Discussions and Messages

Updated Oct 9, 2026

There are three places conversation happens in the community, and they behave differently on purpose.

A comment thread lives exactly as long as the thing it is attached to. If a share is unshared or narrowed, its comments stop being visible with it.

Comments on shared work

Comments on a shared backtest, report, bot, track record, position history or account pulse open in a Discussion panel beside the item, so you can read the work and the conversation about it together. On a wide screen the panel is a column to the right of the item. On a smaller screen it slides over the right side of the page, and on a phone it fills the screen.

The Discussion button, first in the row with Like and Save, opens and closes the panel. It shows how many comments there are and how many are new since you last read them, and the panel's heading shows the same count. On a wide screen the panel opens by itself when an item has comments. If you close it, it stays closed on every item in that browser until you open it again.

The comment box stays at the bottom of the panel, under the newest comments. If anything is new since your last visit, the panel opens where the new comments start. A notification about a comment, whether a reply to you, a mention, or a new comment on an item you asked to be notified about, opens the panel on that comment and highlights it.

For a long conversation, choose Open in full page in the panel's header.

Starting a discussion

Open a group's Discussions tab and choose Create. A discussion gets a full page and a real editor, because its opening post is the one everybody answering has to read.

You can edit your own posts, and an edited post is marked as edited. A discussion post can be edited at any time. A chat message can be edited for 24 hours after you send it, and a comment on shared work for 15 minutes, so something people have already answered cannot quietly change; the author of the shared item can edit their own comments at any time. Polls cannot be edited.

What you can put in a post

• Formatted text, in discussions and comments.

• Attachments.

• Replies to a specific earlier message, so a busy thread stays followable.

• Mentions. Type an @ and a handle, and that member is notified. The handle becomes a link to their profile.

• Shared work. Pick a backtest, report, bot or track record in the composer rather than pasting a link, and it arrives as a card. What the reader can actually open still depends on the audience of that share.

• Reactions, from a fixed set of emoji.

• Polls.

Polls

A poll takes a question, a set of options, and whether members can pick one answer or several. It runs for a duration you choose, from an hour up to two weeks, and closes itself when the time is up.

Research questions

Any discussion can be turned into an open research question. That gives it three things an ordinary thread does not have:

• A maintained header. The question and the plan sit on the thread itself rather than in the opening post, so they can be kept current as the work moves.

• An evidence rail, assembled from the backtests and reports the argument already cites, so the supporting work is beside the discussion rather than scattered through it.

• A conclusion. When the question is answered, it is marked concluded and the answer is recorded, which turns a thread that would otherwise scroll away into something members can look up later.

The author of the question and the group's moderators can edit the header and conclude it. Everyone else takes part by posting, as normal. A group's Discussions tab can be filtered down to these, and subscribers are notified when one is concluded.

Following a thread

Threads you take part in are followed for you, so replies reach your notifications. Reading the thread clears them. For comments on shared work, that means opening the item's Discussion panel: visiting the item with the panel closed leaves them waiting.

Deleting your own post

You can delete a post you made. The conversation keeps its shape: a marker stays where the post was, so replies to it still make sense. Moderators keep a record of what was there, because "why did that vanish" is a question they are the ones who have to answer.

Direct messages

Direct messages are one to one.

You can start a conversation with a member you mutually follow or who is in a private group with you. A trader's profile carries a Message button wherever that is true. In the iPhone app, every other member's profile has a Message button: it opens your conversation with them, or tells you when you cannot message that member yet. Once a conversation exists it stays open even if the follow later lapses, because a lapsed follow should not erase a history.

Blocking silences a conversation in both directions without erasing it.

Your inbox lists only conversations something was actually said in, most recent first, so opening a Message button and changing your mind leaves nothing behind.

Privacy of direct messages

Moderators do not read direct messages. There is one exception, and it exists so that harassment can be acted on: if a participant reports a conversation, moderators can view that conversation in order to review the report. Reporting it is the only thing that opens it, and it never gives a moderator a way to take part.

Reporting

Any post, message or member can be reported. Reasons are spam, harassment, misleading performance claims, impersonation, or something else you describe. Moderators review reports and act on them, and depending on severity and history that can mean a warning, content removal, a temporary mute, or losing community access.