About six years ago the vouching system was implemented to help identify credible members. The idea was that traders can find quality information faster when there's a visible indicator of the poster's credibility, and while it was never a perfect system, it saved traders countless hours by placing an icon next to the username of vouched members.

We still believe in the idea behind the vouching system, but it's clear that FF has outgrown it. Not only is the system built on hard-coded levels (e.g., 11 vouchers assigns top rank, 4 vouchers allows vouching for others), but it's becoming a weaker indicator of content quality as the membership grows.

Today we're happy to announce the vouching system's replacement – the Member Impact Ranking System (MIRS). The detailed ranking formula can be found in the user guide. The structure of MIRS has many advantages over the vouching system. It's simpler because it's based on existing subscription functionality, rather than relying on an additional user action (e.g., clicking a vouch button). It's more democratic because it allows almost all members to affect the rankings, instead of just those who have four vouchers. It's more scalable than vouching because the formula considers the current membership size, rather than hard-coded levels, and it's more adaptive because rank is decreased as a member's subscribers go inactive.

While MIRS and the vouching system rank members somewhat similarly, there were a few differences that stood out when we compared the two systems:

1. MIRS generally assigns higher rank to members with recent activity, whereas vouching wasn't sensitive to last activity date.
   
2. MIRS credits members who have positive Trade Explorer returns, whereas vouching rarely included non-posting members.
   
3. MIRS quickly ranks new members who post high-quality information, whereas vouching was slow to react due to the small population of "voters" (i.e., only those with four vouchers).

No system is without limitations, but after putting a lot of thought, research, and analysis into it, we're confident MIRS will not only make quality content easier to identify, but also raise the overall quality of information posted on FF. In the coming months we'll be monitoring the system closely, and will make adjustments as necessary. Please let us know if you have feedback!

We're happy to announce the launch of Members, a new page that allows you to easily find and discover Forex Factory members that interest you. It's part of our initiative to facilitate content discovery, and it furthers the goal in a big way!

The page includes membership statistics, a master feed of the latest member activity, and a configurable list of members. The list provides three primary tools for discovering members...

Settings:


Filter:


Sorting:


Once the functionality is mastered, you'll be able to quickly find members who share your approach to trading, discover members who post valuable content, or locate a trader to help you with a particular issue – and you'll likely find countless other uses!

According to Alexa, Forex Factory has broken into the 1,000 most-trafficked websites in the world!

There's no telling if we'll stay here, but we're excited to have reached this mark for the first time. To all the traders who got us this far: your loyalty is greatly appreciated, and will be reciprocated with a continued commitment to supporting your pursuit of profits.

To the best of our knowledge, Forex Factory is the first forex-related website to break the top 1,000, so this milestone says as much about Forex Factory as it does the forex industry as a whole. Given the recent IPO and M&A trends, all signals point to an industry that's bigger and stronger than ever.

Btw, we recognize that Alexa rank is an imperfect metric. Nonetheless, it's arguably the most credible grading system for worldwide traffic and tends to be the most widely-quoted benchmark.

Forex Factory is still growing after almost ten years! We're sitting at all-time highs in every key metric, and our team has never been stronger!

We just completed construction on our new development center in Tampa, and we're looking to staff it with the best web engineers in the city. If you're a top-notch LAMP developer who wants to work for a product-focused company, we encourage you to apply for the Website Engineer position.



We're also seeking a sales professional with Internet advertising experience. Forex Factory sells display advertising directly to a worldwide customer base, so the position requires significant international travel to meet customers' needs. Please apply for the Account Representative position if this sounds like the right position for you.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

We hope you've been finding the new member profiles useful! Many thanks to those who provided feedback and reported bugs!

With the kinks now worked out, we've turned our attention to adding features and functionality to the profiles. The first major addition is 'member subscribing' – you can now subscribe to a member, just like you would subscribe to a thread or story.



This new functionality brings about several changes that may have you scratching your head without some explanation...

1. 'Buddies' are now mutually-subscribed members
Previously, buddy status was fairly inconsequential – you could add anyone to your buddy list without much effect. With the new system, however, a buddy relationship is automatically established when two members are subscribed to each other. Buddies can no longer be manually added; they only come from mutual subscriptions.

2. Old buddies have been converted into subscriptions
Most traders used the old buddy system to keep track of certain members. Since subscribing to a member has a similar intention, all old buddies have been converted into subscriptions to initially populate the new system. If any of your old buddies also had you on their buddy list, they will remain your buddy because the conversions will result in a mutual subscription (which results in a buddy relationship, as discussed above). The email alert for converted subscriptions was set to 'None', so you won't receive email alerts from these subscriptions unless you change the settings.

3. Vouching was separated from the Network block
You'll notice the Network block now lists 'Buddies', 'Subscribers', 'Subscriptions', and 'Ignored'. The 'Vouchers' and 'Vouched For' sections have been moved to a separate block below the Network block. The motivation for doing this can't be explained without shedding some light on our future plans. In short, vouching will be phased out in the future, and replaced with a system that's based on the number of subscribers a member has. Separating vouchers from the Network block will make for a cleaner transition to the new system in the future.

4. Vouched-for members have been added as subscriptions
Anyone you previously vouched for has been added as a subscription. Since vouching will eventually be phased out, as discussed above, we want to carry the spirit of historic vouchers to the new subscription system. By duplicating your vouch as a subscription, the spirit of the vouch is not lost and will be carried into the coming subscription-based system that will replace the vouching system. To illustrate, a member who had 50 vouchers in the past will now have 50 subscribers, so when the vouching system is replaced they will still be highly "ranked."

While the current state of member subscribing is transitional, you should find the new functionality very useful for keeping track of content produced by traders you respect. Gone are the days of visiting countless profiles to see what traders are doing – it's now all in one place and easy to manage.

Please contact us if you're confused about any of the changes or have feedback. We carefully consider all feedback!