Bitcoin Forum

I would like to make a suggestion for subforums to have a dedicated stickied thread to be used for listing "unofficial" rules or customs to that subforum that users like to maintain. I think this might be especially useful in places like the local subforums, or for example collectables or auctions. I don't know who would want to or could manage this, but even a quick explanation stickied that allows users to post IMO would be useful. Does anyone have any opinions on this?

It's good idea to keep sub-forum/section/child-board keep tidy, but just like any sticky thread (including official rules), it will be ignored.

For example on Bitcoin Technical Support (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=4.0), there's  [READ BEFORE POSTING] Tech Support Help Request Format (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1741772.0).
But i almost never see people use the format and sometimes members had to ask necessary information first (such as log files, core's version and OS) before help the poster.

I am not saying it will magically enforce them, but this place is large and complicated. I think some of us older users forget this since some of it just becomes second nature. Also I don't exclusively mean for organizational sake. For example the auctions section could do with some standards being more universal to make auctions run more smoothly. Local boards might have various local laws which they might want to keep enforced for liability reasons, etc. There are often new users who would gladly abide by the local customs if they even knew what they were. Even if it is something people could use to reference I think would be handy.

I'm not too sure what exactly the post is about, if it's about  guidelines and description on sub forums and child boards, we already have something of that sort. Serious discussion child board, ivory tower for example have this as it's description; Even more serious discussion. Members and above only. No advertising of any kind. No junk posts.. Similar with other child boards. If I am off the point, you can point me in the right direction.

The point is to have a reference that applies to the subforum specific unofficial rules/customs only, conveniently located in a spot that those using that forum most will most easily come across. Some of these subforums are larger than entire other forums. It makes sense that there would be some differences in standards and type of community between them.

I think the dream would be to have a already generated template when posting in certain sections. For example, this could be executed in the auctions section by generating fields for title, starting bid, bid increments, BIN, notes, and end date/time. Additional fields like whether escrow is to be used, and any other additional information in a notes section. This would then greatly increase the structure of each section, although honestly I could only see this being beneficial in a few sections. The thing is with stickies, like some others have mentioned they get ignored. Although, stickies are a little more tolerable on this forum due to not having any excessive colours or indicators that its a sticky the general view of stickies is that they're annoying or they are a one time read thing when in reality they should be read frequently, and used as a reference. People block them out mentally after a while much like they would block out advertisements.

Yeah the marketplace section was the primary area I think that this would be useful. The template is not a bad idea, perhaps even a standard contract phrasing people can use with all the standard protections for the seller such as bid extensions, etc. These are the kinds of things users would usually be more than happy to generate, post, and whoever is managing the OP could curate. Again, of course many will ignore these, there is also an inherent incentive to use these in the marketplace section as those selling things usually understand they want to cater to their potential customer base. I am interested to hear however if any of the local forum moderators would find this useful.

Human psychology is the main reason, people seem to ignore anything that appears on top when it looks any different, how often do you click the first link on google that has the tiny label "ad"?

our minds have been trained to think that those "special" topics on top are fake/ inaccurate or at least do not contain what we actually look for.

a simple trick would be moving that sticky symbol and the slightly darker color and rotating the position for those topics every once in a while, because it won't take too long for our unconscious minds to process the new positions at some point, so changing where they appear will give them more chances to be actually read.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4511686.msg40630435#msg40630435

Suggested and already implemented by several authors.  :)

IMO, this is more efficient that having the guides in a different area of the forum.

Not the same thing, but leave it to you to try to make a conflict out of anything and make it about you. Guides in a guide subforum are just as useful as a guide in meta. The point is it is in a prominent place that people will see even if they only ever go to that subforum, additionally to help orient people to the informal standards those that most frequent it are accustomed to.

I agree that each subforum should have a sticky with local rules, policy, guidelines, etc. What I'm not sure about is how to address the issue that such stickies usually get ignored. In Meta we have the stickied rules thread, but we ban dozens of plagiarizers every day. In Lending we have a sticky about collateral, and yet we see newbies asking for no collateral loans daily. In Digital Goods we have a sticky about not buying from auto-buy links or locked threads, and yet we regularly see scam accusations threads about people being scammed from these exact things. And so on and so forth. There was the idea of a "Welcome Message" for all newbies a while ago, which would be helpful to draw their attention to the general rules sticky in Meta, but you can't do that for every thread in every subforum.

There is also the issue that some stickies are ignored by all users and moderators alike, such as the sticky in Services about signature campaigns, which suggests that both users and campaigns will be banned for spamming and low quality posts, which just doesn't happen. We can't expect newbies to know which stickies are essentially rules and which are completely ignorable.

(You didn't read the entire thread....)

I believe the guides in meta are less useful than what we decided on because a person has to know one additional thing (location to find guides)

Stick with what we are currently doing - writing [GUIDE] to keep in the affected forum.  Do not move all guides to one place.   :)

In this instance I would suggest some kind of incentive system. Perhaps we can start meriting new users who do it right for example... Either way I didn't claim to be able to solve this problem, the point is for some of these subforums there are lots of seemingly small unofficial rules that stack up to cause issues if ignored.

At least a sticky would be useful for the users who cared to look. I never claimed this was going to shake the whole dynamic of the forum or anything. it might also serve as a useful place for those that do frequent the subforum to hash out their own personal protocols as they use it the most.

I did read the entire thread. By your own logic then a subforum in meta is still one additional thing they have to find. I am not talking about moving all the guides to one place, that looks like what you are doing here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4928968.60

I don't see anything referring to placing guides within the subforum as a sticky or otherwise, it is pretty clear you intend to create a subforum within meta for guides. I know I you are letting your ego do the talking again rather than reading this thread, but this is sad even for you. There is no reason both of these ideas can't coexist. No need to get territorial.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4928968.0

In action for six months.  No need to change anything :)   

Literally the thread I just linked (though page 4 by mistake) but ok.

Any moderators on the local boards have any opinions on this?

I would agree, but I think an even better suggestion would be to have some warnings shown in red at the top of certain sub boards of the most commonly broken rules. Ie:

In the Press section: Do not post non-bitcoin press articles here.

Gambling: Do not post ref links

And so on. They could be rotated like ads if there's several commonly broken rules.


Whilst many people do ignore them, many also don't. Silly or naive people may not bother reading them, but that's their issue if they don't and they then fall foul of the rules. I know I always familiarise myself with the rules or customs of a forum before I start posting as some are more harsh than others about enforcing rules and bans and warnings/bans can get dished out like candy on some of them.

Why not both? The "unofficial rules" thread for the subforum could help to generate those warnings. Maybe after one ranks up they can have a feature to turn it off or something. I prefer the sticky suggestion simply for the fact it requires no modification of the forum software/structure itself and would be most easily implemented.

Yeah, psychology is a big thing, and it's exactly the reason why it won't work even if we do randomize the order. I think I actually voiced my support for randomizing sticky threads throughout the section, but our brains are trained well, and we will noticed the title, and automatically skip. I do this all the time for threads that I've already visited, and might not have any interest in.

I wouldn't be against both, but a warning at the top is hard to miss. I don't think it's a good idea having too many stickies though as that just increases the chances people won't read them. I suppose you could include a warning in the red message to also read the stickies for further details. This is something I suggested in the Newbie welcome message I proposed: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4923876.msg44344662#msg44344662


Having a welcome message explaining some of the rules will help a lot and stop a lot of people getting banned and mods wasting their time on handling things that people should be aware about.

Also, I don't think the software would need to be modified to display warnings either as we already have (or did have) warnings at the top of Investor based games (I think it was there, but doesn't seem to be anymore).

As I'm sure you know (since you posted in the thread), theymos wrote a welcome message months ago (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5036308.0). I'm not sure why it hasn't yet been implemented. I also made the suggestion in that thread that the message should include both a link to mprep's rules thread, as well as advice to read the stickied threads on each board.


The warning is still there, but you have to actually open a thread on Investor-based games to see it.

Yeah, you're right. Thanks. Shows you how long it's been since I clicked a thread in there. A welcome message should be made a priority as it will save a lot of time from staff and also a lot of users from being needlessly banned. I think theymos' proposed message should be trimmed down with only the most important rules and the rest of the info being linked to in another thread so people can read that if they wish. I think in addition to having those warnings shown all in red in each sub board as a reminder would also help a lot. Nobody would have excuses for breaking the rules then. Maybe once you hit a certain rank then you can toggle them off if people find them annoying.

To add on to what others have said, there should definitely be one very elaborate explained thread in the mining and hardware section, because there seems to be a lot of confusion over there. I know, this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2415854.0) exists, but still a more detailed explanation for the apparent heavy moderation there should be explained a lil more, don't ya think?


Global Mod btw. _{jk don't ban me pls.}

Has the ban rate gone down or up in the recent months? , you know instead of keeping the important or rather suggested threads on top of the board, why not keep on the side. Something similar to what reddit does.

Oh speaking of suggested threads, can that be implemented? Like the most merited threads could be sorted by that, or something that separates the shitposted fuckfest threads from the genuine ones?

I would quite like the ability to sort by most merited threads from the last x number of days, for the exact reason of finding threads that actually have interesting discussion ongoing rather than just the usual spamfests. Vod's BPIP does allow you to find the most merited posts over various timeframes here: https://bpip.org/r/mostmerited.aspx

Although, surely rather than implement a new feature to filter out the spam threads, a better solution overall would be for more reporters and moderators to lock/trash the spam threads?