Incentives to get people to vote on open cases

[dbrawner]

IMHO, Monetary or other "rewards" for voting is not the way to entice people to participate. I would not want my case decided by a group of people looking for a few bucks or a T-shirt any more than I want a president elected because they offer free food to homeless people or citizenship to illegal aliens. Nor would I want my case decided because someone felt they had to vote in order to maintain their access or standing in the FPA.

I want people voting on my case who understand the process and system which is in question (i.e. the business of trading) and who are willing to put some thought into weighing the evidence and facts presented and deciding on a fair solution or verdict.

I feel that if FPA provides a fair and impartial forum to evaluate broker performance in client dispute cases, it accomplishes at least two important functions. 1.) a place for traders to start their due diligence in broker selection, and 2.) leverage with brokerage firms in the form of an large and well organized group of traders. These benefits can only be achieved and maintained so long as the adjudication of these cases remains "fair and impartial".

Should they become virtual lynch mobs for angry and frustrated traders, then I will cease participation as the benefits described above would no longer be possible.

Our votes should be considered, thoughtful, and based on the available facts and evidence. Unfortunately there are times when the evidence is weak or the facts unknown and in such cases we cannot, must not, render a verdict on emotions or personal prejudices.

It is the spirit of the FPA and our voluntary participation that will ultimately dictate the success or failure of its mission and subsequent benefit to the trading community.

 

[FreddyFX]

Sometimes I wonder if it is time badly spent, as it seems like most cases are with brokers that maybe should not even be allowed to function in this business.
I would NEVER EVER put my money with a broker that is in a place where their government does not have a finger on the pulse of their financial businesses.

 

[platini]

I dont think there is any incentive needed for members to vote. I have been saved of getting scammed by this board. No better incentive than that, since then i have voted in all the cases i could and had enought info.

 

[PistolDave]

Everyone should take a few minutes and review the cases and then vote. Just think; if it were you who had been scammed, would you want some other people to take interest and help you? I think you would. So, help out some others first.

 

[Hermes Leao]

My native language is portuguese and its very hard really to understand clearly all the text.I spend over 10 times more time to understand the case than if it were in portuguese. But I NEVER dropped to vote. That's one compromise I did to myself since I met FPA first time and FPA took me out of AVAFX hands( helped me out),

I have one suggestion:

Is it too dificult to attach open cases right after one sign in FPA sites?
Everybody has to sign in, so we could be redirected to a big message urging people to vote, then we would have to click ''Continue'' in order to go where we want but before we get to where we want we had a stop on open cases.
That way FPA will really mean how our vote is important. People are too easy , lazy , always believe that many other people will vote so they dont have to worry about it , and that maybe the reason why so few people vote.

 

[sailoffwithme]

Just send a couple emails so when know when a case is up for a vote. I will vote when I get an email about a case.
Sometimes when we are busy we may miss a single email or it may go to spam for some reason.

 

[saintela]

A free T shirt or other reward systems will bias the voting system and in my opinion should be discouraged.

 

[Hermes Leao]

It already works this way but hasnt been enough.
Everybody receives the emails but only very few vote.
FPA needs to do anything that pushs people to vote .That's why I gave the suggestion above

 

[greatwest1]

Hi to all,
I prefer Feisal's note , posted near the top of this page, because it is more positive in nature, than say Sazu's threatening type of
post. Sazu- I know what you mean and understand your dedicated interest in this site, but let's just make a clear suggestion now for
members like myself to intend to contribute more. I will do that, with that clear request. I also am fairly new here, and am very busy,
to start Forex trading, but do see how great this site is and can be for the future as well.
Thank you for reading this, and a big thank you for taking my heartfelt comments in the correct and beneficial way.
To your health and pips !
G.k.

 

[qbitz1]

I have to confess that I only vote occasionally and sometimes offer words of support or encouragement to traders in a bad situation. I agree that I should make more time to contribute to this valuable exercise and on reading this thread I got to wondering why it might be that I don't vote regularly and what could improve this situation. My thoughts are:

1. A T-shirt would be nice and something that could perhaps be considered by FPA as something it's loyal followers might be interested in buying anyway - I'd quite like a forex military school type t-shirt I don't think it should be added to the voting system though, since it could cause people to vote without reading things through properly just to get the t-shirt...

2. On forums, there is a degree of gameification in that users get a rank and their number of posts is listed, so I don't think it would be such a big deal to add number of votes cast to this information. This isn't exciting enough to cause vote bias yet it's still something to proudly display as a sign of commitment and contribution to the site. Also, no reason why graphics/icons can't replace numbers to make it more interesting.

3. I think the forum message thread format is not so good for displaying cases for vote. I guess one thing that puts me off voting are the often pages and pages of messages that need to be sifted through in order to get a proper understanding of what's going on. To get more votes from people I suggest the following changes:

Email links to a vote should go directly to the page for the case, not the list of cases where I have to work out which one I'm supposed to be looking at.

The case for and against should be two distinct pages with information only from the complainants added, allowing for new information to be posted if necessary. Maybe requests for more information could be added to the bottom of each page by making the complainants posts sticky.

All other comments/advice/encouragement should be in a separate thread.

A new vote, "Inconclusive" could be added, but since this is effectively a No vote, maybe the guidance should be that if you're not sure from the information provided, either you can request more or vote No.

I welcome your comments.

Jon