As I just received a downvote for my latest valuation update, it would be good if it was accompanied by a reason or a private message note by the user.

I also don't mind if the user keeps themselves anonymous after posting the note.

At the end of the day, people make mistakes in their valuation but also you need to consider the amount of time I spent doing it. This included downloading the financial data, doing a rough balance sheet/income statement forecast and "plugging" the numbers and revalidating the figures while correcting mistakes. It was also part of my assessment which I spent a few weeks on and then spent another 2 days revising it after the latest company results.

Hence it would be good to get a little feedback on what went wrong and why I deserve a downvote.

And I would also mention if the downvote should be ruled invalid because I didn't put the full balance sheet/income statement data in (this is actually the norm in most DCF reports).

I do put my hand up for my initial valuation mistake but that doesn't deserve a downvote either.

I also have a IT background so going back to mathematics after more than a decade has been a real challenge for me especially in an area not familiar to me (financial maths) and I'm bound to make mistakes as I learn along the way.

Sorry for the rant!

It's been really informative to get everyone's perspectives on the voting system, and it's prompted us to reconsider how it works.

After a lot of careful thought, we've decided to remove downvotes altogether. This aligns us with the standard among most social platforms and will prevent the trolling we see from a very small minority of users.

As with twitter, if you don't like a post you can just ignore it. We're also looking to add a mute function which will hide posts from contributors that you don't find valuable.

We'll hopefully have this delivered soon.

The best way to ensure you see the content that is most valuable to you is to follow users and companies that you are interested in, and then configure the filter settings (located at the top right of the newsfeed). For example, you could select to see only the content from those you are following only, and turn off forum posts and trade notifications. Remember too, that you can drill into all the content from a particular user by going to their profile page and clicking on the 'Activity' tab.

Also, on a Company page, you can sort Straws according to votes so as to easily find the most endorsed material. We're also going to add valuations to this feed so you dont have to scroll through users individually.

Down the track, we're hoping to develop a smarter newsfeed which will prioritise the most valuable content (this is actually a lot harder than it sounds, and is something the big tech companies have spent millions on refining).

With Strawman, we're hoping to avoid the clutter and noise (and frankly the hostility) that is typical of most stock forums. Our approach is to give every user their own personal company report for every company, on which they can post whatever content they want without having to get drawn into long debates.

If someone has different perspectives, they can post their own insights (Straws) and Valuations. The community will decide what is best via the voting system, which will influence the ranking of content and contributors. And, as Bear77 says, the forums are there if people want to have a discussion.

As always, we're looking to continually refine the platform and are very much guided by community feedback.

Onward and upward!

Don't mind downvoting and think they it is a valulable part of the site. Also don't see a problem with making the author of downvotes viewable, as more transparency is almost always better. I personally like to downvote valuations along the lines of 'this is the only pure AI play on ASX, hence it's worth at least double current valuation', without any reference to future revenues or earnings. It's not so much that I think the post is incorrect, it's that it wasn't well reasoned. BRN may indeed become a multi-billion market-cap company in the future, but that will require a lot of things to go right and not doing back-of-the-envelope calcuations as to what current valuation implies, is inescusable. It's not about getting the right answer, it's about how you get there. Remember a broken clock is still right twice a day.