Educational Ratings forum ??

[GlennR]

I'm curious about the validity of various forex courses, so I figure FPA would be the best place to check. I find the section listing & rating them, but it appears to be very "questionable". The responses don't seem to be real FPA members. The member names aren't "clickable" like here, where you can judge who they are by their member info. You can't see their posts count, their sing up date, nada'. What value are the ratings if we can't even tell if they are from real FPA members?

Why are the ratings done differently from the forums?

 

[AsstModerator]

The ratings are a separate database that was created before there were forums.

The next major upgrade of the reviews is supposed to be able to link reviews to forums accounts. The plan is to give reviews connected to accounts greater weight than reviews that aren't linked to accounts.

 

[GlennR]

Do you have an idea when the upgrade will happen? I'm considering taking a trading course, but just can't see any value in the anonymous ratings.

 

[AsstModerator]

Do you have an idea when the upgrade will happen? I'm considering taking a trading course, but just can't see any value in the anonymous ratings.

Every review you see posted at the FPA has been screen by me or one of my moderators. The FPA is very good about screening out fake reviews. Review spammers think they know all the tricks, but my team and I have the advantage of having seen all those tricks in action many times.

Can some fake reviews get through? Yes, definitely. I'm sure a few real reviews don't survive the process. Still, it's the best system out there.

Linking it to forums accounts will be a big improvement, but that will not end the standard moderation process for reviews. Otherwise, review spammers would just need to create forums accounts.

I'm not sure when the forums and reviews will be linked. It is on the long term agenda. Implementation will be extremely complex. My hope is that it can be done by the end of 2014.