Some BIG Upgrades to FPA Reviews. The FPA Needs Your Help.

AsstModerator · (#1 (**permalink**))

Greetings Fellow FPA Soldiers,

I am very pleased to announce some major upgrades to our reviews and ratings system. The Forex Peace Army reviews are already the best on the web, and now they are getting even better.

Recently, screenshots of the websites reviewed have been added. This should make it a little easier to be sure you are reading the right reviews, since so many forex companies have similar names.

Some of you may have also noticed that the categories have been reorganized. Non-Broker was dropped, since that was only All Reviews minus Broker Reviews. Trading Systems was added. Those are non-software based trading methods that had previously been lumped in with Education. There is also now a special category for companies with confirmed Scam Findings.

The new Trading Systems category is designed to take all of those non-software “use this method to conquer the forex market” type products out of the Forex Education category. This will allow the Forex Education category to be more focused on broader forex courses and mentorship programs. There are still a lot of trading system companies listed in the education category. With your help, those will get moved to the right place.

“Website is Closed” is for companies where the website is offline. This will save you from wasting time trying to look at a page for a company that went out of business. You still can leave reviews for the company if you want to.

Today is the big change that the Review Moderation Team really needs your help with. Labels have just been added.

A lot of people have written in saying things like, “Can I get a list brokers that have MetaTrader?” or “I want to read software reviews, but only for EAs.” Labels will make this possible.

For each category, there will be specific labels, plus a few labels that can apply to any category.

All categories have a Foreign Language label. This is for sites that do not have English, not for sites that provide multiple languages including English. Remember to be kind to Americans, since most of us have this terrible disability of only being able to speak one language.

For Forex Brokers, there are labels for MT4, .API (Application Programming Interface), IB (Introducing Broker), and White Label.

For Forex Software, there are labels for EA and VPS (Virtual Personal Hosting. This is a remote server that some people use to run their trading platforms from).

For Trading Systems, there are labels for E-books and Videos.

For Forex Signals, there are labels for Trading Rooms and Email/SMS Signals.

For Managed Forex, there is a label for HYIPs. The FPA doesn't consider most HYIPS to be true forex, but many claim to be trading forex.

For Forex Education, there are labels for E-books, Videos, Trading Rooms, and Mentors/Coaches/Live Training.

For Forex Forums, there are no special labels other than the ones that apply to all categories.

This is the part where your help is needed. There are over 1100 companies in FPA's reviews. A review moderator could visit each company's website and verify all the details. If this happened, it would take a long time to get all the companies labeled correctly. Instead, the programming team made a special form. There is an Request Site Update link on each review page. That will take you to a form to let you request that labels be added.

The same form that lets you request labels be added can also be used to request deleting incorrect labels. You can also request adding or removing categories and request a screenshot update too. There's also an option to let the review moderators know that a website has moved to a new URL or has closed down. There is an Additional Information box in case you want to leave a comment for the review moderators. If you are requesting the Foreign Language label, please mention the language in the Additional Information box.

One thing to keep in mind. Some companies definitely need to be in more than one category. There are signals companies that also sell software or offer managed accounts. The idea of the categories is to focus on the primary business or businesses of the company. Most brokerages have a forum, but this is only a very minor part of what they do, so they are not usually listed in the Forex Forums category.

Please don't sent requests to mark a website as closed unless you are sure they have been offline for at least 1 week. Websites can go offline for a few days for many reasons.

The highest priorities of the Review Moderation Team will still be to get new reviews processed and to add new sites. This means that adding labels will take a little while. When this announcement is first posted, please wait at least 2 weeks before resubmitting a Label/Category change request for anything to happen. Starting in March, please wait at least 1 week.

The full procedure...
You find a company that needs a correction.
Submit the form and wait 1 or 2 weeks.
If the correction takes place, good.
If not, resubmit the form and wait 1 week.
If things are still not corrected, use the Contact Us button at the bottom of the page. Maybe there are just too many change requests in the queue. Maybe the review moderators disagree with your changes. If you want to know what's happening, just ask.

If you are looking at any reviews for your own reasons and see the need to make corrections, go ahead and submit a form. If you want to volunteer to help and look at a bunch of sites, I need to divide you up. I'd like to avoid having 500 people submit forms saying that the A1A brokerage offers MT4 and no one submit a form saying that XYZ forex forums are only in Swedish. I suggest the following division of labor...

If your first name begins with the letters A-E, check Forex Brokers
If your first name begins with the letters F-I, check Forex Software
If your first name begins with the letters J-K, check Trading Systems
If your first name begins with the letters L-P, check Forex Signals
If your first name begins with the letters Q-S, check Managed Forex
If your first name begins with the letters T-W, check Forex Education
If your first name begins with the letters X-Z, check Forex Forums

This should reduce the duplicate entries enough so that the Review Moderation Team spends more time adding labels than deleting duplicates. This also will keep some categories from getting ignored. I've divided up the alphabet proportionally to the number of companies in each category. If you really want to work on a different category than the one assigned, no one will check your name.

If you see something like New or New Reviews on the Request Site Update form, just ignore it. The programming team is working on labels for new review pages added and for review pages with new reviews added. This should be made automatic sometime soon.

If you have any great ideas for labels we should add, post them here or use the “Contact Us” form to make suggestions.

JeffNLisa · (#2 (**permalink**))

One thing important to me that I did not see, is a designation for a broker as to whether they are an ECN or a MM, or some combination of both.

Some brokers are strictly MM brokers. Some are MM for most people but can and will give you a strictly ECN arrangement if you want one. And then some are strictly ECN only.

Several years ago Felix had a video wherein he was describing his experiences with a true ECN (MBTrading) as opposed to a MM (or a "bucket-shop" as he referred to it, Oanda in that case I believe it was). His video underscored the importance of this distinction between brokers, and time has changed nothing.

This would be VERY useful information to some folks. I do not know how to really get the information, as most MM brokers will tell you they are ECNs even when they are not. One such broker has offered me a specific arrangement where all my orders will be put thru to the market under all circumstances, and which of course then means a commission, which I am fine with. But even in this case I cannot confirm it, as we have not made any deal and I have not used them; and even if I had, I am STILL not sure how I could really be sure.

So this info would have to be obtained and verified by some specific means that I am unsure of myself.

Sorry to present the problem with no real help toward the solution. But it is very important and I wanted to mention it if it can possibly be done.

Jeff

Pharaoh · (#3 (**permalink**))

Ask not what your FPA can do for you, but what you can do for your FPA.

I've already submitted some stuff via "Request Site Update"

bluesea46 · (#4 (**permalink**))

HYIPs. The FPA doesn't consider most HYIPS to be true forex, but many claim to be trading forex.>

IMHO managed forex account (like Huskins i.e.) and HYIP programs (games) are two completely different categories. Finding HYIP games under Managed Forex category can be misleading for us newbies. As Pharaoh wrote somewhere, all HYIP programs are “scam in progress” and there is no doubt about that.

As this is my first post on FPA, I’d like to express my sincere admiration for your work guys. This forum is a MUST READ for anyone considering investing money online.

Best regards,

David

AsstModerator · (#5 (**permalink**))

There were some debates about putting in labels for ECN and STP. The problem is how to verify which brokers are really operating this way and which ones are just lying in their advertisements. If someone can find a way to absolutely confirm which brokers are true ECNs and which ones always use STP, then I'll have those labels added.

There was discussion of not even permitting HYIPS in the reviews. Many people kept requesting them, so it was decided to permit them. I have been adding warnings to HYIP pages in the reviews. A lot of these HYIPS advertise themselves as managed forex and try to avoid the term HYIP on their pages.