Bitcoin Forum

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Can you imagine a better way for  making important decisions in bitcointalk forum?

Voting is something that is missing in current centralized moderation system in forum and we can slowly try to add this and not always depend on others and complain about decisions.

For example if we have a case of controversial ban/unban why not ask the community to VOTE and have their say about it?

Voting can be done by poll option, or with more complex blockchain solution.

If we support decentralization then I don't see why we should not support some kind of voting in bitcointalk forum.

There are several reasons for and against relying on votes before making a decision.

Although Bitcoin is decentralized, this forum is centralized and is controlled by theymos and a group of admins and people he trusts. They interpret the rules how they see fit.
The thoughts of the majority doesn't mean that they are right. They can be very wrong, biased, unfair, etc..

Nevertheless, the opinions of the community should be respected and taken into consideration when making certain decisions. It is the community that makes the forum the way it is, not one person. Keep the people happy or they will just find their happiness elsewhere.

Because of that, I vote on voting for important forum changes. ;D 

A ban/unban poll can be easily manipulated as people have a lot of alts here and to win poll people may even create another business around it. And the forum is owned by theymos, he has all the right to govern it as he wants. So, I think current system is good enough.
Are you talking about any certain case? I haven't seen any such issue with ban/unban recently.

The idea itself is not bad, but there are a couple of issues with that.

The forum is a private space, with some rules that are applied to all users, with no exception. Everyone must follow forum rules, or else they get the boot. If we were to start voting on every ban/unban than happens, what criteria would voting users follow? Their own personal experience with said users? That doesn't seem imparcial at all.

Apart from that; how would you keep trolls or disposable accounts created by the person that got banned with the sole porpuse of voting to unban them away? You could have some kind of requirements, but would once again be something that excludes a certain sector of forum users.

And if those were not reason enough, the drama wars would get more bullets. I've been away from the forum for some months, and I still don't know how things are at the moment, but if we take the past as a precedent, we can get an idea of what will most likely happen. User A from a "gang" will vote something, so someone from a "rival gang" will vote against it, so then more users from As' gang will vote.... It's a neverending tale.

Summing up... The current system, altough improvable, is quite good. You either follow the rules or don't join, and theymos is our absolute ruler. If someone considers that a ban is not reasonable, they can always create a ban appeal thread, and the discussion coming from there will be the closest to a "voting" we have, altough the last word comes from a mod or admin. End of story

Voting has been tried (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1685557.0), and was ignored by Admin.

I am sure that OP is talking about ReguluHr. A member of our local forum who was banned at the beginning of 2019. His unban appeal is here > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5097792.0
Despite the majority of forum members voting to unban him and showing support in the thread, he was never unbanned. All the Croatian community wanted was to get a reply from theymos or another mod, but that never happened. It's almost 2 years now.

With all those alt accounts around forum, what could possible go wrong  :-\
Yep, I believe theymos is more interested into opinions and ideas (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3292413.0) than voting itself.

I'm not sure what kind of complex blockchain solution you had in mind, but it sounds like something that not a lot of people would participate in, especially if the issue being voted on (like a ban appeal) doesn't directly affect them.  And polls are useless on this forum; Anyone with 100 alt accounts can cast 100 votes.

I don't support decentralization across the board on all things, but that's just me.  Imagine having to vote on every idea that gets proposed for bitcointalk, or every controversial ban, or you name it.  People would get sick of that very quickly. 

The fact is that decentralization is what makes bitcoin great.  Bitcointalk, on the other hand, would end up being even more of a mess than it already is if a voting mechanism were implemented--and I think Theymos realizes this, which is why he hasn't made any changes headed in that direction.

Sure.
Admins tend to ignore a lot of things  :P

No it's not.
Forum is a Public open space.

Voting would be just that - Vote from community and not mandatory change. Moderators and big boss would still have a final say like always.
But maybe you prefer to have no voice, and I can respect that.


It is partially related to that case yes.

Title say Voting for  IMPORTANT forum changes.
I would not waste time voting on trivial things, and again - Voting would be just that - Vote from community and not mandatory change. Moderators and big boss would still have a final say like always.

You'd need to. Make a worthwhile voting system too as "standard democracy" doesn't work and never really has...

Voting on a controversial ban might already be a thing done by moderators so you'd just be expanding the vote to say legendafies and hero's? But what's stopping the person banned buying vote power either by buying votes or buying accounts?

This is a common misconception I recall even theymos clearing up, but I don't have the time to search for that post right now, so I'll try to make a simple explanation to it.

The forum can be seen publicly without an account, BUT the moment you register into the forum by creating an account, you agree to the terms of said forum. The forum is private, as it is OWNED by an individual, but anyone can create an account without any real requirement. To make a comparison with the real world... we are members of a swim club; anyone living in the city can join for free, but the facilities have some rules that if you don't follow, the team will kick you out. You are allowed to use everything, but it's not public

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You are contradicting yourself. You suggest we get a vote on the forum changes but then are OK with the management completely ignoring that voting. For that, we can use the current system in place; which is basically leaving feedback on an already created thread or creating one for a matter that has not been discussed, and once the management reads it, they can decide to ignore it or not. It's better than voting because you can discuss everything in a post; and as I said before, it's the system we already have in place

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And who (and how) would decide what is important and what it's not?

Very grim comparison.


I am not OK, but if they want to ignore people voice and votes, they can do it.
Now we have some secret like society system where someone can be unbanned if he knows a friend of a friend.
Others don't have that privilege.


Members.
If enough people is asking for something and opening topics then this should not be ignored.

Nothing is stopping him.
But even if he buys everyone votes (let's take GameProtect for example) that would mean nothing.

Now, when creating a topic, it is also possible to create a poll. Polling is somewhat similar to voting. And as an attempt to use such voting, one can observe how interested people are in this or that issue. And also how they will vote and how many people will react to such practice.
In the future, this can play a role in helping the administration itself make decisions.
But I am not against this method. True, this would be more true if each person had only one account. But because some of them have more than one, the voting results will never show the real picture.

There will be a lot of politics if we do this by voting, in a country there are regulators like the police, and mods here has that job, they can ban members whom they believe have violated the forum rules. Maybe voting in other matters, not on this particular thing.

For me voting would be better but we know that votes could be influence by some users here so it still will not get the ideal result and it will also depend on the poll or choices.

However, the best thing about voting is that we can voice out our opinions too and make decision through casting votes. I am more than willing to participate if it will going to happen. In that case the forum will be run by the members and the admin of the forum will be the facilitator.

Things like this can already be done and I would urge users to create threads for things like this and all the community can discuss and chime in on the specific situation. Voting wouldn't really work here though as that can be easily be manipulated with alts etc. The only way it might work is if you only allowed certain, high-ranked users/forum regulars  to vote and made some sort of council but that isn't really democracy and it could still lead to issues if people started trying to sway voting behinds the scenes and amongst their friends etc. I think theymos should listen to the community more though as there are probably a lot of things the majority of users want and don't involve giving people power or power awat, but they're either just ignored or he probably doesn't have time for them. I created a thread below where users could make suggestions with the idea that eventually people would vote on them and the most popular could be implemented or considered for it:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4893744.0

Theymos did respond to some of the suggestions there and gave his opinion on them. A couple of them have already been implemented though like:

Signature bans. Bans that remove the signature for x amount of time or even permanently (actually proposed by theymos but never followed up on). Being able to blacklist an entire campaign's signature would also be helpful for those campaigns that refuse to do anything about spam.

Posts from lower ranked accounts don't bump ICO threads to the top (which would then render paid bump spam useless).

I vote that redundant images are deleted, and nested quotes are disabled. :)

Wouldn't a voting system lead to just that? One would need to be friends with other members to get their positive votes. A member with a strong community would have a much higher chance of getting unbanned in a situation as they'll get more votes. In the current system, the admins/staffs and moderators effectively regulate the forum, the DT members also regulate the trust system to an extent, these systems are somewhat influenced by members of the forum, as we can suggest mods, vote on Default Trust members etc, so while the system is controlled from the top (admins) the general community can still chime in and drop their support or opposition in certain cases.

This would be practically difficult to implement and also easy to abuse, it would need a certain rank threshold for votes to count, similar to the voting for DTs, but even in that case, the admins still make the final decision.

More like a privately-owned space open to the public, quite a big difference.
A shop is also opened to the public, you can enter freely but you get no voting on what type of Redbull should they sell and you can also get banned from it and issued a trespassing order and the owner can shut down when he wants.


And what would the point of voting be if The Big Thermos doesn't agree with the little coffee cups? No coffee for you!
Voting or polling would be the same, just a way of giving ourselves some importance as a facade.



Not everything that is decentralized is also better.

Well, multiple accounts are not prohibited in this forum so polls will never work when such rule exist.

If someone wants to get something in their favour they can create hundreds of accounts to vote for their favour, yes ranking restrictions can solve this but not completely so democratic forum is not really possible.

Oh boy, some of you are very good in twisting things.

Don't worry. Theymos will live forever and nothing ever needs to change in forum.
You will still drink your hot coffee everyday and you never need to vote for facade change or anything else in life because everything is owned by somebody.

Regards.

You could point out the things I'm twisting as I'm not really sure what you're referring to.


I don't worry, by all chances I'll kick the bucket way before theymos, so with all sincerity, I can tell you I don't give a damn on what happens after.


Well, now's the moment where indeed I will twist some things.  ;D
Yes! Almost everything on this planet is owned by somebody, be it an individual or a group of individuals, and surprise, that's how bitcoin, the pinnacle of decentralization also works. My keys, my coins, my decision on what I do with them. You're voting on this is equal to zero.

You yourself said that theymos decision would be final, so, why should we even have a vote? Just to show we're not happy with him running the place?
We can do this right now, open a topic with a poll and let's see the results, and more importantly, let's see how you're going to keep the voting secret and at the same time ensure there are no votes from multiple accounts, all this without KYC.
Rather than jumping immediately to voting, how about we first make sure this system won't fuck the forum even worse than now?

All in all a good idea, but let's face it ... (even without taking into account the skeptical comments about it).

For everything to work, first you need to make changes to the voting system. Currently, during public voting, users can only make one choice, known as "bullet voting", which is not very convenient for some counting scenarios.

• To enable users to give preference to any number of items or candidates during voting.
• Identification of users participating in the survey (see here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5127436.msg50431471#msg50431471) for how it looks).

And even if it was not an abstract discussion, there is one more catch. As far as I know, Cyrus and his team are focused on fixing some bugs, so I think it's pointless to talk about adding new features for now.

When the time comes, I think there will be a public discussion with the developers of the new features. Although most likely the new interface and voting options will be added only in Epochtalk, (do not forget that any improvement to the forum requires parallel changes in Epochtalk).

Trying to decentralize a public forum is like giving animals in the zoo an opinion on how they should be kept.  Seems like a fun idea until you see what the hyenas do.

I know democracy is considered the better of the evils when it comes to leadership, but I'm actually against the idea here. I think it would be a waste of resources, when it comes to sorting out a proper voting system which would be transparent, figuring out the logistics, and then implementing it would be take away valuable time from other things. You sign up on this forum, and agree to abide by the rules, and probably are assumed to somewhat agree with how things work around here. However, if there are some bad decisions made at the top, or there's some dubious features implemented, then I would like to think that the community would rise up, and bring up their concerns, and I personally believe theymos to be quite open minded, and accepting on forum proposals because of various changes throughout the years.

We all asked for a system to bring better quality to the forum, and there was numerous complaints for a while, but the alternative solution proposed was to remove signature campaigns. Theymos, and whoever else was involved implementing the merit system, came up with a solution, that didn't take anything away from the forum, but probably did reduce the traffic to the forum (without verifying that myself).

Theymos, has demonstrated that they can identify complaints from the community, and come up with a solution which they believe to better the forum. Taking away signature campaigns, would have damaged the ecosystem of the forum, and I can see why someone would like to protect that. The merit system might not be absolutely perfect, and when is anything ever perfect? Its been pretty successful at what it was brought in to do.

Also, there is nothing stopping groups of users coming up with a priority list, and having public votes on changes. This could be a community driven effort, and the admins can take that into consideration possibly. Overall, I like your proposal, but I don't have any major complaints about how its been run now, and the changes that have been made. The merit system, and the bump system are the most recent additions, and to be honest probably have had a overwhelmingly positive effect on the forum, and I haven't always agreed with changes, and policies especially during my early years of the forum, but my views have certainly developed since then.

The forum allows anonymous accounts, which means it is trivial for someone to create multiple accounts to cast multiple votes.

The forum also values free speech, even when the speech is unpopular or controversial. If voting to Un/ban someone is implemented, it would become difficult to say anything unpopular.

The forum can be reasonably compared to social media. The social media company sets the rules, and the market decides how much traffic and how many users use each social media platform. The social media companies accept feedback from their user base, but won’t make changes based on votes.

The more I think about this decentralised governance in the way initially suggested is a big mistake.

Having individuals voting on other individuals is asking for trouble.

What is better is a set of objective standards or rules being thrashed out that are optimal for the forum.
This is the democratic or decentralized part. Although really even that is not essential a single entity could devise the entire thing.
The only important thing being it is as provably fair to all members as possible whilst being optimal to the goals of the forum.

Decentralization is an obsession here so we try to apply it to everything.
I have been rethinking this lately.
I mean it's simply not sensible for members to vote specifically on other members. it is impossible to prevent personal bias either for that individual or for another members opinion of that individual. It works via contagion it need not be direct.

The decentralized part needs to be directed towards a set of parameters or rules.
Voting is a certain member should have certain action taken against him or her or it is not sensible.

If the parameters don't decide automatically they need to be tightened up.

Whether you implement KYC or not isn't important.

Like i say even the deciding on the rules or parameters it's nice to have everyone involved and you may increase the probability of immediately arriving at the optimal rules to attain the goals of the forum but really one super smet person could actually be responsible for proposing everything. That's if the forum is owned by a single entity that lays out the goals. If not then yes it is going to take a kind of vote to ascertain what the goals are in the first place.


Since we have a single entity controlling and I guess the goal of creating an environment from which the most powerful community which are optimally suited to promulgate the awareness and adoption of bitcoin... then we have a good start.

I mean the forum has done amazing in that regard really but then it was a once in a generation or greater " product" to encourage Intersest and adoption in. So yeah really the forum has done its job already. Bitcoin has reached critical mass now and I don't see anything stopping it. You could say the forum is redundant or even slightly counter productive to that goal since it now provides a launch pad for competing " products ".

Depends on the goal. I guess only satoshi and maybe a handful of people know the goal of both bitcoin and the forum.
Many people have some wild speculations.
I like to believe it was to provide transparency and give everyone a fair chance to easily and immediately see where they stand currently and if they want to join in under those conditions without the goal posts constantly moving to demoralize and crush them continuously on the whim of a tiny tiny tiny minority.
So I'm supporting it anyway. I would still want to join and start even now if I'd only just found out about it.
Who knows.

TL DR = numbers mean nothing. Debate and thrash out the optimal action.

10000000 retards vs 1 genius.  I go with what the genius thinks is best.  Voting means ?

I mean I'm not 100% sure how you identify a real genius because likely to be a real genius you will need to best those that are near geniuses on topics that test them and most of us don't understand. However with most debates certain points will start to be unarguably stronger or won conclusively by one party so you can get some idea who is dominant unless it's super technical. Then you're screwed.

With governance I'm sure the debates can be dumbed down enough we can all contribute to some degree when compiling the transparent,  clear cut rules. The thing about debate is really deciphering when certain points have been conclusively debunked or demonstrated to be suboptimal.

Likely a mathematician could resolve it best but then there goes your democratic or decentralized contribution.
All those wiggles and squiggles ... what is that shit?
I'm gonna learn me some math one day.

The more I think about forums the more I wonder if all this decentralized idealism is needed. The only decentralization you need is debating and reasoning. Just to throw more into the mix that may have been missed. Still the smartest people will process it best.
Optimal transparent rules applied equally = optimal governance if you want good moral and atmosphere. If you don't care about that then its true you could have different rules applied differently to different people and scenarios. I wouldn't agree with that.

Edit - I just notice a couple of posts that covered of what I hacked out  anyway. Still you got another bite at the cherry.

Voting is a very reasonable aspect of a democratic society that very much defines or shows the people's opinion put together but then, it's not at all times that the entire people of a community is been allowed to vote on matters. There are already rules and these rules are the main governance of the forum. The administrators only see fit to effect the rules when faulted. Besides, implementing voting as a decision process creates an opportunity for some users the need to by pass the rules. The voting process is already going to be met with some problems:

1. A user can have 5-10 Alts in the forum
2. Voting won't be obligatory and as such, a lot of persons won't see the need to vote
3. Not all forum users pay attention to pinned posts and visit all boards to get notified of an activity such as this and it could be that they would have had a say as well
4. The criterias for voting is based on individual judgement and lack of experience by some users could fault the decision making
5. The transparency of the whole process would be questionable
6. Decision on what kind of issue to be put to a vote is another problem

With these and others not mentioned being the case, there isn't any need. Should their be a reason for a vote, it could be done by the moderators of various boards as we could view them as the representatives of all sections in the forum. This is pretty much the same way the forum is as, unban appeals are mostly deliberated upon by ranked up and experienced users. Though, the decision making is always left with the administrator as it should be.

Voting simply does not work in this forum, as shown in recent Voting for Worst interview in bitcointalk:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5294957

I am closing this topic now.

RIP VOTING  :P