Learning means both asking and answering questions. It means maintaining an open mind and embracing the intellectual curiosity we all have. It means that after each visit to The Motley Fool Discussion Boards, you walk away knowing more than you did beforehand. You feel your time was well spent, even if you read things that directly contradicted your own beliefs. In fact, it’s those differing opinions that tend to make you think the most.
Together means cooperating, respecting others, respecting their time, and acting in such a way to provide the greatest benefit to the greatest number. Some of the best posts each day in Fooldom come from people who spent an inordinate amount of time analyzing a balance sheet, a product, a company visit, or a conference call. These efforts, which often win our Post of the Day award, are usually born from someone else’s desire to share their knowledge and get YOUR reaction to it. The reason they took the extra time was because they knew their information and hard work would be of benefit to hundreds or thousands of others, which made the sacrifice worth it. That’s the epitome of “together.”
“Together” also means that we all need to be responsible for what we say. Everyone at the Fool has always followed one simple rule: Only say on the boards what you’d say to someone if you met them on the street. That most often means that you act politely, treat your neighbors with respect, and avoid silly confrontations. It also means that folks act in good faith, attempting through effective questions or answers to advance the state of the community’s understanding, and whenever appropriate, trying to leave the discussion board a better place than it would have been had you not contributed to it. Because of this we tend to be much more vigilant and aggressive in managing our community than other sites. This world is all about choices and we hope that people have chosen the Fool because they want to have fun and Learn Together.
In closing, The Motley Fool Incorporated has four core values, one of which is:
To bring about social progress through cooperative endeavor, championing civil and open discourse.
This speaks directly to our belief in the inherent goodness and value of the Internet as an interactive medium that can be exploited for the cause of education, understanding, cooperation, and improvement. We try to live this and our other three core values every day at Fool HQ, and we ask those who visit fool.com to aim for this ideal just the same, every day.
Help us “Learn Together,” and we make the very same commitment to you.
