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Pastimes : SI Beta Site Launch - 7/01/99 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: David Lawrence who wrote (1642)	8/10/1999 1:39:00 PM
From: jbe	Respond to of 2340

David, when the petition was launched, I knew that precisely the objection would be raised to it that you are making here: namely, that it represents only 1%, or 2%, or 5%, or whatever, of the total SI population. I also knew -- and I am sure you did too -- that not even the poll (which allowed a "no" vote, after all) would attract a majority of SI members. So, here too, any attempt to draw any conclusions from it could be dismissed as "presumptuous." A couple of points, in this regard. 1) If the poll had been conducted by SI itself, and prominently displayed on the home page of both sites, many more SI members -- perhaps even a majority! -- would have participated. This route was evidently suggested, and was declined. (I was not involved in starting the poll, so I may be wrong about this. But I think not.) 2) As it is, few SI members even knew the poll was being conducted; and even fewer knew what the URL for it was. The Petition Thread was easier to find, but even then you would have to know it existed, and look for it. But think about the customer satisfaction rule that Michael Cummings mentioned in a post yesterday: for every one customer who complains, assume that 10 other customers have the same complaint, even though they have not mentioned it. 3) Take a look at who actually did sign the petition. If you forget your total membership numbers for a moment, and concentrate on the most frequent posters, the heaviest users of SI, I think you may find the proportion of signatories much larger vis-a-vis the total. And I know that the proportion of signatories among the most bookmarked posters is even higher. 4) The point of the petition was not to sabotage the New SI, but to ensure that Classic SI would not be shut down prematurely. Management was responsive enough to at least promise a stay of execution -- and perhaps even more. So what was "impractical" about that approach? 5) I don't play poker. I don't play chess either. jbe

To: David Lawrence who wrote (1642)	8/18/1999 2:30:00 AM
From: Scrapps	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2340

The true results are in the numbers, numbers of paid users or otherwise, at least that is what we may think, but it really is in the number of hits, be they from old users paid or otherwise. SI has to produce hits so they'll do whatever required to do so. Coffee shops now have become one of the largest producers of hits on SI, in general they have little to do with stock talk, yet they still claim those hits to be a part of the SI stock talk site. I myself say let the classic version co-exist. Also if SI gave a hoot as to what any of us think, they'd have taken a poll where everyone of us had a chance to vote. The users use to gather and share information here on SI...now we just sit and agree on what is shoved in our face. If SI says so...why talk about it. biz.yahoo.com Stop by the coffee shop...I'LL buy.