Subject: Re: Suggestion re: stock board structure.
Congratulations on your Buzz medal. I have programmed this just now, and you were one of the few authors to have a Buzz medal.

I would suggest just two boards: "Berkshire" and "Everything Else" would be a more rational way to structure the stock-specific discussion boards.

The goal of the different boards isn't to compete with frequency of posts, but rather to have focussed discussions. In fact post frequency is a very poor indicator of the knowledge value of each board.

One of the strengths of the earlier TMF system was that the various boards were not intermixed and in fact they were highly separated. Intermixing posts between boards can be at risk of catalysing a dumbing down effect; the lowest common denominator. There is still some cross-fertilisation with posters visiting multiple boards, but there is more deliberateness even then. With more separation (boarding on isolation), the various boards at Shrewd'm develop their own culture over time. The cultural idiosyncrasies of each board is the strength of the system as a whole.

Your implied premise of Shrewd'm revolving around Berkshire also isn't quite right. When Shrewd'm was launched, the Berkshire Hathaway board was for a few weeks more than 90% of the total posts. Presently it is only 32% of the total posts, and that ratio is declining each week as some of the other boards continue to gain momentum. The macroeconomics board for example has only picked up in the last few days, and will likely continue to pick up further.

Also I encourage you to invite your friends by simply emailing them a URL of some of the boards that you would like to have more discussion. The Google, Alibaba and Upstart boards already have quite a few posts and others will follow. The Mechanical Investing culture here has a huge 20 momentum that we are continuing; ask questions there, as there is a community with very deep knowledge even though they may not be talkative on casual observation. Pushing their boards to a "Everything Else" board as you suggest would cause the board culture to disintegrate pretty fast.

Shrewd'm has also only existed for about 6 weeks and people are still in the process of inviting others "back here". Try to help them by sending the urls of genuinely interesting posts to your friends and colleages.

- Manlobbi