There was a lot of entertainment from the current shooting star when you tuned in- Dave LaBuda Joe K  Brian Watt - Good Lord ,who else? Then all the banter back and forth - so many schemes and methods.

Other regulars with questions , observations and prediction - warnings not to take this as a trading recommendation.

 Stimpy, Dave ( I think) the grain broker in Brazil and??? the options book guy, SAJ   - Stewart ?-,who moved to Central America I think and we lost contact---all their great intelligence. So many more to look forward to. 

Oh , sure, the soap operas and rivalries.

It all seems better back then but now -ain't much different-not worse -just different

I'll be tuning in for a while longer 'spose.

  John

 Thanks Capt New

Who was it that wrote the FT Forum parody?? --Howard ?

thanks Tim!

Looking forward to the comments.

I'll wait for those before I give you the history.

Greenman used to post regularly.

Thanks for talking about the wonderful old days.   They were.

Back then we had Alex as a moderator.  He did not have a lot of rules.  The main one was that we be polite.  Personal attacks were not allowed.  And sometimes,  NTR posts were not allowed during trading hours.

Now,  we have a moderator who fancies himself an "elite fact checker" and has decided he is the final arbiter of "Truth".  But Autospy results are flimsy evidence.  Flimsy Opinions are facts, and facts he don't like are flimsy opinions to our self appointed "Elite Fact Checker".   I could go on and on.   But Our Elite fact checker moderator is hopelessly wrong far more often than he is right.

He can ban one of the oldest and most polite posters for disagreeing with him.  He can accuse him of having alzheimers.  

Alex would never have allowed such a thing from a poster,  From a moderatpr??

I miss the forum that was.  

Tim,

 Times have changed since then. We’re in the Misinformation Age. Misinformation has become more mainstream than ever and it needs to be fought. Sometimes I wish the internet didn’t exist.

That’s an interesting version tim.

Gunter was warned about nuerotically posting his dangerous disinformation for quite some time and I feel bad that I let my personal friendship and trust in him cause me to let the forum down by tolerating it for as long as I did before finally doing my job as moderator here.

You are wrong too, Tim. Gunter is not banned. He is only in the NTR penalty box this month and can post freely on the trading forum with no suspension, then again on the NTR forum at the end of October.

Did you really think that because tim, Gunter, mcfarm and others think  that it’s ok for somebody to post that the vaccine kills more people than COVID type stuff for months .....to the tune of 200 posts and be asked repeatedly to stop posting the disinformation about the vaccine ....that it’s ok for posters to do that with impunity? 

As long as people  respect other posters here while they post disinformation that’s killing thousands of people, Tim says that they should be able to post any messages they want.......dozens, even hundreds of those kind of messages......because Tim’s and Gunters and mcfarm’s sources tell them its perfectly ok.

Sorry Tim....it’s definately NOT ok! Not even close to being ok.

Sorry man but the moderator’s job includes being held responsible for the messages which MarketForum sends out to others. I take this job seriously.

In case you hadn’t noticed, the moderator only took this job to use it to try to make the world a better place.....not to use it to spread extreme right, dangerous conspiracy theories and lies.

Unlike the 100’s of posts  that were lies about the election being stolen from trump here that I totally tolerated.....and corrected those lies ....

The lies about the vaccine being spread have ended up killing thousands of Americans.

That may be just fine with Tim, the republican poster but it isn’t fine at all for metmike the independent moderator and it blatantly violates my personal code of ethics.

I don’t need you to tell me what’s right and what’s wrong Tim.  

I’ve been on a mission to make the world a better place for the past 28 years now. I encourage you to join me instead of opposing me because that better world isn’t always made up entirely of a right belief system that includes numerous conspiracy theories.

The better world can include some good ideas from the right which I strongly embrace but please try  to open your mind To consider information that doesn’t always conform to the world that you wish for.

The world that we have is the REAL world. We have to all live together in that world and harmony can only take place when people start working with each other instead of trying to tear down people that don’t think exactly like they do.

I’m sorry that you want to see this as totally political. I am trying to save lives, not cater to the whims of people that whine because I won’t let them turn MarkrForum into their personal echo chamber that repeats far right anti science messages and lies about elections.

I have to do what is right and represent  the objective  truth and do what’s best for MarketForum and for America.... not what a group of politically biased individuals on a forum want so it matches up with their politics.

The moderator uses objective facts and authentic science to base every decision on and as the basis for all points.

You have been constantly encouraged to do the same thing to represent your points.

Please join me instead of opposing me.

Will you at least try?

We could debate your "Objective facts" all day,  but I've seen where that ends up and I just don't have the time.  Besides,  it's irrelevant to the point I am making.

When the forum was a thriving place,  we had one rule.  No personal attacks.

Now, the rule is "I decide what the truth is.  You better agree or you'll end up warned or banned!!'.

And as in all authoritarian environments,  you are absolutely convinced you are on the side of good opposing evil.

See, you don't have to agree with everything that is said here.  You can disagree with everything you want, whether you are right or wrong. The worst thing, and the most couterproductive to the forum, is to censor. 

Tim,while Alex was Moderator,you personally attacked me several time!

Since when does Tim get to set the rules here and call the moderator ignorant because he doesn't like the rules that were made to save lives.

I laid out the rules with transparency for many, many weeks and gave the person violating this many dozens of chances and received complaints for NOT taking actions from 4 different people by way of the "contact ,moderator" button in July and August. 

One of them suggested that  it might be a Gunter imposter at first because they speculated that Gunter would never go to this extreme to propagandize with such deadly, bad science that's killing people.

Ironic thing about this is that I was super, mega anti censorship forever in my life and figured just exposing Gunter's junk science with absolute proof that he was dead wrong would quiet him but instead, it turned him into a neurotic,   compulsive poster obsessed with the idea of showing metmike that he was wrong..........no matter where he needed to dredge up the bad data or information from.

Turns out the Gunter proved something crystal clear to me.

Gunter  proved that there comes a time when only censorship works for some people obsessed with pushing harmful messages into other peoples brains(obsessed to use/abuse the forum for his self serving, anti government, anti Fauci, anti COVID vaccine interest, while refusing reasonable requests that he follow science). Tim is not a scientist or an authority and is completely unable to show any data to counter the proof  that anti COVID vaccine messaging has been killing thousands of people in the US.............but he wants to control the policy at MarketForum so that it lines up with Tim's politics.

Tim, thinks that a scientist that has studied the vaccine for over a year and is even open minded enough to take IVermectin and show the treatments which Gunter's side has advocated and provided massive non vaccine advice repeatedly, is not allowed to  judge this topic objectively and how it affects the message or behavior from MarketForum because Tim knows better than the moderator and scientist.

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/75440/

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/74636/

I've provided my detailed science and reasoning on dozens of threads....actually hundreds now. 

Tims case is that everybody should be able to do whatever they want as long as they respect each other and then, totally mischaracterizes metmike as banning anybody that disagrees with him after 3.5 years of metmike ENCOURAGING posters at all times to present disagreement arguments based on data/science to help him learn and calls metmike too ignorant to learn from the facts as Tim's lame excuse for lacking any facts to support his case.

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/75944/#75963

Again, I just gave the accurate description of the facts above.

No name calling or disrespect as.......ironically you claim is the criteria here for acceptable posting.

You violated your own rule in the thread that you claim to be defending the rule in Tim!  Here it is again, you making a personal attack, calling the moderator ignorant:

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/75944/#75963

I'm just sad and very disappointed in you. 

Aside from Stu, Stimpy and Greenman, honorable mention: Susannah and Susan. John Phares comes to mind as well... hmmm ... ?!?

I recall "Jean", a proudly independent single woman that had a down home common sense rooted in nature,

And who could forget the wonderful and hilarious 'Beaners"?!?

The fellow that had all sorts of astrological, numerological calculations for prices and events.

That daily soybean trader from Canada.

THe variety of folks frequenting the Forum was outlandish, their expertises spanning the gamut of mystical, scientific, political, technical, humanitarian, likely even some "criminal".  A mind watering hole for everyone.  Alex, with his Rueters history had a personality that did not interfere, foremost.  But when he did input, we were treated to a unique, lively and genuine perspective.  Now, he was human, too.  And I never for the life of me, understood his dislike and barring of the super helpful spread trader called 'ab'.  And while I was among those that pushed for separate NTR and TRading forums, in retrospect, much was lost in the attempt to segregate contributions.  Julie was valiant in trying to carry the Forum as both a trader and natural living proponent.  But she soon saw it was a heavy undertaking, not without its pain and angst.  THe end of the tfc forum was an example of the change in people's tolerance and patience with other opinions.  With facebook groups, twitter, telegram and specialized trading sites that feature live trading and instruction, the utility of classic forum congregation has gone the way of the dinosauer.  Extinction, a natural outcome of obsolescence' 

 The hard work Mike puts in as moderator is so underappreciated that it is ridiculous. And largely for political tribalism reasons, he's being criticized. These are my opinions but they are strong opinions.

 If Mike had not stepped in, where would this board be now? Who else can devote the kind of time needed to try to make Marketforum great again. (MMGA lol). I think it would be pretty much dead without Mike's selfless efforts. Keep that in mind, folks. And thank you Mike!

You're very welcome WxFollower/Larry!

Actually, MarketForum did completely die in early 2018 before I took over.

Here's that story. 

Alex had been twisting my arm to try to get me to take over for several years 2014-16 but no way was I interested.

He wanted badly to pass the forum on to somebody new. 

Alex had also been working with the tech guys on the new forum in 2016  and even though I didn't want to take over for him, he had me test it out numerous times as well as asking for my opinions.

I actually liked the old format better as far as the threading, partly because I was used to that.

Sort of like the threading here at WUWT:

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/10/10/bogus-de-oxygenation-crisis/

After several months of the new threading, in 2017, I quickly changed my mind prefer this way.

The one area that I really insisted on is to NOT have the likes button.

I told him that it was a popularity contest and that on a low traffic forum like this, we would end up having o likes most of the time and it would be just an advertisement of how low our traffic is.

He ignored my advice. One time testing it for him , I racked up 1,000 likes in 2 minutes on 1 post to show him how flawed it was and to at least limit people to 1 vote per IP address. This was ignored too.

When I took over, I wanted that removed but they said it would cost a huge amount of money, so it stayed.

Anyway, Alex passed in March of 2017 and it was a shocker.

His wife Karen (who he/we called Kate) contacted me about trying to find a replacement.

I was NOT interested and don't remember all the details but I made several suggestions, including Julie, who ended up taking over a few months later. 

Kate and Julie actually became friends. I don't remember how it went but I think it was Julie that traveled out to visit Kate in New Hampshire, her home.......but it might have been the other way around.

It became apparent that Julie didn't really trade much(Alex never traded) and was a hands off moderator.

Seems like a very nice lady and was posting regular messages for us for several months though. 

That worked well with the old forum a decade earlier with Alex in charge but times had changed a great deal and most traders did NOT like the change in format, which required registering but there were some huge technical problems that made it very challenging to register........which was needed to post at the new forum, while the old forum allowed people to just post without registering. 

There was also a huge problem with the ads too which was interfering with peoples posting and reading. 

There were many dozens of complaints and Julie would say that she was passing it on to the tech guys and they were working on it.

When I took over, they had absolutely no clue about the half a dozen problems because Julie never mentioned it.

So this went on during the 2nd half of 2017 as traffic continued to dwindle greatly every single month.

By the time that we hit Feb 2018, most weeks would have just 1 or 2 posts............total for the entire week. That is outside of tallpines  daily market updates.

There were around a dozen total posts on both forums combined for  all of Feb/Mar 2018. ...outside of tallpine.

Lots of days in March with zero posts that was even less in early April 2018.

Julie hadn't posted in many months, going back to around January 2018 and was not responding to messages about the many snafu's that the limited posters were experiencing.

I thought about how sad it was that MarketForum had completely died.  It was over. 

I met Greenman and became good friends with him for several years after he contact me in early 2002 to start a 3 man trading club with him, me and local(Mark Kinoff).

In 2002/2003, Greenman must have called me on the phone several dozen times and we had wonderful conversations. Brilliant, very interesting man. Same with local that I was in fairly close contact with by email and several times by phone.

We would email each other our trading ideas each day, then go on to follow only our own trading advice and ignore what the other ones were doing. 

I made several hundred thousand bucks in 2002/3 and Greenman insisted that I was the worlds best weather trader. He was probably right..............for just those years.

Local actually came to my house and I loved that guy. He was so witty and sharp. He hated Susan with a passion though. Susan was actually a man.

Anyway, when MarketForum had completely died in March 2018, I thought what a shame it was because of the history that included a few friendships for me.

In April, I contacted Kate, who was very upset/saddened about it because she said Alex was so committed to MarketForum's success because he had started it up almost 2 decades earlier and spent so much time and emotions  that were banking on the new forum being a success but saw the writing on the wall. MarketForum had died.

She was still mourning the loss of Alex a  year earlier and MarketForum dying made it much worse.

So I agreed to try to bring MarketForum back to life.

I got Chris, the guy who designed the new forum to fix all the problems over around a 6 week period and he retrieved all the email addresses from posters on the old forum for me.

Chris is an extraordinarily sharp and impressive tech guy. He spent numerous emails teaching and training me with some basic moderator information.

There were 5,000 email addresses. Far less than half of them worked still(maybe it was closer to 10%?) but I contacted every person I could and invited them to come back to MarketForum. 

I started a daily weather update with an analysis and discussion that sometimes would take up to 2 hours preparing. 

I also commented on several markets  and provided graphs and data.

Spending over half a dozen hours every day. 

Posting and traffic came back from the dead but we had a serious problem on the NTR forum because most of the posters there came to fight each other. 

Personal attacks, name calling, cuss words, intense hatred between the right and left.  For all of 2018, I totally allowed it. There were several warnings but I just allowed all of it.

As the year went on, however I started thinking and analyzing whether it was worth all of my time everyday to promote a place where most of the posters came to sheet on people they hated on the NTR forum.

I did an evaluation that determined in the previous 2 months, 67% of the posts were from people that were telling the forum how much they hated Trump and hated people that supported Trump. 

Basically, spreading hate and the targets, republicans would answer back with hate.

We had become the hate trump forum. People that hated trump had taken it over with neurotic, obsessive posting.

In my other life, I was dedicated as a  full time volunteer to help people and make the world a better place, being part of a dozen different charities/or non profit organizations and teaching/spreading love during  the previous 3 decades and here I was as moderator, hosting/supporting a hatefest and making the world worse by allowing the fighting. with no restraints.

So in January 2019, I announced that we would no longer be tolerating the vicious personal attacks, foul language and other unacceptable behavior. 

Here I was passing on my forum weather threads to the parents of the 200 kids I was coaching in chess and I wanted to be proud of my work at MarketForum...........not ashamed or create a concern for them that they can't trust their child's chess mentor/leader. 

It suddenly hit me why I was really here.

To make the world a better place as defined in my mission statement. 

If people didn't like that..........it's their problem because I know what's right and I know what is wrong with the world right now. 

Rather than complaining about what's wrong, I had a chance to actually do and say things that are exactly what the world needs. 

Honesty, integrity/ love  and authentic facts/science. Reveal the objective truth, even if it ticks off people from both sides that  prefer to follow manufactured lies that line up with their political ideologies. 

In the first few months, we lost several, mainly Trump hating liberals that I gave a dozen chances to in order for them to stop the non stop hatred directed at republicans here.

Vandenplas and mojo were 2 of the first ones to go because they absolutely refused to change and insisted that no moderator has the right to tell them to stop viciously attacking republicans.

Funny thing after they were banned. I continued to get many, many dozens of contact moderator messages from them about how  Tim and mcfarm are ignorant scum bags that should be banned from marketforum. Those messages continued for over 2 years and constantly reminded me of how good the decision was  to keep their nefarious posting out. 

So I focused my efforts on providing useful, accurate weather and trading information as well as positive, interesting and educational/information packed messages on the NTR forum. ..........all while stressing love, tolerance  and respect for fellow human beings.

With time, people just relied more and more on reading the enlightening  messages like they would on a blog site instead of communicating their own comments to each other like they would on a forum.

Of course we still have the forum element going on but it often takes a back seat to the blog element.

The problem with it being a blog is that this takes tremendous work to constantly post new information for people to get value. 

As a forum, you can just let people communicating with each other take over.

However, as hayman accurately noted and what happened for the year before I took over. Failing to provide massive personal input from me is a guaranteed death sentence of our forum in today's world. 

https://www.marketforum.com/about/

Objectives/Mission:Develop the minds and character of our youth thru the game of chess. Enlighten all ages about the current climate optimum, featuring the best weather and climate in the last 1,000 years(and massive benefits of increasing CO2) using data and authentic science to battle the misinformation about the completely fake climate crisis.....AND OTHER MAJOR DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGNS.  Encourage expression of RESPECTFUL thoughts from those that disagree and receive them with an open mind/heart, hoping to learn from others. Stress and demonstrate love and tolerance, while showing the damaging affects of hatred to peoples lives. Reveal the truth...........expose lies, especially in the political realm(of both sides), which sadly includes most climate science today, while always practicing the scientific method.

The thing that I liked the most about the new forum is that it gave us the ability to post maps and graphs and charts and images of almost everything. 

Weather, CLIMATE, crops, trading, energy, science, medicine, statistics,  sports, technology and much, much  more! It's been awesome and a labor of love providing all this stuff the last 3.5 years!

Chris, who created our ability to post/publish everything is a genius!!!

Without that addition, there’s a 0% chance that I would have agreed to take over and stayed.

It’s the only reason that I can provide the weather stuff on the trading forum which is THE biggest reason that I believed that I could provide some unique value that nobody else has as the meteorologist, climate scientist.

I haven’t been spending hours a day on the weather contribution lately like I used to.....but will try to update my Winter ....la Nina forecast thread this week.

 Latest weather:

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/75004/

Western Drought-La Nina forecast Fall/Winter 2021/22 

20 responses |  

Started by metmike - Aug. 14, 2021, 11:42 p.m.

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/73659/

I'm also being offered a potentially great opportunity to be the scientist for a revolutionary carbon capture technology that will take much more of my time.

Considering that the most outspoken people here would rather fight the truth, no matter how clear that  I try to make it and ignore the positive messages, if that opportunity pans out, it will be a no brainer choice to focus most of my talents on something that pays dividends, helping fossil fuel companies stay in business and bringing  substantial rewards to many people and companies......without the constant battles  that seem unavoidable here. Very counterproductive and they waste, so, so much time that could be better spent moving forward on something positive.....even if it's a labor of love for me to do the work here for free.

On the other project, I will also be working with everybody that is 100% on board with making the world a better place, including my wife....even if some of them believe CO2 is pollution.

I may be traveling to Canada in November related to that venture and will let you know how it goes.

I forgot to mention this huge reason to be here also:

                Climate Reality discussions-new discussion August 2021            

            https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/27864/

 "THe end of the tfc forum was an example of the change in people's tolerance and patience with other opinions.  With facebook groups, twitter, telegram and specialized trading sites that feature live trading and instruction, the utility of classic forum congregation has gone the way of the dinosauer.  Extinction, a natural outcome of obsolescence'"

Yes, hayman, so extremely true.

When MarketForum started out, there was no Facebook or Twitter and for almost a decade, we had the franchise in the realm in which we appealed to people.

Just over a decade ago, Facebook and Twitter and other sites really took off but MarketForum managed to hold its own(though dwindling new traffic)  because people are creatures of habit and like coming back to the same place with the same people.

As the seasoned veterans slowly dropped off, they were NOT replaced by many newbies.

Alex saw this happening and created the new forum, with the new format to try to capture new people.

Sadly, it ended up backfiring because to some posters, the NEW MarketForum eliminated the familiarity that keeps people coming back to the same place over and over........then the passing of this wonderful moderator and neglect for numerous months in early 2018, which allowed serious technical issues to turn away EVERYBODY as in EVERYBODY, seriously except tallpine for several months.

By that time, people had found a new home and the NEW MarketForum was starting all over when it was finally completely fixed in June 2018. 

Not many traders came back permanently(having found greener pastures), despite tons of weather and trading posts to try to lure them back in.

However,  those interested in fighting with each other in political battles on the new NTR forum took over there...........sort of like the Taliban did in Afghanistan when the US departed (-:

But the NTR forum was created with this in mind...........still is intended for posters to exchange ideas............especially disagreements.

For all sorts of posting on any topics and designed for people to communicate back and forth about anything they agree or disagree respectfully on. 

Same exact rules as when our awesome Alex ran Marketforum( I miss him too)............with a tiny adjustment that was required because of COVID and one posters abuse of Marketforum.

Going well beyond the opinion realm into using MarketForum to propagandize with a dangerous message that's killed tens of thousands of Americans. Neurotically and obsessively posting(200+) anything and everything that he could find to promote his anti Fauci, anti Government, anti COVID vaccine position, disregarding authentic science and contradicting legit facts at times and ignoring pleas from the moderator to control himself..........even after months of the moderator asking nicely and 4 complaints via the moderator contact button.

So just like hayman and WxFollower noted..........it's a completely different world out there from.........even just a few years ago before COVID but especially compared to the internet over a decade ago.......this new challenge to MarketForum was met with a fair assessment and temporary suspension of the previously very generously contributing Gunter from only the NTR forum.

He is welcome back to express all opinions just like before but will be held accountable for trying to propagandize readers at Marketforum.

Like with the Trump bashing thread, I've created a Fauci bashing thread to help vent some of his and others here  hatred and anger in an acceptable way on this topic.

This especially helped cliff-e who came here and posted neurotically about Trump(but wasn't posting obsessively with stuff that was contributing to  killing people).

                Fauci bashing thread            

                            10 responses |                0 l

                Started by metmike - Oct. 5, 2021, 12:54 p.m.            

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/75789/

I'd like to 2nd the sentiments of WxFollower.  MM's patience with antagonist posters here is remarkable.  I don't recall Tim going on the warpath against "censorship" when it was lefties being banned after dozens of warnings.  I have disagreed with MM on numerous issues but I never called him ignorant.

In case you move on to more productive pastures Mike, thanks for all your efforts.

Thanks very much joj!

We had alot of differences several years back but I've come to know you well and immensely respect your integrity and intelligence.

As it turned out, we had waaaaay more things in common than differences.

Your contributions of great quotes and how to make the world a better place speak loud and clear for me.

Looking at some of our contentious conversations a few years ago and where we are today is at the top for my proudest moments to demonstrate how people that seem to be at polar opposite sides of politics..... can come together and be good friends working with a common mindset.

You truly deserve all the credit for that joj. I send out the same messages to everyone and posters take what they want and reject what they want.

Most people go to places that don't have the right messages which line up with their belief system...........and leave to find an echo chamber........so they can recirculate all the same old messages in their brains.....instead of learning from letting new messages into an open mind.

You stayed here, despite most posters sending out messages that contrasted with your left sided ideologies.  This is exactly what we needed to help round this place out.

You didn't do it like vandy and mojo did just to attack republicans they hate so much.

I one time accused you of hating Trump, then immediately apologized when you objected.

Do you remember that?

With regards to Larry/WxFollower, he and I have been in a weather nuts mind meld from the get go because of our mutual love for weather and trading weather markets.

But you and me CAME TOGETHER joj! Good for us!

I am better for it and thanks very much!