Book of Hook

[hocus]

Longhook:

I followed the links to your site from a post I saw at the Motley Fool boards. There's a lot of great functionality here!

I have a question about your plans for these boards. Is it permissible for community members to set up new boards? Or is that something that only you are able to do?

I posted for a long time at the Motley Fool's Retire Early Home Page (REHP) board. On May 13, 2002, I put up a post there questioning the results of a study put forward by the board founder (intercst) that led to a good bit of controversy. Over time, it was proven beyond any reasonable doubt that the study in fact had been prepared through use of an analytically invalid methodology and that the number intercst had been putting forward was indeed way off the mark. He started a smear campaign aimed at driving me and anyone who posted in support of me off the board. I asked Motley Fool for help, but TMFBogey's response was that he considered intercst the "Board General" of that board, and, thus, he would "probably" side with him regardless of what posting practices he engaged in to get rid of me and anyone else posting honestly on the subject matter of his study, safe withdrawal rates (SWRs).

There was a great deal of support for my position in the early days of the discussions; I had three of the top six most popular on-topic posts of the year 2002. Thus, it took a great deal of effort on the part of the group supporting intercst to have me removed. Many board members asked that reasoned debate of SWRs be permitted, but intercst and his supporters hotly opposed this idea. Ultimately, they resorted to threats of physical violence and even death threats as a means of intimidating anyone who posted accurate information about SWRs. Most of the best posters from the board left in disgust as these tactics continued and Motley Fool failed to take any action.

Last May, Motley Fool banned me from the site for life. They did not claim that I broke any rules (and I did not). But they said that they were losing too many community members because of the SWR discussions. It is true that many posters left as a result of the smear campaign. Today, the board is a shadow of the resource it once was. Most of the threads today deal with political junk because most of the posters who were informed on the subject matter of the board are gone.

I intend to create a new community of people interested in learning how to achieve financial independence early in life. I started posting at the REHP board with the aim of building a community that would
create the most valuable resource on Planet Earth for learning about the subject. My efforts were successful. Before I started posting, the REHP board was a small board. I was able with my posts to attract enough great posters to make that board the second most successful financial board in TMF history (second to the LBYM board). I want to build a new community of posters interested in sharing information about financial independence, and I want the new one to be protected from intercst-type posters and other sorts of disruption.

I don't have time to work on this today. I have several projects that are keeping me very busy. But I am hoping that some time will open up in a few months. I am aiming to have a web site up by May, and I will be using the web site to promote a book that I have written on how to save effectively. I will be providing lots of free stuff at the web site to draw people there and to hold them there. I would like to have a message board system available to permit them to have conversations about what they learn, and to share information they have picked up from their own research or personal experience.

One possibility is that I will set up my own message board site, similar to what you have set up here. Given my experiences with Motley Fool, I have a desire to have as much control as possible over the message boards I set up.

That said, there are downsides to setting up my own site. Cost is one. Another is the time that must be put into administration. A third is that there is not a base of people in place to post at a new site. So I would consider putting up my new boards here, in the event that you saw appeal in that.

I am not sure what the focus of the first board would be. One possibility is that it would be a general Financial Independence board. Another is that it would focus on my book. A third is that it would focus on the question of Safe Withdrawal Rates (SWRs). The level of controversy that the SWR discussions inspired (there were tens of thousands of posts responding to the ideas I put forward) has made me interested in digging a lot deeper into the SWR question. It's possible that in time I would like to have separate boards on each of these topics, and perhaps some others as well.

I also have a desire to gain control of the REHP board at the Motley Fool site. That site has a great eyeball-generation engine. There are always new people stopping by to hear the ongoing discussions. I would like to have a board there that could be used to attract newcomers to the Financial Independence movement, and also have other, smaller, boards not governed by Motley Fool that could be used to explore issues in-depth.

There were hundreds of fine posters who built the REHP board into a valuable resource, and I believe that Motley Fool was out of line in failing to enforce the published posting rules against intercst when he engaged in efforts to destroy the resource those many fine posters created. Posters at TMF pay for access to the boards and the Terms of Service are a contract between the site owners and community members, in my view. I believe that Motley Fool should be held accountable for the damage they have done to the REHP community. For an early retiree planning on living on $60,000 a year in retirement, the intercst study gets the amount of capital that needs to be accumulated to provide for a safe retirement wrong by $1.5 million. So the financial losses that have been suffered and that will be suffered by Retire Early community members are substantial.

My intent is to use a new board not only to permit the sharing of ideas on financial independence, but also for the purpose of building a community that will be used to take over control of the REHP board. Once I am voted in as "Board General" of the REHP board, I plan to lead a campaign for establishment of a system that provides protection from intercst-type posters for people using the boards for legitimate purposes.

I believe that internet message boards have the potential to be a valuable communications medium of the future. But I do not think that they will be able to achieve their potential until systems are put into place that require site owners to administer their rules in a reasonable fashion. Given the great value that the REHP board provided in the days when I was the dominant force in building it, and the decline it has experienced since Motley Fool made the decision that it would not enforce the site rules against individuals it designates as "board generals" (a concept mentioned nowhere in the published rules), I believe that the SWR controversy constitutes an outstanding case study of the importance of reasonable rules enforcement. I hope to be able to use this case study as a tool for attracting public attention to the irresponsible board administration practices followed at Motley Fool, and to generate public pressure for changes in those practices.

My question is--Do you have any interest in me setting up boards along the lines described above at your site, or would you prefer that I set up my own site for them? My inclination is to set up my own site regardless. But in the event that you had an interest in me putting the new boards here, I might want to spend some time thinking through the pros and cons of the two alternatives.

I am grateful for any input you can provide.

[brianhook]

Whew, long post!

I don't mind setting up boards here for posters -- it doesn't cost me anything -- but Book of Hook really was meant to be a domain about my ego, you know, "All things that Brian likes". REHP and LBYM aren't on that list =)

That said, I wouldn't be opposed to setting up a board, the bigger problem is that I don't think a lot of the people that may end up here are going to be that interested in those topics if they came here to read about, say, Football.

The other problem is that you won't have much say in the rest of the site design, and it sounds like you really want something that is an integrated experience -- site, forums, you name it -- devoted to what you have to say and your philosophy.

Given that, I would HIGHLY recommend that you do this yourself, because you'll maintain absolute control.

The amazing thing is that you can do this pretty cheaply! For starters, this forum software is free! You don't have to be an expert to set it up, but you do have to comfortable managing a Web site -- I'm more than willing to help you get your own site started.

For content, I've been using Fog Creek's CityDesk, which is a VERY easy program to use, and it's also very inexpensive. You just write articles and they get posted. The hardest part will be the initial site design, but even then I'd recommend just purchasing an inexpensive set of templates from someone.

Finally, there's the Web host -- LunarPages.com are a great Web host (although, sadly, for legacy reasons BookOfHook is actually hosted on A+.net) that is very inexpensive. I think they're $8/month if you prepurchase.

For what you want, CityDesk + phpBB + LunarPages sounds like a killer combo, and you'd be able to have an entire site devoted to your investment and saving strategies. You would also get secondary benefits of having an easy place to host files, your own custom e-mail addresses, etc.

So while I'm not opposed to setting up a forum for you, I don't think it'll generate the value/interest you'd like, simply because there won't be the ancillary stuff people would expect.

-Hook

[hocus]

<i>I'm more than willing to help you get your own site started. </i>.

Thanks, for making that offer, Longhook.

Everything in your response makes sense to me. It will be a few months before I will be able to work on developing the site. At that time, I will work my way through some books before asking anyone for help. But I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that there is a technical aspect or two that I will not be able to figure out on my own. At that time, I may ask you a question or two about something basic that is holding me back.

I also appreciate the recommendations re support services and software. I don't know too much about what's involved at this point. But I will keep your recommendations in a file, and refer to them later.

I have one last question for now that might help me a bit in deciding which of several paths to travel with this. Ignoring what's involved in the non-discussion board aspects of a web site (because I have to incur those myself regardless of what I decide to do re message boards), can you say roughly how much per month it costs to have a discussion board setup roughly with the capacity of your own? Or, if you prefer, could you provide a range of numbers from low-end system to high-end? I understand that the forum software is free. But aren't there other costs that come into play from adding a discussion board to a web site? Is it possible to break out the discussion board aspects of the cost equation? In the event that you are willing to say, I am asking so that I will know whether this (adding a discussion board to the site) is something that I can afford to do on my own or whether it would make sense to get some others involved in the project.

Regardless of whether you feel comfortable answering the last question or not, thanks very much for the information you have already provided. It's been a significant help.

[brianhook]

Believe it or not, most Web hosts don't care if you run a discussion form and won't charge additionally for it. The only major caveats will be bandwidth, disk space and MySQL servers.

To use phpForums you'll need to have an available MySQL database, which most Web host providers can give you, but some very, very cheap accounts won't necessarily provide this (and definitely most free accounts won't). But starting at about $13/month or more, a MySQL database should be included.

After that, all you really have to worry about is bandwidth and disk space, and since even most cheap hosts still provide decent bandwidth (and forums don't consume much bandwidth at all) and disk space (50+MB), you can get up and running with no additional cost.

I think I'm using the Solo XR package from APlus.net, and it's less than $20/month. And the LunarPages accounts are only $8/month, and I think are probably generaelly superior to the A+.net offerings.

So the short answer is -- until you start getting into a LOT of messages and posts/day, there won't be additional cost (but, of course, this will depend on the host you choose in the end).

[hocus]

Longhook: "until you start getting into a LOT of messages and posts/day, there won't be additional cost "

Thanks for your response, Longhook. That's encouraging, and knowing that is a big help in my effort to decide which way to go with this project.

Good luck with your site!