Handbook

Welcome to the Investors Hub User and Moderator Handbook!

The Moderators Toolbox

Community Guidelines

Moderator Guidelines

About the Handbook

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Frequently Asked Questions can be found here.

You will also find many places where portions of this handbook are linked to FAQ pages, and where the FAQ pages link back to portions of this Handbook.

Who is This Document For?

This reference is provided for the benefit of all Users of the site and particularly Members acting as board Moderators. It focuses mainly on boards in iHub's investment forums with emphasis on stock-specific boards in particular. Moderators of boards in our Premium Zone are allowed a greater degree of latitude in moderating those boards, while boards in the Free Zone are held to a higher standard for Terms of Service enforcement and specific guidelines for Moderators.

Please be aware of the following when referring to this document, its related FAQ and Help pages, and our Terms of Service:

These documents are not intended to be all-inclusive references explaining and giving examples of every single act that can result in administrative sanctions and every single thing that won't. We have tried, but the fact of the matter is that we will never get there. Such a document would be enormous and really shouldn't be necessary.

It should be good enough and clear enough that iHub participants are expected to be civil with one another and that those who are unwilling to do so may and likely will be shown the door. We ask that everyone show common courtesy and respect for other Members so that all can enjoy and benefit from their participation at Investors Hub.

Communicating with iHub Admins

For contact information regarding Login Assistance, Legal Matters, Copyright Infringement or Advertising, please refer to the Contact Us page which is linked at the bottom of every page on the website.

It's highly recommended that Users add The Question and Answer Board to the list of Favorites and follow the discussion there. In addition to Site Admins, there are many knowledgeable & helpful Members who offer timely answers to questions that Users and Moderators have about the site. In many ways, it is the "hub" of iHub.

Private Messages sent to IH Admin appear in all Site Admins inboxes. This allows the first available Admin to assist you. Choosing this route (instead of PMs to specific Admins) will likely elicit a more timely response as each Admin does not work 24/7. Please include related links to expedite this process further. If Admins have to search for what you're talking about it is very time consuming and slows the entire process. Many times if a PM is received without links you'll receive a reply asking for them. Your PMs to IH Admin will eventually appear in your Outbox as having been sent to the Admin who actually handled it, or in some cases the Admin to whom it has been specifically redirected for disposition. That way any further discussion of that particular matter can be directed to the Admin who originally handled it.

The Report TOS Violation link found on every public post is another way of communicating with Site Admins. Clicking this link will provide a form for the member to advise Site Admins of alleged violations of the Terms of Service. In addition to a list of possible violations, a comment section is provided that can be used to address your concerns with the specific post, or Member if appropriate. (Note: Admin are the only people who see or have access to TOS Reports and the comments).

If you wish to inquire about a post that has been removed, the means to do so are described on your My Removed Posts page.

How to include links in posts and PMs:

Go to the top of your screen where you see "address". Highlight (hold the left mouse button down as you move your cursor across the text) the entire line beginning with "http". Right click and move the arrow down to "copy". Then place your cursor where you want this information to be copied, right click and select "paste" and Voila!

Please refer to FAQ:Reporting Violations for more information.

As described above, iHub provides numerous means for Members to contact site Admins and support staff both privately and in designated public forums. In addition to your communications regarding specific support issues, we routinely solicit Member feedback on site design, functionality, and operating policies and procedures. We encourage and welcome constructive input from our user community and routinely implement changes suggested by Members. However; we do not welcome disruptive or non-constructive communications, or attacks on iHub itself or our staff. Persons who find themselves unable to refrain from attacking iHub and/or its staff, including but not limited to 1) threats of reporting us to [insert list of the usual "name dropped" agencies here], 2) threats of litigation, 3) promises of ensuring our demise, 4) accusations of criminality, conspiracy, or any other alleged violation of law, or 5) vulgar or abusive PMs, should avail themselves of their prerogative to cease using the site immediately as we have no interest in hearing it. Those unwilling or unable to respect those guidelines will be asked to refrain and, failing that, will be shown to the exit.

Site Features

Message Board Subscriptions

Subscribing Members, otherwise known as Premium Members enjoy numerous additional features. Key Premium features include but are not limited to Private Messaging*, Unlimited Posting*, Batch Reading of Boards, and Advanced Search. Subscriptions can be purchased for as little as one month to as long as three years.

If you wish to cancel future subscription renewals, simply go to Settings > Cancel My Subscription. This will cancel the auto-renewing component and your remaining subscription will continue until your expiration date.

If you wish to change the credit card on file with Verisign (our processor), do the same as above, then when you receive the expiration notice(s), re-subscribe with the new credit card.

Credit card information is never stored on/by iHub. It's processed entirely by Verisign.

Subscription options and feature entitlements can be found here.

• Premium subscriptions do not include an exemption from the website rules. Premium subscribers found to be in violation of the Terms of Service or the policies described in this Handbook are subject to administrative sanctions. These sanctions include but are not limited to suspension of and/or limits being placed on posting privileges at the website and/or individual board level.

Premium versus Free Zone Boards

Boards in the Premium Zone simply mean that Moderators have more flexibility in managing the content by removing messages and banning specific users from the board although rare, Admin reserves the right to overturn any Moderator action on any board for any reason. Posting on these boards is also restricted to Members with Premium account features.

Premium status does not give a board license to blatantly violate the rules of the site. Any concerns with Mods or deletions on other boards still needs to be addressed with Site Admins. More latitude is offered to Moderators on Premium boards. For example, if two posters are having a heated debate that includes what might be considered a personal attack on Free Zone boards, the Mod has some flexibility to allow this. However; one sided deletions in this example are inappropriate. Additionally, using these boards as a place to launch personal attacks on other Users of the site is not allowed and should be deleted. Premium boards are also not a haven to "archive posts in case they are deleted" and/or in the event they are removed. If a User feels a post has been inappropriately removed then their recourse is to request a review either through the automated system or by sending a PM to IH Admin.

If many of the messages on a Premium board fall into the above categories, the Moderators need to take immediate steps to rectify the situation and return the board to it's original intended purpose. Failure to do so will at a minimum result in moderators being removed and/or replaced as well as possible administrative sanctions.

Member Profiles

When other Users click on your alias it takes them to your Profile. This is the place that you can tell people a little about your personality and trading/investing philosophies, if you so choose. From your profile, you can click on Edit My Profile to make changes.

Please keep in mind any information in your profile must adhere to the TOS.

We highly recommend that you not disclose any personally identifying information here (email address, etc). Remember all Members have access to this information.

Please refer to FAQ:Member Profiles and FAQ:Signatures for more information.

Interface Preferences

Site Options

Composing Posts

Please refer to FAQ:Composing Posts for more information including adding bold, italics and images to your posts.

Use of Automation - iHub discourages the use of automation to refresh, crawl or post to the website. If a automated refresh is used, the minimum permissible frequency is once per minute. Scripted posting should be throttled to no more than once every 30 seconds, and may be disallowed if found to be excessive or abusive. Users found to be manipulating site content and/or metrics through any means, including but not limited to automation, are subject to administrative sanctions up to and including account termination.

Member Signatures

The comments above where the signature is added are pretty self explanatory:

• Please do not put sounds in signatures and keep images as small as possible.
• No racy/sexual/scantily-clad pictures.
• No mention of specific stocks/tickers or links to stock specific boards.
• No links off the site.
• No solicitation.
• No political or religious images/text.
• No comments about ihub members or ex-members.

Note new signatures will not be attached to your posts until being selected as your default in My Signatures

If you see a violation, please send a private message to IH Admin

Please refer to FAQ:Signatures for additional information.

Member Profile and Images

• Status Messages and Images are subject to the terms of the Terms of Service (TOS).
• No racy/sexual/scantily-clad pictures.
• No mention of specific stocks or links to stock-specific boards.
• No links off the site.
• No political or religious images/text.

Ignore Feature

How to Ignore Another User

Image Upload Feature

Available on the "Other" navigation button on the Image Upload tab.

About Message Boards and the Moderators' Role

The principle objective of the iHub message boards is to maintain a high signal-to-noise ratio while encouraging the exchange of all points of view. Moderators are an important part of making our message boards beneficial to all participants and readers. Moderating a stock-specific board, particularly those which are controversial due to many divergent perspectives or newsworthy events, can be a challenging and time consuming role. The time and effort expended by our Members who volunteer their time to fulfill this valuable role is greatly appreciated and our Moderators should be treated with the respect they deserve for donating their time and efforts to the collective benefit of our community. Company-specific boards are the lifeblood of iHub. The Moderators' role is simple to define for company-specific boards:

To promote the civil exchange of on-topic dialog that complies with the Investors Hub Terms of Service.

It is no accident that neither the above definition nor the Terms of Service makes mention of investment sentiment, shareholder interests, or considerations such as "the good of the company." That is because the TOS are blind to investment sentiment. In order to be a successful Moderator and conduct a board within the scope of iHub's TOS, it is critical that Moderators distinguish their role and privileges as Moderator from their role and privileges as a posting Member. That is often easier said than done, particularly on active boards with both the typical and atypical controversy.

At the same time, Board Moderators are welcome to express their investment views and sentiment in the same manner as any other Member; by participating in the dialog. However; insofar as their Moderator privileges are concerned, it is not the Moderators’ role to dictate bullish or bearish sentiment, command the "tone" of the content be along any particular investment sentiment, or favor one investment sentiment over another when removing or restoring messages. (Please note the bold as this is a vital part of the sentence).

It is also not the Moderators’ role to remove posts on the basis of "truth" or "accuracy". Readers determine the veracity of the posts they read and the credibility of other Users. If a Moderator disagrees with another Member’s post they have the same recourse as any other User; to ignore the post, or to challenge it with a post of their own focusing on the information, not the other Poster.

In short, the role of the Moderator is to help foster an environment that promotes and encourages posting of ALL opinions and information about companies, regardless of the bullish or bearish sentiment of the posts, and to be the site’s first line of defense in ensuring we remain free of spam, vulgarity, and personal attacks on other users.

Deletion Review

All Members have visibility to their recently removed posts and in most cases the ability to request a review of any removed posts they believe were done in error. For logged-in Members, the My Removed Posts page can be accessed from the Settings button at the upper right corner of the page or from My Removed Posts tab. These requests for review and comments go into a queue that can be viewed by individual board Moderators, Mod Squad and Site Admins. If the message is restored it is automatically removed from the queue and the Author's My Removed Posts page. If it is not restored, then an Admin will review and either restore the post or close the request. Mod Squad and Moderators can only restore posts in this queue, they cannot remove the message from being reviewed by Admin. When a post has been deleted and subsequently restored, will appear next to the post in the message list.

At times moderators may receive a private message from Admin asking why you made the decision to remove a post. Please don't be offended or defensive when asked. Sometimes the reason chosen i.e. "personal attack" was mistakenly given and it was really supposed to be "duplicate". Or sometimes the post appears to be discussing a public figure of the company, but it's actually a Poster on our site, not affiliated with the company.

A large part of Site Admin's role, with the valuable assistance of our Mod Squad members and Moderators, is to endeavor to have our rules of conduct applied consistently across the site. Users need to be able to move from board to board and have a clear understanding of what is or is not acceptable.

Of course, mistakes are occasionally made and posts are removed in error. When a deleted post is clearly not a Terms of Use violation, most times it will be restored without asking any questions. However; if there are too-frequent deletions made "in error" by the same Moderator, they will receive a private message to address the situation. Moderators who are unable to act within the defined scope of their position will be relieved of their position.

Thank you to everyone who participates in our community and especially those who help to moderate and keep the boards high on signal and low on noise. Your energy, dedication and efforts are integral to iHub and your efforts are appreciated.

Definitions of Terms Used in This Handbook

• Terms of Service ("TOS") – See Terms of Service.
• Terms of Use ("TOS") – See Terms of Service.
• Terms of Use – These interchangeable terms refer to the rules of the site which can be found via Terms of Service link provided at the bottom of every page on iHub.
• Stock Specific Board – A board that has a ticker symbol for a listed company. These boards are in our Free Zone. iHub allows only one board per company.
• Mod Squad ("MS") – An experienced group of Members who have consistently shown their understanding of the Terms of SErvice and ability to fairly apply it to all Members. They have deletion/restoration abilities on ALL stock specific boards. MS Members, like Moderators, are not employed by the site but, instead, volunteer their efforts.
• Site Admins – The group of individuals who are employed by Investors Hub to administer the site by enforcing adherence to the Terms of Use. They have site-wide abilities to delete/restore posts and warn, suspend, or terminate Members who are in violation of the site's rules.
• Premium Zone – Boards in this area are available for all Members to view but you must be a Subscriber to participate in the dialog.
• Free Zone – Boards in this area are almost exclusively stock specific and available to all Members to read and to participate in the conversation.
• Premium Member/Subscriber – These interchangeable terms refer to Users who have elected to purchase membership privileges on iHub. Membership does not afford Users different rules of conduct, but does allow access to upgraded features.
• PM – Private Message. A message that can be read only by the sender and recipient.
• iBox – Also sometimes referred to as a "Header" on "Intro", the iBox is displayed at the top of any message board and is created and maintained by Moderators and Assistant Moderators. It typically contains a description of the company being discussed and tools such as charts and links for further information.
• Moderator – A Member of the site who creates a board or who volunteers to and is appointed to manage it. Boards can also have a number of Assistant Moderators. Throughout this document, the term "Moderator" applies both to Moderators and Assistant Moderators unless indicated otherwise.
• User – Anyone who visits the site, whether they post or not and whether or not they have registered a Free or Premium account. Users cannot post until they become Members.
• Member – Anyone who has registered a Free or Premium account on the site. Members can post and can also become Moderators.

Related Pages

Frequently Asked Questions

Site Admins