1981).
My view is that once we open up the possibility of honest posting for all community members, things just get better and better and better for every single community member. I see it as a proposition with huge upside potential and zero downside potential. Keep your fingers crossed, Evidence!
Rob