Bitcoin Forum

The bitcoin forum used to be a place of lively discussion of political and economic theories and practices.  Now it has descended into a junk name-calling forum full of irrelevant and ridiculous topics, each topic full of irrelevant and ridiculous posts.  Can anyone suggest an alternative bitcoin forum for me to join?  Is there any?

http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoin

/r/trees is much better [20]

It really is pretty terrible. There needs to be a invite-only/heavily moderated forum that gets rid of the morons.

We need to throw them in here (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?board=11.0).

Preferably a forum where the devs are listening...

That'd be nice.

Ever since June 3 or June 4 it's gotten really bad, all these new people coming in since the Silk Road stories.

I lol'd.

Youre right. And I'm sorry for my part in that.

I think things had just gotten so tense and accusatory with everyone on edge about recent events of the hackerly/conspiratorial/no talent ass clown nature that some juvenile steam needed to be blown off....gallows humor, perhaps...

T-minus what now?

Anywhere you go...there you are.

Changing things starts with you; Think of a useful, relevant, non-redundant topic and start a thread.
I started a thread ~12 hours ago that now has over 25 or 30 replies and last time I looked there was a great discussion with no trolls.

You could try bitcoinforums.net.  There may be others out there as well.

This forum needs to be removed from the bitcoin.org domain and moved to its own domain.  It shouldn't have any official sanction from the main site.  Let the various forums compete for users based on quality, rather than having a single poorly-run official forum.

"Devs" left this forum long ago... They cannot be expected to listen to all this noise.

Not true.  I just got a reply from Gavin in one of my more technical question-asking threads today.

Maybe reporting all the troll-threads and -posts would make things a bit better. Though I agree, even though I've only been on this board for a few weeks I too witnessed the upcoming of all the trolls and kiddies hoping to make a quick buck. I guess something like an ignore-function would also be nice so you don't get threads/posts displayed by people you ignore.

I would love to see an ignore function.

Please yes, was saddened by it absence even more so by the rash of troll's and spammers as of late.
Completely agree with the OP.

You can help by thinking about the way you post, too. (Not referring to anyone in particular here.)

Think before posting. If you find someone's writings raising your blood pressure, back away from the keyboard. Do not write anything until you've calmed down. When you do reply, vet your responses for anything that could be considered offensive. Once you've written your posting, go through it, sentence by sentence, and prune all the barbs. There's always a neutral way to say whatever it is you want to say, and even if your counterpart is a bona fide troll, remaining civil and calm will soon rob them of mistakes to latch on to. Either the other will respond in a reasonable manner and your discussion will go somewhere, or they'll degenerate further into ad hominems and irrelevancies, at which point you can with good conscience discontinue any discussion.

If a discussion is truly going nowhere, withdraw from it. Offer no insult, just take your leave.

Theres many bitcoin forums you can choose one. Heres mine

www.tweetforum.com/bitcoin

twitter.com/bitcoinforum

I built a forum that connects to twitter and sends the users updates on every post, so they are always connected. I love this forum though , it's not perfect, but it really gets the job done.

that's not going to do it.

most ideas regarding the bitcoin technology are usually either met with "keep your stinking hands of my bitcoins" or "go fork the blockchain and 'fork' yourself" to have your idea implemented.

this forum is about speculation instead of technology now and the attitude is very similar to other "investment" forums.
which is no surprise, as bitcoin is about speculation right now, as there is no economy accepting bitcoin to speak of.

Actually there is and its growing every single day

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade

I really don't think its that bad...sure improvements can be made, but most of these complaints are exaggerations

no there isnt.
if you look at other fiat monetary systems, the base money supply roughly around 30% of annual GDP.
that would mean a bitcoin economy of 18mBTC or ~270m$.

bitcoin is speculation as of now, and this forum proves it further.

Your going by traditional standards. How many fiat monetary systems do you know that are only 2 years old?

none. you don't have to take what I say as a criticism of bitcoin.
it's just a fact that the current bitcoin value is speculation. for example, speculation that bitcoin will be adopted as a form of payment and the money supply will be a reasonable ratio to GDP and these BTC/USD prices one day be justified.
but they aren't now.

I don't see how you can interpret these values and claim that bitcoin isnt 99% speculators.
remember that bitcoin can draw its value only from 2 things: demand from circulation and speculation.

yes, voting +/- on every post,
posters with negative balance in votes would  get posting disabled for a week...

Go for it TheManOfTown. There is niche in the market to fill, do it.

That would be the most boring forum ever. If someone wants to create it, I totally support it. Let all whining people go away.

TheManOfTown: All good suggestions. I'm starting to think a very strict code of conduct needs to be enforced for a forum such as this to work. Only civil posts, no ad hominems, no aggressiveness, perhaps no profanity. The idea being to not moderate ideas but wordings.
Some fairly random examples of posts which I think should not be tolerated in their current form follow. Most of these are fine, even useful in terms of the content behind the rage, but would be better expressed in more neutral terms.

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=21405.msg268477#msg268477
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=20572.msg263925#msg263925
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=20437.msg261202#msg261202
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=20535.msg256510#msg256510


Now, before I get told to shut up or leave, these are not demands. I simply prefer an environment where it's possible to actually communicate, and it's gotten pretty difficult here. The guidelines above are very draconian, I admit. If implemented, they should in my opinion come in tandem with very transparent moderation. Clear limits on moderator powers, and repercussions for exceeding them. No thread deletions. You can't trust mods if you can't judge for yourself whether they are doing their job or abusing their power. This is not some random hobbyist forum. People have money invested in Bitcoins, and accusations of, say,  moderator collusion with Bitcoin businesses are therefore very damaging.

Maybe the bitcoin.org powers that be will do something like what I'm asking for. If not, I'm very willing to give any forum that does a shot.

I'm new to Bitcoin and I'm loking for good info, I'm spending a lot of time reading post that are very little help.  The forum is moderated, but it doesn't feel like it.

I checked reddit and it is already more helpful, I may go live there for a while. 

There is lots of info at tweetforum, theres info here, theres info everywhere ! Just get to it !

I checked a couple of the links above. Certainly posts that could have had a more civil language. Profanity never is a good idea when you try to get a message accros. So I agree with most if not all what you say. I see someone mentioned such a forum would be boring. Well, I think those who really loves the drama and all the trolling can stick to forums where this happens. I will go forward with my idea and I will see how it develops. There's possible to make deleted posts reviewable by admins, so that even if moderators abuse their powers, this will be noticed. There will of course be a discussion as to how the rules should be set on such a niche forum for bitcoin users, and there will of course always be disagreement over how it should be run, however, I think I've got my main point across in my first post. And when I start this forum, no matter how it turns out, everyone would still be free tho choose, if a user do not like the draconian rules, then that user is free to leave. The problem is that the minute you start backing off or giving slack in the rules, then problems will occur, and users will complain the rules are not equal for everyone, and eventually some of those users who did not get their will or became banned will call me names too. Something like that is impossible to prevent.

But I agree with you. Communicating in a civil manner would be of outmost importance in such a forum. And profanity and name calling is not something that I would want to have on such a forum. It wouldn't be too hard to police moderators, and see their actions (this can be logged). However, forum admins will have total control of such a forum, and as such, the forum admin would need to be trusted. Trust is usually built up over time, and that's the only way to do it when making a service for the community. I am of course open to any suggestions for how rules should be set and enforced.

Yes, I agree with this too. I asume the sheer volume of posts can be an attributing factor. These days it seems like 5% of what's posted in this forum (or less) gives
me any food for tought, and the rest is just mindless waste. Personally I don't like waste so much, although I am sure some of the users on this forum actually can
find amusement in hillarious trolling and stupid jokes.

Word.

Um... I'm sorry this is not very contributing.. but I couldn't help it seeing this one:  ;D

two weeks ago this was a thriving community of level headed intellectual progressives, now every post is met by gangs of thugs and mental midgets severely limited in world experience.
such is the nature of human civilization.  :(

It's been this way for quite a while.

@TheManOfTown - I may be interested in participating in such a forum.

I disagree about the "no referral link" rule though.

And I'll take this opportunity to say that one of the problems of this forum is people not bothering to read the documentation and posting criticisms of Bitcoin that are trivially debunked. This is exhausting after a while.

Your disagreement is noted, and I do understand why. :) But that's the way it is, people will have different opinions. Personally I do not like referral-programs, I never did. I am more of the opinion that if you create a business online or elsewhere, focus mainly on creating a great service, and customers will come, and they will tell others about your service. I understand other people will have a different view on this, and esp. those who are personally benefiting from the referral links. I am sure you and me would not agree on that particular issue, so let's just agree that we disagree. :)


Yes, it is. But I believe that's the nature of humans. Many people do not RTFM. Perhaps such threads should be closed down immediately with a link to a page where said questions could be answered if the users just spends 30 mins of his time to actually read the information present. There's nothing wrong with newbees, but I think everyone should first try to find the answer to what they need through reading available information and doing some google searches. There's a lot of information available about bitcoin, and it's not too hard to find. Also if questions asked are already in the sticky threads in a forum, I think the thread should be closed immediately with a point to the information that will answer the questions of the user.

After running forums through many years, I realize it is 100% impossible to keep all users 100% satisfied all the time, and no matter how you do things, people will call you names sooner or later. :)

"You can keep some of the people happy some of the time, but you cannot keep all of the people happy all of the time" :)

This all started with that guy on OCN making the bitcoin guide for the internet trolls for all to see. A lot longer than 2 weeks. I remember this clearly because the decline of the level of intelligence in every post was dreadfully noticeable right after the initial wave of those people emerged on the forum. That guy pretty much single handedly dropped the average intelligence of the bitcoin community by more than 50% due the sheer amount of the new people and the extraordinary level of intelligence they share.

The solution has already been proposed and rejected (paid forum), and since that time the forum has become even more useless and is now just a place for bitcoin enemies to collect comedy fodder for regurgitation on other sites.  Financial-based forums ONLY work when they are fee-based.

I find it difficult to believe that users of a forum about a currency would be so violently opposed to direct participation in the economy they want to promote.

I completely agree! But practically speaking, experience shows you can get more with a mediocre service and good marketing than with a good service and mediocre marketing. People should indeed strive to offer the best possible service, but they would do well not to neglect an honest, respectful yet effective marketing if they do not wish their great service to remain unused. (It's the "respectful" part that some of the referral spammers don't get...)

Come on, we're not that different you and I. The main thing that prompted my objection is that my affiliation with Tradehill is actually a step up from being a mere referral whore. So referring to them has some qualities of linking to my own services, leaving me confused if I am allowed to do one but not the other.

PS. I actually also have my own service, which I do not yet link to in my signature for strategic reasons.

If only there were an appropriate corresponding sub-forum to post this in ...

Look at my sigline.

Being a moderator sycophant isn't going to score you any points.

Yes, by all means, let's hide this thread in Meta like the retarded stepchild in the attic. 

We want this issue to be discussed and seen, so the only place it should go is in Bitcoin Discussion.

I wish the trolls would go away. All they do is hurt the public perception of Bitcoin. They make stupid threads about losing 20k Bitcoins, 400, etc.

I agree, if we only had more level headed posters like you this place would be a lot better off.

That, ahem, being said... It's clearly a moderation failure to some great degree. There are plenty of higher traffic forums than this that maintain a much higher S/N ratio. You can think laissez faire works great for economics, but it's a clear proven failure for forums. A little moderation goes a long way, there has to be a broken window theory type process going on here where people see mayhem and shit S/N and decide to contribute to it because obviously nobody cares about the forums very much.

I mean really, there are obvious trolls (no offense imperi), pyramid schemes, rehashed flame wars and hucksters all over the main subforums. Spend a few days with a real editorial policy and suddenly there'd be a lot less of that going on to have to moderate. It seems the main problem is that the moderators are mostly just checked out, maybe nobody's really in charge or they've moved on to greener pastures.

Or maybe, they are proponents of free speech and not censorship.  If someone creates a post about a new pyramid scheme they have created, and it is removed, wouldn't that be considered censorship?  Or if someone wants to report that their 25k BTC went missing, but their thread was deleted, would that REALLY look good for bitcoin?

The nature of new people constantly joining up means that conversations and arguments WILL be rehashed.  There are a few trolls who need to be brought under control, but other than that, I see no need for extra moderation.

An ignore button would go a long way toward fixing that, IMO.

An up/down voting system with the result of enough downvotes in relation to the upvotes being a TROLL marking, similar to the SCAMMER one (maybe little troll icons instead of coins)?

I'm sure some of them would wear it proudly.

Ignore would be great.  Voting system, not so much, as it could be easily abused.  Just think about groups of trolls working in tandem, and how they could really screw things up with a public voting system.

Some sort of rep system could be set up... But I agree it could be abused, if not properly managed or weighted. Might be more work than it's worth.

HERESY!  (just joking)  ;D


Yeah, this is a real clisterfick of a forum.  When I first visited here, I saw plenty of user handles with "Moderator" underneath - many of them with posts in the "Newbies" section - so I assumed that there were some reasonable posting rules here that were actively enforced.  Turns out, the only rule I subsequently found was this posted by Atlas: "Rule #1: Use best judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules."  Since then, sirius posted a Forum Moderation Policy (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=20333.0) that has been met with considerable resistance.  It's inexplicable, given the current sorry state of affairs.

To be fair, this forum probably needed very little moderation in the past (I wish I was here then), and the recent tsunami of new users here might've caught the admins/moderators off-guard.  They appear to be addressing the situation, so I'll be taking a wait & see approach.


It's a matter of priorities.  Seems to me if your primary goal is to promote bitcoin by providing a forum where interested parties can exchange useful ideas and solutions, then "free speech" takes a back seat to that goal.  (at least to some extent)  There has always been tension between Quality Information/Free Speech, and the mayhem observable on this forum confirms that.  Member JohnDoe pretty much covers it in two sentences (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=20333.msg258491#msg258491).


Well, I see a lot more than just "a few" trolls here, but I won't argue that with you on that.  But I would ask how do you propose the trolls be brought under control?  Warnings from a moderator?  And if a troll refuses to heed the warning, what are you left with?  The only other remaining options are suspension or ban - i.e., censorship.  Is there another option I'm unaware of?

I'm kinda glad you chimed in on this thread, Sgt.  You're the proprietor of the forum in your sig, right?  I visited bitcoinforums.net earlier today, and (if I read correctly) you seem to be in the process of working out a posting policy.  Right now, you've listed the following rules:


Seems reasonable to me.  But your list begs the question: what are the consequences for violating these rules?  Damn near every forum worth its salt that I've ever visited enumerates the penalties for violators.  If they don't, you may as well assume that there are no consequences - and therefore no meaningful rules either.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not picking on you, your site, or your rules and expectations.  Quite the opposite in fact, I applaud you for setting out some reasonable rules at your site's inception (which is more than can be said for this place).

Just for the record, not everyone benefits from referral links. I for one know of a site, www.eurobilltracker.com, that doesn't pay or reward in any way for using referral links. All users gain by referring people is a higher position in a ranking, as in "Wow this guy brought 32 other people here!".

That said, I've never used my referral link to that site :).

Original postings wouldn't need to be removed/censored, a simple edition by the moderators would be enough. There's a recent thread that features some red bold letters added by a mod, warning users that the post could be a scam.

We already have a "Report to moderator" link that appears in each and every post. Let's use it.

didn't we already try a +/- voting system? IIRC some troll single-handedly killed it by rating everyone and everything into the ground..
a more sophisticated solution was discussed but seems to be difficult to implement with smf.

i think a personal blacklist would help a lot, and some way to have a whitelist and a separate "stream" with only posts of whitelisted people would be really awesome.

I suppose I was being inappropriately sarcastic regarding my free speech comment.  Being that this forum is a second stop for many people interested in finding out more about what bitcoins are all about, we do need to be at least somewhat careful with what is posted.  Make a good first impression and all of that.

How to deal with trolls here?  If it were me, I'd give a warning for each instance of obvious trolling.  3 warnings = a ban.  They can write up a ban appeal to possibly get unbanned if they want, and the moderators would review it and vote on whether they believe the person would correct their behavior and should be given a second chance.

Thanks for pointing out that I need more information for my own forum's procedures for dealing with rule breakers.  That should definitely be specified, at least to some extent.  I imagine the procedure will end up similarly to what I just stated above.

You think this forum is horrible, the MTGOX support forum is like a seething hellish troll slaughter orgy trainwreck.

Report obvious trolling and off-topic posts.

You may specify more strict rules in your OP, and moderators should moderate according to these rules as long as the rules are reasonable and very clear. For example, you could ban certain words (though you must specify the words).

Yes the forum is terrible. It has been proposed many times to improve it to focus on customer support and development (see also the "Kill the politics forum" thread) and kill the trolling parts. But the admins simply choose to ignore this, it seems.

Note that the forum admins are an almost completely distinct group from the bitcoin devs so don't rail on the devs please because of this :)

Your approach seems very reasonable, and certainly in line with what I read after a quick search on "forum moderation best practices".  I might just have to go over to bitcoinforums.net and register (if you'll have me!)   :D


ROFL...I'll be looking for ways to use that phrase in everyday conversation.  Gotta suck being a mod @MtGox right now.


Excellent point.  Although it kinda makes you wonder who's in charge here, because IMO this forum is a liability for bitcoin adoption.  It's bitcoin.org for christ's sake!  Since the devs have as much (or more) skin in this game as anyone, I'd expect them to be the most vocal proponents of cleaning up this place.  (not publicly on the forum, of course)

EDIT: Har!  We're in Other/Meta now!  Be careful what you ask for, eh?  I'll take it as a good sign, though.

Sure, you're more than welcome to come on over!  Right now, I'm having an issue with getting forum activity up.  I anticipated it to be a little easier than this to start up a new forum.  Lots of people seem to register, make a good number of new posts, and then are never heard from again.  I think it's just the lack of activity, but I can only start so many new threads myself before it starts to look like a "SgtSpike is talking to himself" forum.

I thought this was a bitcoin forum, not a "progressives" forum. I'm from the UK and don't see any reason why this forum should pander to your political beliefs which I consider as offensive as the BNPs. Likewise, I don't expect it to pander to my political beliefs or anyone else's either.

Don't you love how we can speak the same language and still have a language barrier? Only in English. He meant 'Forward thinkers', not what those idiots have co-opted the word to mean.

Thanks!  And hey, seeding discussion is an entirely appropriate thing for a moderator to do at the beginning - but I see your point.

Back OT, here's a prime example of how forum.bitcoin.org is a veritable case study of how NOT to moderate.  First we have a post (emphasis mine) by theymos, an "Administrator", dated 6/9:


Ten days later, hugolp (a "Global Moderator") posts this in a thread titled "The Labor Theory of Money w/ regards to Microeconomics...":


::) So lets see...here we have a moderator replying to a somewhat off-topic comment by another poster with a completely off-topic post - in violation of another moderator's posting rule!

Somehow I resisted the temptation to click the "Report to moderator" link and report the post.   :-X

Since I've mostly vented in this thread without really contributing anything constructive, I'd like to offer a few suggestions (if any mods/admins are reading this):

• Have one person in charge of maintaining/updating the rules (you've allowed a free-for-all for users, don't have one for the mods)
• Keep all forum posting rules in one highly visible place. (they seem to be scattered all over the forum right now)
• Inform new users that they implicitly agree to the rules upon registering their account. (I don't recall seeing this)
• Mods should post under a "non-moderator" handle if they are frequently contributing to forum discussions (to preserve the appearance of impartiality)

I guess it goes without saying that moderators who post under their "moderator" handle are subject to the rules like everyone else.

I'm not going to delete that one, since it would have been OK if that post and his post just afterward were combined. That they're separate posts doesn't really matter. The purpose of the rule is to force all participants to constantly contribute to the discussion, which hugolp was clearly doing.

Anyway, you should report all posts that you think are wrong, regardless of whether the poster is a mod/admin. (Hugolp was not a moderator at the time of that post, however.)

 :P

Heh, now I feel a little foolish.  If hugolp wasn't a mod at the time, my little example is pretty much invalidated.  While I don't agree with your "proximity exception" line of reasoning, I do recognize that you guys have to make judgement calls...and yours was proper in this case.  So, I stand corrected.

Thanks for your reply, and thanks for setting out the rule on off-topic posts and taking steps to enforce it.  Despite my venting here, I do realize you guys have a difficult and often thankless job, and I appreciate your service to the forum.  It should be apparent that myself and others in this thread support what you're doing - we'd just like to see more of it!

I agree with OP most threads on bitforum make no sense what so ever!

It's like the more sense threads try to make, the less other people can comprehend the point they try to convey.  ;D