Bitcoin Forum

I keep a mental list of forum members to pay extra attention to, as I think many do. On my list are obvious names like Gavin and jgarzik, but also others I've long since added like DeathAndTaxes, evoorhees, and Mike Hearn to name a few.

This post is inspired by a member I had suspected should make my list and did with the post Why does everyone keep calling them fees? They're not fees, they're BIDS! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=151420.0). Now, instinctively, going by the username alone 'blablahblah' I would not expect much content of value. So my idea is a sort of reverse ignore button.

My guess of how this forum's ignore link works is when clicked by a number of users it glows progressively prominent shades of orange. While I've personally never clicked to ignore anyone the glowing names I see seem to tally with my loose mental list. As Bitcoin becomes more popular and this forum grows it will be harder to separate the signal from the noise. Maybe a link that reads 'don't ignore' and glows progressively green could be helpful. Using post count alone isn't ideal as people can say a lot about nothing.

I do caution as much as a visual indicator might help I hesitate to suggest it. That's because people can be spot on about some things while off on others. Giving visual weight to a user's words shouldn't be done lightly. So maybe a better version would be a private link that glows only one shade of green for the user that clicks it. That would help me at least to keep track.

It'd be cool to just shade the background of their whole post a light green.  A big and obvious indicator as you're scrolling through a thread.

Yeah, that would be awesome too, a post specific indicator.

That's also along the lines of why I had the idea. There is so much content I'm finding increasingly I won't delve into a thread without checking first if anyone on my list has posted there (for topics of non-obvious interest).

On another forum I am on there is a +rep/-rep (reputation) system.

After a while, you get little green dots (kinda like the little bitcoins) for a lot of +rep that people give you. You get red dots as people give you -rep.

Hazek knows what I am talking about.


Also, this thread would be better off in this category: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=24.0

Yes, it seems many large successful communities with UGC (user generated content) have some sort of vote indicator of user approval. This can apply to posts and/or users. Good examples are Reddit and Hacker News.

I know we're still trying to get a forum overhaul programmed, but it seems that's not forthcoming. Like the watchlist feature maybe this is something fairly simple yet worth implementing.


Possibly. I know this doesn't mention Bitcoin specifically, but I think it's still about Bitcoin because Bitcoin is decentralized and governed democratically. Some sort of vote metrics in such a system I think are helpful. I've never once clicked the Meta section.

You misunderstand me. Believe it or not I agree completely with your concern. Voting indicators, if not applied correctly, can be absolutely horrible. That's why I qualified my OP saying a vote of endorsement for particular users should be only visible privately.

The subject of effective voting measures for UGC communities is something I've thought a lot about. Your concern is completely valid. I think elimination of down votes is often helpful for the reasons you state. However, up votes that apply to specific posts I think is often helpful. We already do this here sort of by quoting and adding +1. Having that tally embedded in each post might be helpful.

Edit: and to eliminate popularity bias even up votes might only be visible from users you've added to your own "don't ignore" list.