Bitcoin Forum

Recently all Newbies were restricted to a 'Newbies' board, not being allowed to post elsewhere anymore until they reach 50 posts.

I know there's a lot of complaints about Newbies not understanding things and posting irrelevant things. But by excluding them from the discussions we might very well miss interesting views from Newbies who do have something useful to say and just turn away. That, and we might become very self-righteous ourselves, possibly banning valuable retort.

They changed it to 5 posts and 4 hours online now, I think. Hence my ability to post. :)

Ok, I missed that, sounds a little more reasonable. Still, someone useful might not want to make that effort.

Were you here on "The day of Trolls"? It was horrible, and I think it only stopped because of the restrictions. I think anyone can handle 5 posts if they want in. Plus you can always browse the newbie forum if you want to see what they have to say...

No, I was watching "The Day of the Triffids" that day. You can browse the Newbie section, and I am. But:

- Someone googles on some Bitcoin subject.
- Lands in a thread here, not in the Newbie section.
- Has a useful contribution, and is willing to share it with us.
- He/She can't. At least not at the correct spot.

Can't tell how much (or little) we miss this way ofcourse.

I think restricting newbies is a good idea. They tend to always post the same topic (Bitcoin is a scam LoL!), and usually don't understand bitcoin yet. Restricting them to a nice place with a few motivated people to teach them about bitcoin is a good idea, and it leaves this place for people with interesting things to say for people who actually understand bitcoin.

Ok was also wondering why I was able to post hehe. Not sure they even implemented it, been posting a couple of times every day the last days.

Can't we leave it to the reader to judge Newbies who shout "Bitcoin is a scam!" without proper arguments? And hell, I'd like to know if someday a Newbie comes along and does have these arguments!

While I agree that you can learn a lot at this forum, I would be extremely interesting in the for opinion of for example people working in banks, stockexchanges, or with high degrees in Economics or Business etc etc even if they just learned about Bitcoin

I think the 'newbie' forum is one of the most interesting

On the other hand, this forum was starting to become unreadable amongst all the OMGBUYBUYBUYSELLSELLSELL white noise.

5 posts and 4 hours is a good balance, I think.

i think the noob forum is a very annoying thing for people who dont speak english.

Giving them their own day only legitimizes them more lol...

To be honest this happened to me, I came here and posted on some stuff before they put in the restrictions, and then found myself locked out when trying to answer questions or contribute.  Rather frustrating.
Of course I was pretty close to being allowed to post so I just stuck around a bit longer but if I had just come here I'd probably have left in frustration.

At the very least the 50 post count should be in place for starting new threads.  And then there should be enough moderators floating around to see if somebody is just crap posting all over the forums.

Let the ban hammer swing.

-airdata

Theres stickys posted everywhere, i don't think people need a noobie forum section

I'm glad this got implemented. A forum really is a kind of community, and the best way to join a community is listen first, for a little while, then start posting a little bit (and a newbie forum is just fine for that), and then posting a little more.

It makes the mods lifes easier, and it won't really keep anyone who is seriously interested in joining the community from doing so. But it will make life much harder for spammers, idiots, people opening multiple accounts to pretend their opinion is the opinion of multiple people and other stuff that's not in the best interest of Bitcoin or the people who really care about Bitcoin.

Kudos to the forum admins for this change!

The issue with people not speaking English is a valid one, though ... maybe new people should be allowed into those forums ... and people posting English in those forums be banned after second warning ;-)

censorship is ALWAYS negative and is a slippery slope, even if it does not seem so at first. Don't want to have to look at certain threads everytime b/c it clutters things? well put in a delete button and you won't have to. the way it looks now is that the 'troll' problem is the worlds 'drug' problem. an excuse to have more control and a reason to use it. views opposing the powers that be can be squashed without question. bitcoinforums.net has agreed to not censor at all and if things get messy, they will put in a button, that is why i prefer that sites setup.

EDIT:
that comes off as harsh, and i want to say that even though my account was banned on the night of the trolls, it has since been turned back on and the policy adjusted, so even while it has been shown that they are willing to crush accounts for opposing views, and delete threads for speaking out against them, they have shown to care about punishing the innocent, and have been able to admit when they were wrong(me being able to post again is case-in-point)

there are many reasons why having your mouth shown shut is bad for the progress of society. one instance quite relevant is this, on hell night last saturday a prospective bitcoin adapter/vendor came on looking for information on why he she accept bitcoins on his site, who was there to answer his questions? newbies trying to rack up post counts. what a great intro into a community.

incorrect, any reasonable individual would be able to see how this would lead to a major infux in unrelated responses. I'm not calling YOU unreasonable, because most likely you merely have not thought of this.

People can have 1 OMG THE SKY IS FALLING thread, but we don't need 50 created over one weekend.  This isn't the pokemon forums, people are heavily investing in bitcoin and people aren't a part of that shouldn't be allowed to come into the forums and just shit all over the place.. Somebody has to clean that stuff up. 

hell... even sticky a CRASH!!!! thread.  But outside of that, I'd honestly keyword restrict threads with any similar words in the title.  If people want to bump the CRASH!!! thread... go ahead.. just don't try creating another 10 of them.

somebody, yes. but not somebody FOR everybody. the SOMEBODY you are reffering to is YOU for YOURSELF. YOU should chose what YOU get to see. this can be accomplished with a HIDE THIS THREAD button, it hides the thread from you, not the ENTIRE WORLD. let me know if i was unclear, i will simplify it, it is worth my time for you to grasp this thought since we share a planet together.

How is this even up for any sort of debate?

If you run a forum and people are starting the same thread over and over again, the only logical thing to do is prevent that from happening.  New users shouldn't come into the forums and be overwhelmed with 9/10 threads being troll threads.

There is no debate about that at all...

If somebody has a valid argument they want to raise somewhere.. cool.. Do it, but don't spam the forums. 

The local forums are exempt from the restrictions.

Honestly, the Newbie forums have been a very positive change for the forum. The newb posts outside of that forum have dropped to levels we haven't seen in weeks, and the newbies are actually getting the help they need instead of being chastised by the old forum members.

Don't have 4 hours to kill and you want to announce the launch of a new Bitcoin business? We'll whitelist you. Personally, I've been whitelisting around 20 people per day.

The system works.

I was wondering what happened.. it seemed like the average IQ of this forum went up about 20 points in the last week.  Keep the trolls out.  Its not hard to get 5 posts or 4 hours accumulated. 

I used to act much more like a troll here until other people magically stopped. It's funny how that works.

we still have issues like bitcoin7.com not being able to reach the proper audience and so he had to wait for 2 hours until i got his PM to post his new exchange site. I have posted the new exchange in general now though, hopefully he will be permitted to post so he can talk about it himself.

Has anyone else noticed a correlation between price stability and the noobs/trolls being gone?

Huh? I whitelisted him a few hours ago. He can post it himself...

I'm not sure they get the concept of Bitcoin...and seeing as they view anything that opposes feeding the banks I doubt most will have any more valuable insight. 

I had a friend who works at a private country club tell me that some members were discussing Bitcoin the other day...he said how "...if they are talking about it then it should get big...", I replied "...it already is big...they are late to the game...as was I".

Then lets get into this whole "Bitcoin black friday"...only to the sheep...currency traders love that kind of volatility, most markets don't allow that kind of movement in a day...the only real problem is depth...tough to make millions in a day but easy to double a small amount if you play the market right.

The issue of when and how to moderate has been brought up many times before; I remember in particular a big debate about a month and a half ago.  The conclusion I think was live and let live. 

Better to have the forums match the user base of bitcoins than to get into the quagmire of a few individuals choosing how to shape the reflection of the bitcoin user base I say.  Information about bitcoin has been posted in many places where trolls abound, thereby attracting them.  Too late now. 

Applying a lens across the people who post here distorts the real picture of the market; that's not any better for business. 

Yes, also so they can spam the forums till no end.

I had been lurking for a while and when I finally got motivated to post I signed up and saw the newbie restriction. It was a bit disappointing, but 5 posts and 4 hours isn't so bad. It helped me learn about the myths section. However, if I had to make 50 posts in the newbie section that may have been difficult ;)

I know this could probably be gamed if the question pool was too small, but it would be an interesting experiment. My suggestion is this:

What if to shorten your wait time by 'n' amount, you had to answer correctly some factual questions about bitcoin? That would serve two purposes, educate those that need to learn, frustrate any potential troll since you are forcing them to read about the subject and comprehend it.

I suppose you could formulate some questions based on the wiki and serve them up randomly from a given pool. Just a thought. Not sure if the forum could even support that kind of functionality.

whats this!? uncensored society!? somebody stop this man before he starts saying i should be able to put whatever i want into my own body! this is an outrage!

+1

Now that you mention it...yes.

short and sweet:

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=17107.0

anyone else notice that the price staying roughly the same for a couple days has been happening over and over for the past year? I'll tell you what i noticed, my neighbor had a different maid come by right when the price started to dip from 30. coincidence? I think not!

Everything you write makes the case to keep noobs in the playpen stronger. Hell, I wouldn't even trust ME if I were an old-timer. That Black Friday crash was a coordinated attack and the trolls scared many people out of their money.  We needed a correction, but that stampede was stared deliberately.

What about Captcha to combat the trolls, at least give them some headache.

We are better off if people stupid enough to lose money based on thoughtless newbie rants lose their money. All the money that was 'lost' was simply transferred to smarter hands.

By the way, I am honored that you are such a dedicated follower of my posts to have had read them all. Thank you.

Don't worry, I'm not expecting you to reply  :D

presumably, anyone smart enough to be able to make sentences that can scare people out of their money, is able to crack even the trickiest of captchas.

This is certainly not the best solution, and I never intended it to be permanent. I have a long-term solution in mind: A new jr. moderator position is added with no moderation ability over established posters. Newbies can post freely, but their posts are subject to more strict moderation by the many jr. moderators. All newbie posts are additionally available on a single page for review by all members for moderation/reporting.

The reporting system also needs to be enhanced, and moderation needs to be made easier.

This requires extensive modifications to SMF, so we'll have to make do with the "newbies" section until I get time to code it or someone contributes the code. I think the section has been pretty successful in containing trolling, spamming, and repeat questions: the only downside is that it is annoying and drives away potential contributors.

+1

I've never been annoyed by newbie posts. I'd much rather ignore the occasional display of ignorance than create an elitist/unwelcoming atmosphere.

Personally, I read a ton about bitcoin before I ever posted even one comment. I think that is probably the more common scenario.

I didn't sell a single BTC, but the value of my stash dropped over 30% from the highs. Not all the rants were thoughtless. They were targeted misinformation. Scaring players and dollars out of the Bitcoin economy isn't good for the Bitcoin economy, is it?

If you had been smarter with your bitcoins you would have recognized a pattern occuring and you have sold high, bought low, not sat idly by and watched others do so while you lost value. Luckily, father logic was here to punish the fools and reward the clever so that uncle progress could get on with his work.