Bitcoin Forum

The Cambridge dictionary defines the meaning of the phase "to live in an ivory tower" as

Obviously this applies to the current UK politicians, but how does it apply to Bitcoin Talk users? My understanding is that it distances members from the boring and repetitive sig spam posting on the discussion and other boards. I hope it will take us back to the old cafe society era where intelligent and erudite discussions could take place in a pleasant environment. This is a great alternative to the modern fast food "restaurants" with all the loud music, swearing and rubbish conversations based on photo exchanges via cell phones.

Bitcoin is maturing and taking a unique place in the world economy, and it will be nice to have a board to discuss this development. Comparing Bitcoin with cowry shells, gold or fiat currencies for the hundredth time, just obscures the more interesting issues. Bitcoin talk has a large number of very knowledgeable members - please visit the board and help people like me who may have been around for a while, but who have fairly focused knowledge. We need to expand to use the emerging Bitcoin economy.

As I mentioned in the announcement thread for the new sections, the "Ivory Tower" name (and in part the board itself) feels like something that'd be joke in a Meta thread about declining post quality forum-wide, not an actual board. While giving a space for coherent discussion is great, this really does seem like an attempt of dodging the problem. I wouldn't say I'm embarrassed, moreso a bit baffled - it just feels kind of surreal when we start dividing the forum into neighborhoods, as if it's a social experiment and not an actual place where discussion and business happens. "Here's where the rich and cool people hang out, this other district is for the middle class and the rest of the city is slums".

I dunno, the entire thing just seems to leave a bad taste in my mouth.

I don't think that the intention was to create an elite Bitcoin class. If that were so, then I don't think that I would be included.  I understood it to be an attempt to escape threads with topics like "Will Bitcoin cause Theresa May to wear longer skirts?" Would it be more popular if it was called " The frog pond", or just simply the lounge?

Sadly the forum has essentially become a joke really. These new boards are silly if you really think about it but are essentially a necessity now and are just a sad symptom of signature campaigns and how they've been left to degenerate into what they have become and the issue with paying people to post is so bad that there needs to be some sort of quarantine free from disease. The fact that this site is a bitcoin discussion forum is pretty much an afterthought now as the vast majority of people signing up here don't care about that at all but just the fact that they heard you can earn money here (and most of it isn't even paid out in bitcoin but alt coins or tokens etc). When you don't actually care or know anything about bitcoin and can barely speak English and on top of that are forcing yourself to make posts to hit your quota what is going to happen? Add to that that most people create numerous accounts to maximise profit then there's just wall to wall spam and abuse. If we had actually cracked down on what campaigns can get away with then this problem wouldn't be here today but because we've had a laissez faire attitude and let campaigns do whatever they want it has just led to laziness both on the campaigns themselves and their actual participants. When we let people have an unlimited amount of accounts and let campaigns pay people for whatever drivel they can be bothered to make what do we expect to happen? Pure abuse on both sides. Why would campaigns waste time policing their campaigns when that costs time and effort and why would users bother to write more than a sentence when they don't need to? If we made it so this behaviour/attitude was unacceptable and punished those who were causing the problem then things would have turned out a lot different. I've always said that signature campaigns could actually help improve the quality of discussion here but that's only if people who run them do a good job and only accept and pay for quality posters and there's punishments for those that don't. At the moment there are campaigns that will accept an unlimited amount of newbies and pay for them to make any old crap so of course it's going to be abused. This behaviour can't be acceptable but if it is allowed to continue then the forum is just going to get even worse than it is now.


The intent is simple: People shitpost to lazily rank up their accounts and get paid from signature campaigns. If there's boards that won't further them in their goal of achieving activity and postcount then those shitposters won't waste their time posting in there as it's counter-productive and hopefully the only people who will post in there are those that actually want to contribute to decent discussion.

Signature campaigns aren't bad in the services section, most of the managers are okay, the bounty managers, they are way too lazy. There is one manager who isn't checking the post quality of users I guess, he's just accepting the users if the parameters are  correct. Here's his campaign that he is managing :- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2705913.0
I do not mean any personal offense to him but clearly I guess that's what is happening there.
The intent might be in the right direction but yet shit posters will spam there. So what if activity doesn't count? The activity raise is only to a limited number of posts per week, campaigns expect users to post like 25-30 posts on an average. Users would post in as many sections they can, so that they get accepted in future campaigns. Because there are some managers who expect users to post in many sections, as one of their goals would be diversification of posts.

Nah, but their posts would be chucked away. Account farmers and spammers can't deal with that kind of risk, which is why they spam the shit out of Economics, Bitcoin Discussion, pretty much every fucking board. Those posts are far easier to come up with, and you can spam a shit ton more due to the amount of vague and general threads (spam megathreads incl.)

Plus, posts in the Ivory Tower and Serious Discussion are kind of over most spammers' heads. All they know about crypto is how to send coins and join bounties.

Hopefully good moderation will help to build those boards into useful reference resources.

It all depends on the posts and support that the quality members give to those boards. :)

Right.. If their posts gets deleted,they won't be able to meet their weekly minimum posts requirements,so they won't get paid. But posters just want to rank up are posting,which angered theymos I guess,so he had to increase the restrictions on posting in those two boards. Wondering why theymos doesn't do the same to boards like off-topic,politics and society.

Touche.

Perhaps it's better to sacrifice the weak rather than let the infection plague the strong. These are relative terms, anyway. Off-topic and the Politics & Society boards are far greater density cesspools than the other boards. If you let spammers handle their one-liner (or one-word) bullshit there then you prevent that from leaking to the other boards. Kind of like delegating all the ponzi spam to the child board investor-based games.

It prevented the shit from spreading all over the important board.

There are several campaign managers who aren't up to the job and don't really do anything other than accept and pay anyone who bothers to sign up. Sylon is one of the worst managers here and as far as I can tell he doesn't do any sort of quality checks at all and as such his campaigns are routinely abused by hacked accounts and farmers. I honestly don't know whether he's just grossly incompetent or is directly involved with the farming.


I can't see why shitposters would bother. There might be the occasional one who lingers in there but the Ivory tower board contributes to neither activity nor post-count so I can't see why anyone who is here just to earn or rank up would waste their time and energy with that board.

In fact there aren't many people posting there at all. If I start one more thread, I'll ask if it can be renamed "The Jet Cash board". :)
 I must be one of the least competent of the eligible members, and I support the board, but I would love it if some of the more knowledgeable and interesting members would pitch in.

The name is supposed to be fun. I don't actually mean that people who post in the section are "living in an ivory tower".


How about I rename it to Le café d'or, then?

Someone should create a poll.

I wouldn't have an issue with the name and it's connotations if the forum was in a better state than it is now. There's a fine line between parody-level satire and Ajit Pai satire. With all the hordes of shitposters continually degrading any discussion they come upon, this seems to slowly veer of into the latter.

To be entirely fair, the signature spam, and related nonsense posts is fairly unpleasant...

My issue with the ivory tower is that its placement within the forum more or less makes it an off topic section that allows for a broad variety of threads that I may not be interested in reading. I would say I would rather have the ivory tower be a child of bitcoin discussion, and allow any non-marketplace, bitcoin related threads, even if said thread would also be appropriate in technical discussion, trading discussion, and similar. 

Wow, that's your main concern?   Did you read hilariousetc's post?  It's spot on and you're "la-la-la-la-la, I can't hear yoooou!"

This has been some great reading, you guys are definitely the cool kids. I haven't seen anyone one who's used the word "erudite", or even known what it means, since grad school. It seems as though at one time there was a chance to moderate content in relation to advertisements for bounties and airdrops and such. Why was that not acted upon?

I found the name to be more humorous than anything else. Although, reading some of the responses, I can understand why there would be issues with the name, because most people around here don't seem to appreciate humor much. For me, I guess this brings up the question of whether theymos made this a "fun" name because he is mocking or does not agree with the perception of where the "state of the forum" is at, if he just made it fun... for fun?, or merely created the subforum to respond/acknowledge requests by other members and made the name humorous because he doesn't really take it all that seriously?  I may be overanalyzing, although I'm leaning towards the fact that theymos created this in a serious manner, with a bit of humor, to address or at least acknowledge that the forum is not in a great state with content and spam-like behaviors. Maybe I am being too gullible.  :-\

I'd agree the placement of the subforum may not be well placed, assuming it is intended to be a serious subforum, it does make it less serious under "Other". While it would gain more attention and possibly more posts higher up... the issue with putting it under "Bitcoin Discussion" is that having "Serious Discussion" underneath of "Bitcoin Dicsussion" seems to imply Bitcoin, or "Bitcoin Discussion", is not serious... and in that case, why not just jump to changing "Bitcoin Discussion" to similar limitations that exist with Serious Discussion/Ivory Tower, and try to make Bitcoin Discussion "serious". Or eliminate "Serious Discussion" and create a child board for the "IvoryDistinguished Tower" under Bitcoin Discussion?   ;D

OK here is my suggestion.

Change the discusson board to " The Frog Pond"
Change serious discussions to a simple " Bitcoin discussions"
Change the Ivory Towwr to " In depth discussions"

I think that will confuse most and they'd avoid it, which is a good thing  ;D. How about La Tour d'Ivoire?  ::)


I think he's more than aware of the issue with spam here and you'd have to be blind or have your head in the sand not to see that. I think he takes it seriously otherwise he wouldn't have created it, but that doesn't mean we can't have a little fun in naming it, which may or may not be an attempt to also acknowledge the ridiculousness of the situation, but I don't think there's anything wrong with a little humour especially on this forum.


I vote for just Srs Bsns.

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/225/951/130843624378.jpg

I vote that girl should join us for some serious discussions. I don't mind if it's in the ivory tower either. :)

I don't know whether this is good news or bad news. The domain that I mentioned in one of the threads in the Ivory Tower (RMG blockchain.com ) has just been listed on Sedo by some front-running scammer. The name is not for sale anywhere, so nobody has the right to take money for it. It shows that the threads there are being read, and people are acting on the information in the posts. :)

I assume there are just too many potential consequences with modifying existing boards?  I mean if you're going to be serious about it, why push the serious people into an "Other" subforum so the shitposters can continue to overrun the main boards this forum is known for?  Maybe I'm being too critical, I believe it is a positive addition, and maybe the Tower will become what I would hope it to become... but without visibility, it may not get much attention and most will continue to go to the main boards. Is this just accepting defeat on the main boards and providing a place for people to flee?

So why aren't people using the new boards?

Surely it can't be because they can't show their signatures,or increase their post counts. :)

I'm sure it can be moved and hopefully will, but maybe there just wasn't a more appropriate place for it at the time or he didn't think too much into its placement. If it doesn't belong as a sub board of Bitcoin Discussion maybe a separate subsection entirely can be created for it. I think it should be placed as a sub of the main board personally but theymos may envision it to include broader topics on economics and politics etc (though we could certainly add those sub boards to there over time).


Well, probably at least 95% of people users are only here to either farm accounts or get paid to post so those will obviously leave it alone, but either way it still serves its purpose. I would much rather there not be much activity in these boards than loads of half-assed topics just for the sake of it. I'm sure it will grow over time but maybe if it's better placed it will get more traffic and many users still wont even be aware of it or might just be confused about what it's actually about.

Remember a few years ago when people posted on the forum to learn more about bitcoin?

https://www.google.ca/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjt9dupjdfYAhUU7mMKHc1-Co4QjBx6BAgAEAM&url=https%3A%2F%2F2static3.fjcdn.com%2Fcomments%2FBlank%2520_241dbfe1e13ccd85903fe5b6b28a80dd.jpg&psig=AOvVaw2OgV-fOq6E09CzBwQtfZDt&ust=1516007186290130

(apparently my "Partridge Farm remembers" Meme won't show up.  :(  )

I would say I would rather have the ivory tower be a child of bitcoin discussion, and allow any non-marketplace, bitcoin related threads, even if said thread would also be appropriate in technical discussion, trading discussion

...
Any leads on this  ::)
Poor newbie, he shall be banned now. How will he support his family if he can't rank up and participate in signature campaigns? :'(

Well yeah, but times have changed and signature campaigns (and their users) have grown exponentially since then (or more specifically crapcoin campaigns which have/are doing most of the damage). Signature campaigns have always been a problem for as long as I've been a member here but allowing them to go unregulated and unpunished has just caused chaos and now the board is more just some sort of 'earn money online' forum as opposed to a place where you can actually have some quality discussions about bitcoin (which is now essentially just second fiddle). The issue of sig spam was relatively minor back when I first signed up and I think people could only dream of the relative calm there was. It was practically a utopia compared to what it is now but I guess it was inevitable and this is why we can't have nice things.


::). Banned. I wonder if this user is a bot. Hard to believe someone would be this stupid to copy and paste in this of all threads.

Signature campaigns were supposed to improve post quality, look what they did. Sad.
Love it. :-* Thank you so much.
Edit :-*Waits for user, @choisunam to open up a new thread confessing on how he is willing to contribute to this forum and how his sibling copied that post and posted without his knowledge ::) .*

They were just something that naturally evolved here and I don't think signature campaigns were "supposed" to be anything other than people getting paid for a service. But as with any job or industry without rules and regulations being enforced capitalism always gets out of hand and greed and laziness take over as people cut corners and trample over others in any way they can just as long as they can get a piece of the pie and the abuse is happening on both sides. Signature campaigns could have helped improve the quality of posts here but that's only if campaign managers do their job properly and only accept and pay for quality contributions but if there's no requirement for them to do that and punishments for those that don't then why would they bother? All they're doing is wasting time and money (which they would rather just sit back and watch come in). This needs to change. If people started getting penalised for not doing their job properly the culture around here would soon change.

Signature campaigns only improve post quality if posted are paid by results - signups or sales for example. Just flying a banner fr a product that the poster has never used, and probably never will encourages volume, loe quality posting. I don't understand why campaign managers think that helps their products. In most cases it makes me think - That's a product to avoid if he is promoting it. :)

There are 36 posts in the Ivory Tower, and 31 post it this thread which is talking about it. Just in case you don't know where the board is - it's here -

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=251.0

The board is sig free, so you can read and post there without choking on the sig smoke that clouds the frog pond ( known by some as the discussion board ).

Its risky but lets see what comes of this change. See the community reaction. Based on that we can say this was a good or bad move. Time will tell us.

I don't know why I don't feel posting in that board, feels too weird not to mention the topics are so boring  :-X, to be honest. I agree with the users who also think that the sub-board hasn't been placed in the right place. Rather it should be either a child board of economy /bitcoin discussion. Sounds like a joke when the serious discussion board is placed under the board of others. But that's my personal opinion. And oh, I finally found a topic in serious discussion which is not boring, hurray and finally. So now only the placement of the board is off-interests. Maybe some one should start up a poll regarding the placement of the boards, and some people don't like the name too. Problems of people these days.  :-*

They will only improve if people pay for quality posts. For that to happen there needs be punishments for those that don't make them and those that pay users to do them and then everyone will tighten up their belt and do a better job. An advert is an advert at the end of the day and oftentimes I would have no idea about most of these ICOs but I soon become aware of them when I suddenly see dozens of shitposters crapping all over the forum carrying their signature so their way of adverting is sadly effective. I'm not even sure if users making better posts would be more advantageous for them as more posts = more hits/ad impressions regardless of quality. Also, you have to remember that most of campaigns these days are essentially paying them with free money. They just pre-mine a load of coins or tokens then dish them out to anybody who bothers to sign up and in the process advertising their product all over. The owners can then just sit back and watch the 'real' money come flooding in in Bitcoin and Etherum etc without having to do anything and their end goal is achieved.   

And a problem with this is that quality doesn't equate with quantity.  Managers like aTriz have a 200-character requirement, which helps, but what I'm seeing is that a lot of members are writing extremely bloated shitposts that basically say the same thing over and over, within a post.  And those posts are just as garbage-y as the "nice 1" posts, only from far away they look like something profound.

As you've said before, change is only going to come from above.  Only when Theymos cracks down on campaign managers will we start to see the end of shitposts, and I don't see this happening anytime soon.  I like the Ivory Tower section, but it looks like no one is going to post there much (not surprisingly).  So much of what we see on bitcointalk is motivated by campaigns.

As a result of a discussion on the Serious Discussion board, I managed to pick up XBTkiosk.com for $6.69. BitcoinKiosk.com is being offered for sale at $6,817. These two new boards are starting to become really useful venues in my opinion. :)

A 200 character count is probably a good idea, but you still need to be monitoring people alongside that for the reasons you stated. If campaign managers only accepted people who make great posts in the first place then there would be nothing to worry about. If this was adopted across the board then users would be forced to up their quality before they could even get on any campaigns. As long as we have campaigns that will accept bots and shitposting account farmers then nothing will change because those campaigns will always be exploited.


Ivory Tower gives people a safe-haven from sig spam and farmers so it's helpful in that respect, but it obviously doesn't help the rest of the board which still needs to be dealt with.

I had never heard of Ivory Tower until i were curious to see why a user were given negative trust, and who gave it and ended up here.
The idea is good in my opinion, and i would probably participate if there were any discussions that interested me. But i will bookmark it and try to keep an eye out.
Hopefully it will be a place to learn more about the technologi when i have the spare time. Im not an idealist and in crypto for the money, but mostly through what i mine or bought from mined coins. But i want the buyers of coins i sell to not end up loosers so i try to buy coins that have a good future.


-Not saying all my posts are deep and meaningfull (but on par with the common user), but my activity is not for the bounty campaign. For senior members being in crypto for years i may look like a trash poster though. But the forum are now not only used by idealists but also members trying to be part of the new dot.com (and finding the gems like Amazon). If someone do have input on my posts id like it in my pm with suggestions on how i can be better for the community. A little off topic, but considering why Ivory tower had to be created it is partially on topic.

Bots are very annoying btw, i try to report but does that help? Like getting questions about the ICO on a pure mining coin from newbie..