I had thought that the trolls killed the board with their relentless harassment. Turns out, that's not the case. Recently I discussed this with several long term SE posters that no longer post. I was suprised to hear that the reason they no longer post is that they were grayed by SE only never to be 'un'-grayed. They were significant posters that were grayed out for a lenghty in a haphazard way. SE had censored them in a lazy unthoughtful way and failed to reinstae them in a timely fashion.
Who is killing this board?
Streeteasy is killing the board.
They should reflect on this activity, review their own behavior and quickly modify before the chat board portion of this website becomes even more useless and dead than it is now...IMHO.

What is grounds for a graying, by the way? I've always been curious.

For the most part those that were greyed were trolls, but they'll never admit it.

ungrey huntersburg!

falco brother, the reason is there is no more debate. The hopes and dreams for a 2008-2010 market crash never materialized for the bears and now we are back in a Manhattan real estate bull market. Discussion over. Censoring had nothing to do with it sir.

> falco brother, the reason is there is no more debate. The hopes and dreams for a 2008-2010 market crash never materialized for the bears and now we are back in a Manhattan real estate bull market. Discussion over. Censoring had nothing to do with it sir.

true! also RE as an obsession is long gone. when was the last time you came across sby bragging about a RE flip, a reno? it's part of the end of the bubble, the excitement on the asset class as investment is gone.

"Fifty shades of grey.
It wasn't the trolls"

Fuzzy logic killed the board? Yeah, that's partially true.

vaguely erotic. depends on the reader.

streeteasy has no vested interest in keeping up a lively, spirited informed discourse on these boards. for the most part, they are more interested in keeping the "pros" happy and have by extension become a source and tool of the folks in the industry.

i have been saying for some time now that we are left with lifeless and useless posters whose main contributions are just bereft of any logic or meaningful thought. a real yawnfest. Tumbleweeds.....

Pricing aside, it's not like real estate is that dynamic. Most of the advice given a few years ago is still valid today, which make the archives incredibly valuable.

While I'm not about to assume everybody with a question is using the search function to find the information they need, the answers are mostly there for people willing to look. I'm nearing the end of an 18+ month search for the right place and the old discussions were a gold mine.

exactly. the "old" discussions.

hburg is trying so so hard.

But to answer falco, don't think SE killed anything. If those same posters really wanted to keep contributing here, I'm sure they'd be able to. I just think they sorta ran out of things to say. It happens.

I don't agree.
The posters in question are as interested as ever, still read the board, just don't contribute.
It was their contribution that schooled many a buyer and seller.
Now what do we get? Mike and his broken AC on 79th street.

I agree falco. I have learnt a lot from the greyed contributors, in some contexts, I learned more than I did from rest of the board put together.

http://streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/31021-building-at-161-east-88th-street

This was just just the first of Daniel178's(many) posts on buying his first apartment. It was amazing how much information he got from all the non-grey posters on what to look for, both in the apartment, in his lawyer, in his walk-through, for his mortgage, and on and on.

He really didn't need to read yet one more post about prices going to $500/psf.

My view is much closer to Riversider's (3rd post on the thread) than to falcogold's.

I can only think of one of the grayed and departed whose perma-graying I thought was unwarranted and whose departure, in my view, lessens the board.

> I would bring back alanhart and stevejhx (who was not grey)

Hypocrites like SteveJHX ran around complained asking for others to be banned, for behavior they had done (or worse). Some didn't bother to deal with it... if anything, Steve should take some blame for ending some discourse.

Of course, that he also had to leave Manhattan after all his bad stock bets probably had something to do with it...

Wait, hold on here.... turns out we do have a sacrificial lamb popping his head up. This is hillarious...

"falco brother, the reason is there is no more debate. The hopes and dreams for a 2008-2010 market crash never materialized for the bears and now we are back in a Manhattan real estate bull market. Discussion over. Censoring had nothing to do with it sir."

Oh, SteveF, this is classic, I love it. I think SteveF was invented by streeteasy because somebody had to be cannon fodder.

Pay no attention to the fact that we are STILL below crash threshold... we haven't crashed!

Sorry to burst your bubble (no pun intended), but how much of a shill do you have to be to ignore...
overall median down to 24.4% off peak... 28.2% in real terms.

I love it...

alanhart was greyed? That's nuts. Maybe falco is onto something after all.

somewhereelse continues to embarrass himself with his delusion that NYC real estate crashed and is still bottomed.

I'm still around, just have been busy.

I think SE dropped the ball on taking this site to the next level as a company. The NY market was a great place to start due to the lack of an MLS, but this thing should have gone more wide-spread long ago. The two things missing in most markets is transparency and community. While sites like Zillow try to address the former, they don't do it anywhere nearly as well as SE. And in terms of the community represented by the Talk section here, even in its reduced form, just isn't found anywhere else. I think questions of the form "What is the SE of San Francisco?" come up often, and people are referring to the potent mix of transparency & community that was created here.

The who / why / what of it all, I don't know. I wasn't in SE's shoes. But I think this is the sort of thing that differentiates Silicon Valley from NY. In SV, there is a whole infrastructure behind taking a lightning-in-a-bottle idea and going big. It seems SE had to worry about business model & revenue & all that before it got going, and I gotta imagine that is a reflection of being in NY. This is the sort of thing that would have gotten $50 million thrown at it in SV, let's see if you can get critical mass. Heaven knows the crap that gets $50 million thrown at it in SV, this would have been one of the better ones.

Video Killed The Radio Star!

"Only swe could call Steve a hypocrite and point to his bad stock bets after swe is caught making a pro equity call on May 1 this year."

Still throwing that lie around? Sorry, never said it... and you could never find anywhere I said it.

But keep trying, this is amusing.

> somewhereelse continues to embarrass himself with his delusion that NYC real estate crashed and is still bottomed.

Yes, 28% down on the Manhattan median (real terms) since peak. I must be absolutely delusional!

Pot, kettle...

LOL.