HotCopper Gremlins strike again
Posted by: Fringe in Australia, Censorship, Politics, Shares
The powers that be at what was once Australia’s best stock forum, HotCopper, have now decided that no posts on politics, terrorism or war are to be permitted in their General section. One wonders immediately why religion wasn’t included amongst the banned topics, as of the four, it would seem religion has the least relationship to stocks. Perhaps some have an irrational belief in the success of praying for stock gains similar to the rodent’s exhortation to pray for rain as all else has failed. Other mischievous posters quickly noted that sex discussion was still allowed.
Contemporaneously, a General post revealing the use of HotCopper archives for research by a team from the University of Queensland Business School in their paper “Market reaction to takeover rumour in Internet Discussion Sites” published in the March 06 Accounting and Finance journal on the noticeable effect of takeover rumours percolating in the forum was removed almost immediately after it was posted.
The UQ Business School HotCopper research abstract states
The authors acknowledge the assistance of the management of Hotcopper, who made available to us their archives …
We examine the market reaction to takeover rumour postings in the Hotcopper Internet Discussion Site (IDS). Results from the interday analysis show abnormal returns and trading volumes on the day before and the day of the posting. Results of the intraday analysis show abnormal returns and trading volumes during the 10 min posting interval and abnormal trading volume during the 10 min interval immediately preceding it. Sensitivity analyses indicate that the results are robust to concerns regarding potential confounds, credibility and bid–ask spread bias. Taken together, these findings are consistent with the market reacting to the posting of takeover rumours in IDS.
Participants on the HotCopper site are informed in the site’s Privacy Policy that information may be used
for the following general purposes: to customize the advertising and content you see, fulfill your requests for products and services, improve our services, contact you, conduct research, and provide anonymous reporting for internal and external clients.
Have the HC admin has decided the banned topics might unduly influence the market fortunes of the vying parties in the forthcoming Australian federal elections? Political censorship and wowserism at such times is of necessity suspect. Just who is being ‘protected’ by the limits on debate? After all, despite the management attitude, this is not a children’s forum site.
Note to self: must remember to email all Political Science and Political Economy departments of Australian universities to inform them of the limited nature of their areas of study.
Sphere: Related Content
Entries (RSS)
April 26th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Hi Fringe,
Apart from stocks, and there have been plenty of inane comments there, hasn’t HC today been ordinary. There is no longer wit nor repartee, and nothing to challenge people to think outisde the box.
Life in the world isn’t that boring, is it?
Have visited your forum from time to time, but today have bookmarked it into my “Forums” folder. In that, I only have HotCopper and Stockhouse Canada in that. Never visit Stockhouse but used to when I was involved with XEN in East Lost Hills. Find your blog really good, so now intend to open it each day right behind HC.
All the best. Your quality is great.
dub
ps. Just started reading “Freakonomics” from the library. Fascinating and recommended if you do have free time.
April 26th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
Hi Dub
I’m bemused with the dead zone it has become too. It should be obvious to anyone with half a neurone that politics is integrally intertwined with the stockmarket. Uranium, clean coal and other emerging ‘green’ shares provide a perfect example of how policy can influence share prices.
Why it has been found necessary to stifle political debate is the question - it’s not as if people can’t use the ignore button if they don’t like certain posters’ views. Will logins decrease because of this infantile policy change? One imagines so.
However, I’ve started posting at stockfish.com.au, which isn’t as far I have seen, influenced by folks with a negative bent.
Thanks for the very kind compliments - I do enjoy writing this shares/political stuff and despite being somewhat overwhelmed with work at present, shall endeavour to keep it up. There’s certainly no dearth of subject matter at the moment!
Haven’t read Freakonomics but believe it is excellent. I’m in the middle of “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” by Ilan Pappe - very well researched, historically accurate and guaranteed to annoy rightards who support the bloody, ongoing land thievery by Israhell in the occupied territories.
April 27th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
I suspect HC’s recent decisions is to maintain existing ad revenue and attract more. Problem is it makes HC look like a “black and white television”.
April 27th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
The General section has now been deleted completely. One would think that would reduce ad revenue as well as eroding the social value of the place, out of step with the latest Web 2.0 networking tendencies.
I like that Rudd quip today to which you allude:
“Mr Howard doesn’t really believe in a single idea, which didn’t appear on black and white television.”
April 28th, 2007 at 12:07 am
From Wikipedia:
Interestingly as far as censorship in Australia goes:
April 28th, 2007 at 10:18 am
Dear Fringe readers,
Please note that stockfish.com.au has a facility for general posting. I haven’t had any posts censored as yet so the coast seems clear. This forum is a no spam, no advertising space, with useful news and asx announcements syndicated on the front page.
It’s fast, flexible and posts can actually be edited later by the author. Posts can also be coded easily with the user interface provided. And the moderator is friendly!
Regards to all
FD
April 28th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
I can see HotCopper follows the same theme as WorkChoices, that’s embraced by small business, and is expressing their choice to ban views, eliminate views that are not in line with its and without any consultation with its members. These are the HC’s conditions, take it or go elsewhere. - Charming.
Since HotCopper’s first choice to ban, it has now ignored ALL the members’ feedback and simply deleted these all the views by removing the hole General forum. - Who does their PR, if any?
This second unannounced choice clearly shows the lurking HotCopper arrogant attitude, just to shutdown the hole General forum and without any notice or consultation with its members and ignore all the member feedback.
Also to note, a simple HotCopper design oversight that is telling too, the top left hand side HotCopper logo on all its framed web pages is non click able, no mouse over to link back to the home page! A telling sign of the website designer is not professional. At least non profit websites get this bit right.
April 30th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
I moderated my first comment today!
To the “How About Disclosing” anon twerp who posted a stockfish whois, desperately attempting to ID the magnificent Fringe as the proprietor of that forum, get a life. In fact, get a woolly one up yah.
The glorious Fringe has hardly enough time to write on her blog, let alone set up a stock forum site. Fringe btw is a she, has no proprietorial interest in anything except her own shares, and small business far removed from the stock world.
She is however very interested in the analysis of the phenomena of suppression of political debate and the climate of fear desired and promulgated by rightard goons who would rather their grubby fascistic agendas were concealed and immune from dissection.
Today she sees the General forum has been restored to HC - a positive and commendable step.
April 30th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
“How about disclosing” tries again … 3 more stalking comments deleted … let’s see how good Akismet is
Seems to be working now.
Fringe recommends “How about disclosing” reads the Fringe Contributions policy and in particular the bit that says
November 29th, 2007 at 7:38 am
Hi there, i am looking for info on online education but i am left wondering how is your post HotCopper Gremlins strike again related to that ? .
November 29th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
While some may think it is so, I strongly resent your implication that I am responsible for the activities of search spiders. I never kept them as pets, I didn’t!
There’s a link there somewhere ….