Bitcoin Forum

[Inspired by the “Switch forum software (https://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=5739.20)” thread]

Personally I prefer NNTP to any web forum, and I'd welcome a bitcoin ‘usenet’ discussion forum.

For almost a decade I've been operating two NNTP servers, and I'd like to peer bitcoin.* with anyone who thinks this could be cool.  We'd have to discuss which groups to create, obviously.  I can throw in the Scandinavian hierarchies (dk.*, fo.*, is.*, no.*, se.*, swnet.*) and Big 8 (http://www.big-8.org/) (comp.*, humanities.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, talk.*) if you like.

I do not want the hazzle of accomodating online users (i.e., NNTP clients), so I'm only interested in peering with other NNTP servers.  I could talk to the admin of Usenet4All (http://usenet4all.se/) to see if he would be willing to host the bitcoind.* hierarchy, though.

Anyone?

Cheers,

That'd be great!

That would be awesome. Does bitcoin really need its own top level, though? Why not alt.bitcoin.*? (Perfect for the Anarchists, Lunatics, and Terrorists around here, after all.)

There's too much crap in the alt.* hierarchy, IMHO, and my servers are rejecting all messages posted in or crossposted to any alt.* group.

If people prefer a bitcoin subhierarchy in the the alt.* hierarchy I'm cool with that, but then I'm not going to particpate…

Cheers,

No worries, bitcoin.* is fine as well. A top-level hierarchy in the hand is better than a well-placed subhierarchy in the bush, and all.

:)

All the good stuff is in the alt.* hierarchy  ;)

+1 for this idea... but only if it mirrors or replaces the forums.

Not interested in fragmenting the discussion...

Personally, I'd like bitcoin.* to be far more laissez faire than this forum, so that the moderators here can act with a clearer conscience. Way too many discusions here start out interesting and devolve into warmed-over ideological contests. I think this gives us an image problem, but I don't want to stop people from speaking their mind. It would be nice if the moderators could say, "Hey, take that stuff to bitcoin.holy-wars," when such things came up.

Likewise, I see no reason why something like bitcoin.trade.drugs couldn't exist. Bitcoin and Usenet are both international, after all, and Usenetters know enough not to judge Bitcoin based on one or two newsgroups.

Is it possible to have a one-way mirror to the forums, so you'd have a read-only section here with the messages posted to the NNTP groups shown? I think moving discussion to a less mainstream medium might result in the perception Bitcoin is being run by some kind of small elite group of individuals.

There's no talk about moving the entire Bitcoin Forum to NNTP.  The thread here deals with a potential bitcoin hierarchy in NNTP space, meant to be just a subset of the global bitcoin discussion fora (which includes WWW, IRC, …).  The Bitcoin Forum here is already [too] voluminous as it is; increasing the number of messages are likely to decrease its usefulness, IMHO.

Cheers,