All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Greene

There's no easy answer to the AI problem. I remove them when I know that they're there but the speed and quality of them is just getting too fast and too good to do like could be done even 6 months ago. You always run the risk of dumping real people's threads when you think something is AI, so it's not like you can just take a meat cleaver to the forums. 

As for the quality of the forums beyond that, there's at least 3 major problems and none of which I'm sure BP can solve:

1. RE is in a serious downturn overall;

2. Social media has increased the proliferation of struggling dreamers that think they can wish their way to "financial freedom" through real estate, without any money;

3. A large number of forum users these days are here to generate business for themselves rather than just participate in discussions about RE. 

Problem 1 is going to take some combination of lower interest rates, more supply, a check on runaway housing prices, and real wage income to solve. Not going to be easy.

Problem 2, I have no idea how you solve this. Get rid of social media? 

Problem 3, I also don't know how you solve this. I've been coming here for years, and I have nothing to sell or advertise or any real interest in trying to turn people here into dollars. I really just started coming here because everyone else I knew looked at me like I was an alien when I started talking RE. So the forums became my coffee club. But I suspect I'm the anomaly around here. When I make posts or share information or ask questions there's no monetization of it, at least among the people here. And the old-timers that I've seen drop off, that I used to converse with, I think were the same way. 

Beyond that, everything goes in cycles, really. When RE was a lot cheaper and there was a lot to get involved in, the forums were hopping. A lot of us that have been in this for a long time have just been kind of Rip Van Winkle'ing it because of interest rates and housing costs. 

There is no way to fix it. This has been a runaway train for years.

I was on a call with many of the hosts and the new CEO and his team. The new CEO has barely invested in real estate. This is a tech company, it's not a real estate investing portal anymore. He was saying that their goal was to use AI to create more connectivity. What?

AI is what is dragging this site down every day.

If they wanted more connectivity, BP would partner with local meetups in every city to co-sponsor the IN-PERSON meetups and help make it more collaborative.

None of us needs to be sitting on the computer in forums anymore. We need to talk to people in real life. New investors need to connect with people who are making deals in their market.

Thanks for dragging me back to the forums to spew @Remington Lyman.

Siri, is this appropriate enough for the site?

The best part of this discussion, is finding out how not alone I am. I have been experiencing and thinking these things but was unsure if it was just my own perception of things. 

I had a solution idea. 

I really thought this through and I truly think it's the only legit, enduring solution that threads the needle of best results for all on BP, and for BP Platform profitability (if it don't make $, it won't make sense for ownership and thus, it won't happen, right). 

Post's can only be created by paid membership holders. Be it biz or personal, but paid not free accounts. 

And free accounts get a daily reply limit. 

There is a trend, free accounts making the same repetative basic nusance post over n over which means (a) there not contributing good engaging new content via doing such, and, (b) there not searching the forums, going through existing content because if they did they would have found the previous 10,427 posts asking what there asking. 

This also helps prevent from account spamming. 

Next is throttle a daily limit for paid account to create posts, based upon a persons votes. An ascending tiered model where at certain benchmarks, ability to do more is awarded. 

Look, simplest way to safeguard for quality content is to allow those voted most quality to post most freely, and that to post more it has to be earned via quality posts & replies. 

Ideally, this also helps the ai thing because ai spamming won't get the votes and thus, daily post creation will be throttled to a level that hopefully makes the venture not worth it to even try. 

My observation is the best content is consistently put out by various paid memberships, and the worst most spammy ai stuff is by free or low vote accounts. 

What do you think @Moderators

It doesn't help BP to fix this problem. This is a user problem and most notable to use who used to enjoy the forums to an astronomical amount compared to now. They are unusable. But they want more users, more vanity metrics to show and sell, so do they really want the forums to be policed well or just to be strong in post numbers and responses?

It's hard to say (not really), but I can tell you from being a moderator - you don't get paid, you don't get benefits (not even a ticket to BPCon, maybe a free PassivePockets membership on trial), and you often have to explain yourself to someone after your restrict a person for doing something insane. So, it is not worth it at all.

When the goal is to get new users, up numbers, sell books, it's not for any of us who are here in this forum anymore. None of us even listen to the podcast anymore (I love Dave and am good friends with him, and I have been a guest on the big show 4x now, but the podcast is nothing like it was because that's the way BP wants it. It's like current events every day, you can buy, this area is good - Dave's skills are honestly going to waste) because there are rarely guests that matter and there are like twenty ads per show.

I still get leads all the time from BiggerPockets, but not from any relationship with BP. I have never paid for anything except Pro, I just answer questions (and sometimes offend baby investors) in the forums. People still find me from old posts.

But, BP set it up wrong. Anyone can be an agent with BP which skews the expectation of the group here. It doesn't mean they are investor-friendly, they just paid for it.

The investors now are unrealistic because of a few things:

1. They read the older BP books and think they can run the BRRRR framework or flip now without any experience.

2. They are too fragile (I will never stop saying this, it's an epidemic) and only want people to say yes so they end up paying gurus or going on webinars etc.

3. They don't truly want to do the work of an investor, they just want the profit.

BP is now running a tech business that they want to sell off as @Henry Clark said so their goal is to gain vanity metrics and sales of books, etc. It's why the majority of the speakers have books on sale at the bookshop at BPCon.

There is no way to fix it. This has been a runaway train for years.

I was on a call with many of the hosts and the new CEO and his team. The new CEO has barely invested in real estate. This is a tech company, it's not a real estate investing portal anymore. He was saying that their goal was to use AI to create more connectivity. What?

AI is what is dragging this site down every day.

If they wanted more connectivity, BP would partner with local meetups in every city to co-sponsor the IN-PERSON meetups and help make it more collaborative.

None of us needs to be sitting on the computer in forums anymore. We need to talk to people in real life. New investors need to connect with people who are making deals in their market.

Thanks for dragging me back to the forums to spew @Remington Lyman.

Siri, is this appropriate enough for the site?