London Capital & Finance

Humdinger1

From a PR and marketing viewpoint, if a poster with as much credibility as DunstonH has been taken down just because LC&F is unhappy (and of course, this may not be the case - transparency would be so helpful here) then all the time & money they are currently spending on PR and marketing is just down the drain. If (and I do stress if) this is the case, LC&F needs to retain a PR agency specialising in crisis management immediately, because it could look as if they are trying to stifle dissent; that never ends well. These sorts of agencies charge serious money (it can run to the hundreds of thousands) and whether reputations (and hence people's decisions to invest money with them) can ever be repaired isn't 100% clear, but the sooner they act the better. If (and how do we know?) MSE is at all concerned with protecting LC&F's reputation, the best thing it could do would be allow informed, balanced concerns to be aired in a professional way - like DH did. At the moment, the handling of this makes it look as if there's possibly something to hide and is raising horrifying concerns about potential conflicts of interest which cannot be in MSE's best interests either. The quickest, fairest and least expensive steps to take would be 1. Explain why DH has been banned rather than let everyone speculate 2. Reinstate him with handsome apologies 3. Confirm publicly that the interests of posters will be prioritised ahead of those of companies with a commercial agenda. 4. Clarify grey areas in the rules - the points made upthread about how informed regular posters can be targeted by trolls and those with an agenda need to be looked at very seriously. Otherwise, you're heading for a possible rebellion - and it could be big, and all that money spent on buying the board will be under threat.

DairyQueen

OldMusicGuy wrote: »

Dunstonh can be a bit terse but he has the patience of a saint. The number of people that come on here asking the same question, along the lines of "I've seen this great investment opportunity, x% return guaranteed, what do you think?", can get a bit frustrating. I haven't been on here long, but the number of first posts along those lines is depressingly high. If dunstonh has been on here for 13 years and is still answering fundamentally the same questions, I'm not surprised sometimes he can be a bit terse.

If that is the reason he has been banned, again the mods need to overlook that and consider the huge value he provided to this forum.

I haven't been here that long either and I share your experience/view. If posters are to be penalised for being grumpy old gits on occasion (very different from obnoxious/abusive/trolls) then I may as well sign-off now.:eek:

SonOf

There is a lot of speculation. We know the thread that caused the issues and we know the posts that were deleted and caused the PPRs (perm and temp as well as non-banned warnings) were mild and not abusive (two pages of posts were removed from multiple posters). That is why many have concerns that it was more to do with LC&F.

I personally believe a certain board admin got frustrated and went too far and LC&F have absolutely nothing to do with the deletions/bans (other than the topic being about them). The certain board admin posting on that thread did make things worse with their responses as it came across that MSE was not interested in consumer protection and was getting a lot of posters criticising that. The bans/post removals came after that. If that is the case, it would be somewhat ironic that posters are not allowed to get away with having the odd moment of frustration yet board admin are.

le_loup

As you are a new poster, I'm going to be especially nice and agree with you ;-)
Hope I don't get PPRed now.

Pobby

Very surprised and what a shame. One very helpful and informative poster.

Reaper

Humdinger1 wrote: »

From a PR and marketing viewpoint, if a poster with as much credibility as DunstonH has been taken down just because LC&F is unhappy...

Just to be clear I am not aware LC&F have complained. If they had we normally get PM notifications to all the posters they object to.

My point was some of us have used up a great deal of MSE time through previous disputes with questionable investment companies, so it is possible when a minor spat came along they over reacted and handed out bans to people who had used up a lot of their time in the past. The forum rules say:

Any inappropriate posts or any issues that take up a disproportionate amount of resources or make it a worse place to be will be stopped at our discretion - with or without explanation.

But since we haven't been given a proper reason for the ban this is all speculation.

Malthusian

TrustyOven wrote: »

Would we be allowed to reply with "We cannot say anything as COMPANY_X is possibly highly likely to take legal action against anyone criticising them or their products. You need to decide very carefully whether you want to invest in such a company that wants to stifle balanced discussion and enforce censorship."?

That would probably invite an email from their lawyers to MSE claiming that it's defamatory to say that they want to stifle balanced discussion and enforce censorship. Unless you were willing to give your real name and address so they could sue you personally, MSE would then take down the comment. Whether there is any actual chance that a judge would award damages against you for libel is irrelevant.

Reaper is right, the only response that safeguards you against a backlash from Company_X is "no comment".

Another provider of unregulated minibonds - no relation to London Capital & Finance - did complain about one of my posts (and others'). I declined to reply to MSE's email and let them remove it. Later the whole thread was deleted. (Hopefully I'm allowed to talk in generalities, especially as it was a while ago.)

Yet another provider was allowed by MSE to have one of those official company accounts with a special purple username. This user made a brief attempt to engage directly with discussion of their bonds on the forum, in between inviting investors to contact them directly via phone. One of the posts from this official account included the immortal words "The saying 'If it looks too good to be true it possibly is' was invented by the regulated market to discourage investors from investments offering higher than average yields" which is still my favourite thing I've ever read here.

Point being that the various companies which offer such unregulated opportunities are well aware of this forum and have taken extensive measures to counteract it. Until we have a definitive statement from MSE we cannot know if DunstonH's ban was something to do with this or not.

OldMusicGuy

If it's not a direct complaint from LC&F, it maybe has something to do with dunstonh's response to bail-in's very long posts on that thread. His response was critical of the posts, so maybe that is the reason. A mod was commenting in that thread so may have taken exception, especially if bail-in complained. Sad if that is the case.

The mod in question is apparently on vacation until Monday, so maybe that's why we are hearing nothing.

Ray_Singh-Blue

It is a two way relationship. People like us get a forum to exchange views; in return we generate content and revenue for the platform provider.

Heavy handed behaviour by those holding power can harm any relationship. Reduces trust and reputation. Feels like a misjudgement & at this point in time makes me want to take my humble keystrokes elsewhere.

Regards Ray

AnotherJoe

Reaper wrote: »

I now have new information about the ban but I'm not sure what I am allowed to say. So this post may get removed (or maybe I'll get banned too). Here's what happened:
* Somebody (I won't name them) made some huge posts
* Other people objected and pressed the "Report" and "Spam" buttons
* MSE reinstated the post saying it hadn't broken any rules
* dunstonh said the posts were "a waste of space" and "creating confusion for people"
* MSE banned him giving that comment as the reason and said the ban was permanent.

Does that justify such drastic action? I'll leave you to make your own minds up.

Those ludicrously huge posts which were misleadingly labelled as being done with permission (which implied backed by MSE when all it meant was that they decided they didn’t need taking down) show that MSEs posting limit is far too long, and also shouldn't be allowed to be circumvented by posting as multi part posts.

The worst Dh deserved was a slight slap on the wrist which should have been matched with 90% of the words in those massive posts being deleted at random. It wouldnt have affected the information content in them.