Why not a "Real Estate Failure Stories" forum??

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Ok, so I can picture the raised eyebrows and perhaps even a curious look from @Joshua Dorkin right now... but please bear with me and read on.

This topic has been raised by other users here, and here and several other posts but only a few of them have many people willing to comment. Why is this?? Almost everyone here has bombed at some point - that's thousands of failure stories. Why does it seem so few of us want to share those with others here?

Backing up... I was talking with a fellow user this week over drinks about how wonderful BP is - the resources, the community.. Wow! hands down the best REI site on the Internet - undeniably! But I mentioned my discontent about the fact that there is an inordinate amount of success stories out there and not enough people posting about their "failures". BP boasts "learning about real estate without all the hype" but I've always felt like an information gap like this could be misinterpreted as just that... hype.

I don't blame BP for this. It's not like Josh has a team of people moderating posts and removing unfavorable content. Instead, I'm sure it's a simple fact that people are eager to boast about their accomplishments (and rightly so) but generally adverse to highlight their shortcomings. Not to mention... I wouldn't be motivated to spend time posting something that made me feel lousy as I rehashed all of the gory details - Yuk! Some (or most?) may even drop off the BP radar after that first bad deal or simply exit the REI industry altogether.

But, today after discussing this very thing, I found a post from @Scot Howat (1st time flip in chicago was a flop) about his very first flip experience. He walked us through the numbers and how it was going to cost him about 12k in the end. A good number of questions were asked as to what went wrong, and as a new investor, I learned some very valuable things. I noticed something interesting.. I didn't feel pumped up after reading Scot's post but I did feel more empowered. For me, getting pumped up from reading a post about someone making 25k off their flip is great but it's a little like a Red Bull sugar rush... it's great while it lasts, but in a little while, I need to find more to get back to that feeling again. Scot's post was more like a healthy dose of complex carbohydrates. He gave all of us the opportunity to learn from HIS mistakes, and that went a long way for me.

This is not to say that there isn't a representation on BP of the dirty realities of REI but the stuff I do see is usually a bit abstract... "Be careful of this, because of that". I don't find nearly as many real world, all cards on the table conversations like Scot's. 

The title of this post was meant to be a bit provocative. I don't necessarily think there needs to be a dedicated forum for failure stories (or should there be?). I'm more interested in hearing everyone's take on this. 

• Are there enough postings on BP like this? Maybe I've just missed it. 
• Do you think there is worth in encouraging more information sharing like this?
• Do you think more postings like this could have a negative, demotivating or demoralizing effect on the community?
• Do you communicate and detail your "failures" on BP? If so, what are your reasons. If not, why?
• Other thoughts?