Hi @Grant, in the time since i have been active on Q, i have always very much appreciated your perceptive and often provocative posts, both from a philosophical and from a very practical perspective. Does this mean that we are going to lose the benefit of all your previous posts? Best wishes, TonyM.

No, the posts are just fine. I've just decided to clean house and start over in terms of my workflow (take some time to focus on factor research exclusively).

Ah, that's good!

Whew. I feel the same. @Grant I definitely have benefited from your posts. The forums wouldn't be the same without you. Glad you aren't thinking of moving on.

Thanks Dan. It is very much a hobby for me. It's been pretty cool. I've been active since 2012, shortly after they went public with the site. I try to be respectful that it is their site, and that they are trying to make a living at this silly thing. "That ain't workin' that's the way you do it
Get your money for nothin' get your chicks for free." No need for "free chicks" here, but the idea of free money is alluring...

Same here @Grant. I may not always agree with you, but I've always appreciated and enjoyed your thought-provocative posts and generous help, so I'm glad you're not leaving altogether.

A brave, but smart, move too I reckon. I'm not quite as brave but I'm trying to do something similar. I've been too addicted to the backtester for too long, and as a result, convinced I've overfitted all my strategies quite a bit without realizing it. I'm therefore forcing myself not to use the backtester for any of my own strategies, until I've fully researched my factors in Alphalens (AL) first. I feel I know the backtester well enough now too, and AL not nearly as well, so a new challenge will keep things interesting too.

Hope we can continue to help and learn from each other as we learn more about alpha research in AL.

Q support - any update? I still see 1 algo and 347 backtests, but I'd like to delete all of my IP, please.

Here are the current screen shots:

Grant, this looks like a bug of some sort. We'll prioritize a fix as appropriate.

Very wise action, Grant and I'm very happy that you did this.

When I posted the query, I was concerned about your IP being exposed in the public domain for years, as it is entirely conceivable that anyone could clone your algorithm to add factors and orthogonise the risk factors and to game it against your IP.

Following Josh Payne's post on the change of terms, I enquired with Quantopian support on certain definitions on the subject, and it occurred to me that you could be running the risk that I was concerned about, ie. 5. Proprietary Rights:

"If you choose to post, display or otherwise make your Content available in the Common Areas, such Content is considered Shared Content. By so posting any of your Content in Common Areas of the Site and Services, you hereby grant to Quantopian, users of the Site or any other Quantopian platform, and other Members a worldwide, sublicensable, assignable, royalty-free, fully paid, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to make, have made, use, reproduce, modify, translate, distribute, transmit, create derivative works of, perform, display, import, and otherwise exploit, without the requirement to make any payment to you or the need to seek any third party permission, such Content in any form, media, or technology, whether now known or hereafter devised or developed, and to allow others to do the same, but at all times, in accordance with Quantopian’s Privacy Policy."

Happy coding. Love your posts!

ps: not sure what you can do with cached content, like Google's

@ Josh -

Thanks for checking. What's the story with cached/back-up data? Given your focus on users owning their IP, do you have a process in place to permanently delete copies of their private content?