US actuaries’ experience shows Actuarial Outpost = the Google of actuarial forums

The well known saying is that those who are ignorant of history are condemned to re-live it.  Here is a case in point:

The UK actuarial profession is now on to its fifth official merger discussion forum in less than 18 months.  Six if you count the initial bizarre situation where the Faculty & Institute’s website had a link (in early April 2008) that said “merger discussion” which took you to a page that provided one-way information only: from the leadership to their members.  Seven if you count the “Actuaries On The Merger” forum [now at http://www.forumsforactuaries.com] created by members given the initial absence of any official medium for two-way discussion.   That AOTM member sponsored forum, together with a shock defeat (of Faculty Council’s agreed plan with Institute Council to allow members only 3-4 months discussion before putting a vaguely defined merger plan to a formal vote by the end of June 2008) at a member requisitioned Special General Meeting in mid April 2008, led Councils to create their first merger discussion forum.

A study of US actuaries’ experience with discussion forums would have been useful before we in the UK embarked on our own process, and I admit that it was an error on my part (given that I created the original AOTM member forum in April 2008) not to study this until now.  Whether the UK leadership was aware of the US experience I do not currently know.

It appears that we in the UK are behind in this area, in that US actuaries already have a long history (going back more than a decade) of using discussion forums, which started off with separate official forums being run by each of the SOA (Society of Actuaries) and the CAS (Casualty Actuarial Society).  However, eventually members resented what they viewed as excessive control (in particular with regard to the ability to register and post anonymously, but also with regard to the degree of moderation exercised by SOA and CAS moderators) and moved over (as long ago as about 2001) to a member created forum.  This was initially known as the “Rebel Outpost” or “Rebel Forum”.  In contrast, the official forums became known as “the desert” because they saw so little activity as compared to the Outpost forum.  Here is a quote from an article written soon after the creation of the “Rebel Outpost”:

Being that the actuarial community in North America is small, the lack of identity protection caused much self-censorship, and the SOA forum stagnated. Among many actuaries it is still known as the “desert”.

(The reference to self-censorship seems to refer to the fear – expressed by some UK actuaries recently in UK discussion boards – that some members will be reluctant to post under their real name, for a variety of reasons, e.g. a perception that it might harm their career if their superiors dislike what they post, or a worry that a post that looks reasonable now might look foolish with the passage of time. I personally have been happy to be fully identifiable in my forum posts, but having studied the US experience, I now recognise that this issue is a serious one for many actuaries.)

After initially being financed by voluntary contributions by a subset of members, the Rebel Outpost became so popular that by 2003, the expenses of running it caused the founders to enter into an exclusive sponsorship deal with actuarial recruitment agency DW Simpson, who financed the site in return for the right to display adverts on it.  The site was officially renamed “The Actuarial Outpost” (commonly referred to as the AO).

By 2005 however, the administration burden had become too great for for its original founders (who were still doing their day jobs) and they sold the site to DW Simpson who have run it ever since.  It is now by far the world’s largest online community of actuaries, with almost 20,000 active members, and several thousand posts a week.

So, we in the UK have a choice: do we think we are sufficiently different from US actuaries that their experience doesn’t apply to us?  In which case, fine, let’s continue posting to the “official” Faculty & Institute discussion forums.  However, they already look to be deserving of the “desert” appellation applied to their US counterparts, with tiny numbers of page views each day, and very few posts.

On the contrary, I think it makes sense to learn from what happened in the US, and I believe the lion’s share of our discussions will take place on the AO (which does have a UK section), so as previously notified, that is where I propose to post mainly from now on.

(PS: why the AO, and not a new third party forum?  Well someone is welcome to try, but the AO is well established, and is effectively to actuarial forums as Google is to search engines.  [I run an actuarial forum, www.forumsforactuaries.com, but have decided today that I might as well discontinue it, and recommend that everyone move to the AO instead].)

(PPS: and no, I’m not being paid a penny by DW Simpson for writing this [nor have they asked me to in any way].  After having run various online forums and realised the work involved, I just think the AO site makes perfect sense, both for DWS as actuarial recruiters, and more importantly for actuaries as a place to be able to discuss important issues openly and without interference from any special interests).