sscritic wrote:Leeraar wrote:sscritic wrote:
I don't think a sticky will stop people who can't be bothered to read what came before them from posting the same old "why did my fund drop?" The best we can hope for is a huge market drop on the day of the distribution so that most of these people won't even notice that their funds dropped even more.
sscritic,
You are missing that they also did not read all the communications on "year-end distributions" from their investment companies, nor the Bogleheads threads on future year-end distributions, before they started their own Bogleheads threads on the unexpected drop.
Which just reinforces my point: you can lead a person to bogleheads, but you can't make him read it. Maybe we just need a banner across the top of every "start a new thread" compose box:
Before you ask, google! And once the person clicks submit, there is a pop-up: do you verify under oath that you have already googled this and/or looked for the same topic on the front page. If we find another post on this topic, you will be banned for a period of ...
now here I am not sure: should they be banned longer for missing a thread from the day before or for missing one from seven days before? If the second post is less than 30 minutes after the previous post on the same topic, then there should be no penalty, but once you hit the one hour mark, the penalty should jump way up and then decline from there (IMO).
I do understand all this; I am a happily-retired longtime moderator from another huge forum, with many noobs joining on a daily basis, and with periodic floods of still more noobs joining after various outside crises brought them to us. New members and casual members DON'T necessarily know how to search, or indeed, realize that they ought to search, and when they try, they often don't find what they're looking for. They might not know the search term to enter, as the most basic obstacle. So yeah, they'll probably miss the sticky, but the handy thing about stickies is that they stay put at the top of the page, and all
you have to do is (kindly, I hope) reply with the link to the sticky on their where'd-my-money-go post. And it also lets them learn about the usefulness of stickies in general, and who knows? --they might read the others, too.
As for communications from their investment companies, I do read mine, but I got them back in March or whenever, and I don't know about you, but I've slept since then. Also, when someone is new to a topic as complex as personal investing, it is completely absurd to think that something that they read once, before they have knowledge and personal experience to put it into context, is going to pop back in their heads when an unexpected event occurs. It's more likely that they'll come here, post their question, get their tongue-lashings, dig out their mail from back when, and think, "Oh, THAT'S what that meant."
All y'all who live and breathe this stuff appear to have lost sight of the fact that we all started in ignorance at some point. I enjoy pointed humor as much as the next person, even when it's aimed at me, but frankly, the snotty tone of many replies to the new and confused is very off-putting. I have a lot more appreciation for members like nisiprius and grabiner, who patiently untangle new members and save their digs for the old-timers. As a mod, I did a ton of time-outs and bans, but except for spammers, they went far more often to veteran members who were abusive to others, rather than to new members floundering about.
Many thanks to Lady Geek and the others (including members) who keep the Bogleheads forums both informative and civil. You'd be astonished how difficult a job that can be.
The continuous execution of a sound strategy gives you the benefit of the strategy. That's what it's all about. --Rick Ferri