IMPORTANT!! Read Before Posting Questions in the Forum

[Nicole Seaman]

It is extremely important that our members follow these forum guidelines. It saves everyone time and makes our forum a better resource. Just a reminder that before asking a question in the forum, you want to make sure that it has not been answered already before creating a new thread.

SEARCHING AND READING THE ENTIRE THREAD BEFORE POSTING IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!

• Practice Questions: If you are asking a question about one of our practice questions, the original forum links are included on the answer pages of the practice question sets. Please make sure to read through the ENTIRE thread discussion before asking a question. It is VERY likely that your question has been asked and answered already.

• Search Function: We have an excellent search function in the forum! You can type in a few words or a full sentence, and the search will bring up any threads that discuss the concept that you are looking form. Make sure to use the search function before posting a new thread. We really need our members to ALWAYS use the search function before posting. The search function is HERE.

• Cross-Referencing: The FRM curriculum is very extensive so there may be times that you will find practice questions or other materials in the study planner that could be placed in more than one reading. There are some concepts that are relevant to duplicate readings (chapters). Please use the search function in the forum to find specific concepts by keyword. Our curriculum analysis spreadsheet is also very useful in finding specific concepts that may be relevant to more than one reading. We ask that you refrain from asking questions in the forum about which reading a specific concept pertains to. As you can tell, we match every learning objective to its corresponding practice questions, however, there are times that you will find that a concept will be relevant to more than one chapter so you will want to take the initiative to read through the other chapters before trying to answer a practice question if you are not able to answer it after reading one chapter.

• Post reference question: When posting a question from an outside source (i.e. GARP, EOC source questions) please make sure to copy/paste the entire question, answer, and explanation. This saves us the time of having to search for the question that you are referencing, and it also allows the question to show up in the search results. Do NOT paste an image as the text within images cannot be found using the search function. Copy/paste the actual text.

• GARP Practice Questions: When posting a query about a GARP practice question, please make sure to use the tag function to see if that question has been asked. The tags are formatted as follows: garp19-p1-20 would be question 20 from the GARP 2019 Part 1 practice exam. The tag search function is HERE. You can also copy the first sentence of the practice question into the search function and it will bring up any discussions on that question.

• Duplicate Posts: Please do not post the same question twice in different areas of the forum or even within the same thread. David sees every post in the forum, but that does not mean that he can answer every one of them immediately. We also cannot guarantee that every single question that is posted in the forum will be answered. There are only so many hours in one day and there are many other daily tasks that require attention.

This helps to ensure that our forum runs smoothly, and is not unorganized with duplicate questions and answers. It also allows you to quickly see if your question has already been answered, which saves you time and it shows respect for our time as well!

We appreciate all of your participation in our forum! It has been such a great asset to FRM candidates!

 

[Ashok_Kothavle]

I just wanted to bring this post up again, as the rest of this week is going to be extremely busy! Making sure to take the small steps in the comments above before posting saves David and myself a great deal of time searching for things already posted, searching for the question being referenced, etc. Please make sure to provide as much information as possible when posting your question. This will allow us to answer more questions in the forum because we won't have to be searching constantly

Also, as noted above, the search function does not recognize images, so when posting a question, please copy/paste the question instead of posting the image.

Thank you all for helping to keep our forum organized!

Nicole

Dear Mr David and Ms Nicole

First I sincerely wish to thank both of you for the herculean task and efforts you both undertake of replying our queries. One must must must appreciate that. It's a forum where we can learn a lot and lot and in the process upgrade ourselves.

As profile wise my main interest is Market Risk, I normally find myself reading the queries raised here and understanding the concepts mentioned there.

I do understand owing to the tight schedule, it may not be possible, but still I will like to give you one suggestion.

As mentioned above, since my main interest is market risk, is it possible to bifurcate these questions topic wise. In the sense, say all questions pertaining to VaR models in the Topic named "VaR Models", all questions relating to say backtesting in the Topic "Backtesting", Questions pertaining to Expected Shortfall etc in the Topic called "Expected Shortfall" and like wise. All these sub topics under the main "Market Risk tab".

Now the problem is all the questions are scattered and literally appear at random. A question about say backtesting is followed by a question say on "Key Rate" which again is followed by a question on say "Coherent risk measure" etc.

Hence, there is breakup of link. No doubt we can always search on keywords and obtain questions relating to keyword. But still is possible, if this done, it will increase the utility of the forum. Of course do understand that some topics might be overlapping. But the advantage is one can read the given topi specific questions at a stretch.

It is just a suggestion, don't know how practical it is though. I am sure you all must have already given a thought to it. The same logic can be applied to other topics like Credit risk, Operational Risk etc.

Regards

Ashok

 

[David Harper CFA FRM]

Hi @Ashok_Kothavle Thank you, for your kind words and the suggestion. Nicole and I do think and talk about this topic (how to improve forum usability) a lot. I'm open.

But I will say that I personally I do not think more granular forum nodes (if I understand you correctly), where nodes are the forum's (xenforo's) organization construct (e.g., sub-dividing topic boards into sub-boards) is an ideal solution in the long run. It's an analog to more folders on your hard drive, or more folders for sorting email, with the attendant disadvantages. It presupposes too much organizational control, I think, and adds too much human maintenance. And we know from experience that a majority of users won't necessarily always diligently organize their posts into the "correct" sub-forum. Related, with too many sub-forums, it's not always obvious where to locate a new post; many topics are candidates for multiple concepts. I believe this approach adds a lot to the maintenance costs.

Instead, we have recently started to use tags; e.g., https://forum.bionicturtle.com/tags/backtesting/ you can see that "backtesting" is such a new tag that we only have two tagged entries so far. Admittedly, it is not currently easy to use the tags (we realize), but that can and will be addressed with interface improvements. I believe unstructured tags will be more useful in the long run than structured sub-forums. (but, it's key that we make the tags super easy to use!).

We did recently just install the ThreadZoom (search application) with the hopes this improves the search function.

Finally, I have a lot of faith in our choice (years ago) to deploy XenForo. We got lucky, it has evolved into arguably the best forum software out there. With a huge xenforo community (https://xenforo.com/community/) of developers and end users, so we are hardly alone in the challenge of wanting to improve forum usability. There is a community of resources (e.g., actually retain Xenforo specialists for our forum) and they are constantly adding improvements and (including applications and addons). There are a few ideas that we have yet to try pertaining to organization. Thank you for your thoughts!

 

[Ashok_Kothavle]

Yes Mr David,

Totally agree. It indeed will be cumbersome in the long run. And I tried search using key words and it does provide pretty descent results.

I knew you must had given thought to this earlier too.

Thanks for your response.

Regards
Ashok

 

[Nicole Seaman]

I am bringing this thread up again to remind all of our forum members that the forum is very busy with the exams being tomorrow and more exams coming up in November and January. Please make sure to read the original forum post in this thread BEFORE posting in the forum.

The use of the search/tag functions is VERY important, along with reading the entire discussion in the thread before asking a question. I cannot stress this enough. Most of the time, you can find the answer to your question within the forum. The forum has been around for over a decade, which means it is unlikely that your question (or one similar) has not already been brought up and answered. You just need to search for it. It is very time-consuming for us to answer the same questions over and over and is not productive.

GARP Practice Exam: When posting about a GARP practice question, please first search to make sure it is not already discussed in the forum. There are also tags that will help you to find them. For example, garp20-p1-15 is the tag for the GARP 2020 practice exam for Part 1, Question 15. Also, it is important that you do not post an image of the question. The search function cannot search for words in an image. If you are posting a new thread with a GARP practice question, please copy/paste the entire question and answer so other members can find the thread.

Also, please remember that we must prioritize the questions from paid members. While we would love to be able to provide free support to those who do not purchase from us, it is just not always possible, so our paid members must take priority. This also means that if you are a free member, your question may not be answered if there is not enough time to do so.

We appreciate everyone's cooperation with this, as it is very important to us that our members are supported.

Thank you,

Nicole

 

[Nicole Seaman]

In an attempt to prevent anyone from being stressed in the forum, I just want to ask that when members ask a question, that they do not specifically tag David or anyone else. The forum is here for everyone to contribute and David cannot answer all questions that are asked. When he is tagged it creates MANY notifications in the forum, which I think would be overwhelming for anyone. We encourage everyone to continue posting in the forum to ask questions, but if you see a question you may be able to answer, that is always helpful. We appreciate all of our members and just want our forum to be a stress-free environment for everyone