Bitcoin Forum

Since mining altcoins has proven profitable, there is endless discussion about it everywhere in the forum now, especially in the bitcoin/mining subsection. The signal to noise ratio for people interested primarily in bitcoin is dropping rapidly.

Should 1. The topics be moderated/moved to not include any altcoin discussion, 2. More subsections created for altcoin discussion (such as mining), or 3. Pretend altcoins are part of bitcoin?

I suggest moving anything involving altcoins to alternate cryptocurrencies.

Said it before, but anything involving Ripple to the trashcan

If you see topics about alt-coins, use the report function.  I always move relevant topics (that I can move) to the alt-coin section.

That would be half the mining topics these days. Are you sure you want us to start doing that?

edit: Not that I object to that idea...

Yup, that's what the button is there for!

My suggestion would be to report the first post, if the post is about alt-coins and not bitcoin.

If the topic isn't about altcoins but on-topic replies are about altcoins, that's OK.

Muhahah...

EDIT: Thanks, and nice quick action on your part too  :)

*John gets his pail and bucket to clean up the alts, and dumps the contents to Alt section*  :P

Told you it was everywhere! 70 posts reported so far just from mining/...

OK. I have now put "Alternate cryptocurrencies" on my ignore boards.
Was interested to read the occasional piece about litecoin and ripple, but there is so much other noise that it distracts from the main event.
Appreciate all the work the mods do to keep the jungle in order...

I've done the same thing. It would be nice if the altcoin section could be subdivided for more precise ignoring.

Then it just turns into 'bitcointalk.org' deciding what coins are good now, I don't think theymos wants to do that.

Why can't it be just like any section of the forum: if there are too many threads in a single area it gets subdivided.

Honestly I just want to be able to ignore everything except threads about Ripple, but if I un-ignore the Alternate Cryptocurrencies section my "Show unread posts since last visit" becomes completely unusable.

And this is bitcointalk. The altcoins can start their own forum for specific discussion about that coin.

Which is the correct forum to discuss ways in which Ripple might be used to facilitate the movement of dollars to and from Bitcoin exchanges?

Ripple shouldn't be considered an altcoin seeing how it's hopefully going to be used to exchange bitcoins for currency.

Ripple has elements of an alt coin and a distributed centralized payment/exchange system. It's still very much an altcoin.

Ok, and what should I do with the Portuguese forum? People have been posting about Litecoins and other clonecoins there, but I can't move those posts to the alt. curr. board as the posts are written in Portuguese and if I trash them someone will be mad at me.
Any ideas?

There a bunch of alt coin posts every day?  If so, you should talk to theymos about getting a portuguese alt-coin subforum setup.

It needs it badly. The issue has been getting progressively worse.

I don't really mind it too much. But for the new people who come and the first thing they see is a bunch of posts about "feathercoin" and "bbqcoin", it's probably both confusing and off putting.

One Off-Topic child-board would be enough to send those posts to, after all this IS BitcoinTalk and any alt coin thread is off-topic per se.

That's a solid option.

I haven't been here long but I've seen this point raised several times and I still don't understand the reluctance to create sub forums for altcoins. Surely all altcoins are simply alternate versions, variations, or flavours of bitcoin by definition?

FTFY

Lol.. thanks.. but seriously, they're all variations on bitcoin to a greater or lesser degree aren't they?

I can appreciate you not liking them, but is that a good reason to not have sub forums for them? Surely sub forums are simply about making the site easier to use for people?

To be honest I only see one alt chain trying to do something different using the Bitcoin codebase and that is Namecoin.
Most others are just pump-and-dump schemes made by fellows who are butthurt for not being a Bitcoin early adopter, like we aren't all early adopters still ;)

Agreed. Every time I pop in the alt subsection I see yet another pump and dump coin.  :-\

I hear you.. but does the (lack of) value of altcoins mean they shouldn't have sub forums? If we can separate what we think of altcoins from whether they need sub forums, we might decide that sub forums for altcoins is a useful move for the forum in general.

No doubt new altcoins will be popping up for a while yet, so why not at least try to minimize the increasing chaos of a single altcoin sub forum by giving altcoins individual sub forums? Otherwise surely the problem is only going to get worse..

Giving altcoins their own individual forums is a nonstarter, far too many altcoins come and go in a matter of days/weeks.

Besides, the majority of them have very few changes, making new subforums would be putting more work into the altcoins than went into the altcoin itself.

How about just deleting the entire Alternative Currencies board? Problem solved instead of getting worse.
Whoever makes those coins can setup their own forums with their pump-and-dump early mining profits.

And have a pure bitcoin forum with no discussion of altcoins at all? That would be one solution.. but is it likely to happen, realistically?

If not, what else can be done about the problem?

They could still discuss them: on the Off-Topic board.
Now try to follow my thought: what if theymos really decides to delete that entire board and forbid alt coin threads? What will happen to all those homeless dudes who relied on BitcoinTalk.org to discusspump their alt-coin flavour of the day? In the name of decentralization they should setup their own forums on their own domains and servers. They're relying on theymos(and bitcointalk.org staff) too much. Bitcoin by itself is a magnet for problems and trolls, alt coins only aggravate that problem.

Wouldn't that be back to square one with a mass of posts about various altcoins all on the one board?


I agree it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing for altcoins to set up their own domains/forums, so long as the bitcointalk forum in general didn't see it as a loss..

Theoretically one would not need one separate subforum for each coin, but rather subforums such as "marketplace", "exchange", "mining", "giveaways"... that would make it future proof and much tidier with very little effort.

Either way this is getting out of hand. You guys need to take a stance and either expand the altcoins subforum or remove it altogether.

We have taken a stance, some people just want to see how many ways they can hear no.

Alternate cryptocurrencies is the alternative to deleting them, nothing more. Nothing against them really, at least some have a goal. But at the end of the day, there's few things more annoying than seeing yet another good thread have a 5 page derail over how xcoin is better.

This forum is already a lot of work and time, would require a lot of restructuring and many more mods to be the 'cryptocurrency forum'. Alt currencies would require a lot of work and child boards to get it under control.

There's more than one forum in the world, and this forum is bitcointalk.

This aggressive migration of threads has certainly helped drive precisely what is needed for both bitcointalk and the altcoin discussions:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=202630.0

1 year too late... ;D

Oh it's the second forum of its kind.

Now all we need is a new altcoin forum every day.

No, wait...

They are usually based on variations of the bitcoin code. However, other altcoins

• ...usually don't even have a dedicated community that accepts the coins (hence, no dedicated forums or irc). Many of the people run as soon as another coin is more profitable for speculation.
• ...usually don't have a remotely dedicated dev team. Many of them are "create and run", so there is no one to address problems with the network or even rebase to newer versions of the client.
• ...are often schemes to prey on newbies that think all coins are created equally. It's trivial to fork the bitcoin code with a different genesis block and different parameters, however to think that this gets you even close to what bitcoin community has built up painfully over the years is "cargo cult" thinking.
• ...are often pump and dump schemes (many exceptions here, but even the coins not set up as pump and dump are used thusly)
• ...are sometimes vectors to install spyware to steal other wallets and/or login info

There are some exceptions (such as ripple), but as said by others it's not up to bitcointalk.org to "pick winners". IMO the founders of the altcoin should make sure that their community has places to communicate.

Its killing me, there are 30 new coins per day, and all of them have equal rights to post, as we take a neutral stance on the coins themselves. And then people complain that they need to be moderated, but if I moderate the coins they they support, then I get yelled at (plus I don't have the right to moderate the majority of them) and it just continues.

Right now I'm just hoping that they will become less profitable soon, so the crowd will die down a little, but in case that doesn't happen, we are working on ideas on how to manage.

I agree it is sencelees to make a child board for each alt coin but i see absolutely no reason why you don't support
subforums such as "marketplace" "mining".The argumentation against this possibility is weak.
Yes, maybe its more work but i'm sure that anyone would help you out.
Who would be disadvantaged with this solution? I think this forum policy is dubious.

The forum policy is way less dubious than 99% of the alt coins out there ::)

Regardless of what you do as a forum policy, moving the altcoin threads out of the bitcoin mining subforum has made it much easier for me to actually provide support for people looking for help mining actual bitcoin. Whether I choose to help altcoin miners or not is secondary for me based on time, whereas I actually do want to help people trying to mine bitcoin. I'm sure it's the same for most other people who primarily care about bitcoin.

I think that the bitcoin community has the responsability to posicionate itself including in a better space in the forum the really innovative, community supported and complementary coins and take distance from the others (lost projects, pump amb dump, scam, premined etc...)

So i think that is not difficult to consens that there some coins that are complementary to bitcoin and have innovations and real community suport:

At first first level:
litecoin
namecoin

at a second level:
ppcoin
devcoin
freicoin

and no more, until other coins demonstrate long time, huge communitary support.

Every one of this real cryptocurrencies, have their own forum (perhaps except devcoin?) but not exist a forum to talk about the real cryptocurrencies as a group related to bitcoin.

But i think that a at the current moment its pretty important to think and create about technical innovation and public outreach, not only for bitcoin (in competition with other real crytocurrencies?)  but bitcoin & other real alts.  So we need a common space for bitcoin & and other real cryptos. and the better space is this, bitcointalk as the more consolidated forum...

At the sime time that Dollar, euro, pounds, pesos, yen, yuan ruble...etc its the cluster of the fiat money and their technical and organization its useful for all the cluster (central banks, ATM, credit cards, etc...)
Our technical organization as a cluster of p2p& crypto currencies needs to be useful for all the cluster.

So, I propose to rethinking bitcoin talk & other  cryptocurrencies.

perhaps a subforum in "other" section could be:
- Bitcoin & Other real cryptocurrencies (litecoin, namecoin, ppcoin, devcoin, freicoin)

And inside (child forums like mining project development, etc...)

and alternative cryptocurrencies subforum, could be abandoned or just make and advice/above post saying:
"bitcoin talk itself not responsible of the content of this subforum"

just my opinion!  :)

I do things for bitcoin because I believe in it and wish to make a profit - I am not a big time miner, I'm a developer primarily. I do things for litecoin only for profit - if the donations went away, I'd drop support for it in a flash. Ironically, that's what most miners do with litecoin but won't freely admit it. Telling me what I should care about is what I'd call shitty. Passing judgement on someone for not caring about what you care about is a bit rich.

Well then, I'm glad I donated you two litecoins that day :P . Reason I mine ltc, the btc diff is to high for just two gpu's & plus I can throw my processor @ ltc mining. Lets hope you don't drop ltc support :) .

Edit: I think btc mining is for the big boys, now.