Bitcoin Forum

Back when I joined bitcointalk at the end of 2010, the level of the discussion was consistent with many bright people contributing and a high "signal-to-noise" ratio, at least from my perspective.

Lately as I read over what is posted in the forums I'm struck by how much things have changed.  The level of discussion has fallen on at least two scales:  maturity and intelligence.  Now the average poster seems to have the maturity of a teenage boy and at best an average intelligence[1].  As a result, the "signal-to-noise" ratio has fallen so far that the amount of useful information I can find here is heavily outweighed by the time required to sift through it.  And this is despite heavy use of my "ignore" button.

A lot of arguments can be made for having a space where people can share ideas where no one is excluded (other than known troublemakers).  I don't think this should change.  However, I would like to see in addition to such inclusive spaces some exclusive spaces which are by invitation only.  Such spaces could draw from public bitcointalk forums through inviting selected members based on their posting history or other achievements (e.g. Bitcoin developers).  Bitcointalk would be a natural place to host such private subforums, though there is no reason they could not be run elsewhere as well.  This approach has proven worthwhile in other venues, where exclusivity either via an invitation-based system, or through membership fees generally results in a much higher qualilty of discourse.

In the meantime, I think I will limit my use of bitcointalk by creating a few bookmarks to a handful of live threads until I can find a new bitcoin community I am not ashamed to be a part of.

[1] Although this is a subjective claim, I believe it can be independently verified because of the high correlation between intelligence and vocabulary (typical correlation coefficient is 0.8 ).  Thus if one compares the level of vocabulary used in years past on bitcointalk, I assert that it would be considerably higher than it is today.

Edit:  Mods, please feel free to move this to the Meta subforum if you feel it's appropriate.

Dumb people are going to find this place and I don't know what the solution is.  Dumb people will continue to think things like "Is the price going to go up or down?" are good threads.

Thanks for reminding me about the "ignore" button. I shall endeavour to utilise it in the very near future so I don't have to endure pointless, pontificating posts from people that don't have anything to say about real topics.

While I don't think this is a bad idea to have private area's, one of my favorite websites (wickedfire) takes an approach that allows the newcomers to read worthwhile posts while excluding them from posting in that section (they call it the 'enlightened members' section).

Most posts end up there because a moderator thought they were particularly worthwhile or the members voted that it should go there. The difference between this and a truly private section is everyone can still read the posts in there and gain insights (and hopefully increase their posting quality through the knowledge gained there) without having idea's horded by just the members who are able to read a 'private' section.

I, being new here, would appreciate a section like this as well as it's usually a good starting point to get your head wrapped around new concepts without having to sift through a pile of other stuff or ask questions that have been answered and subsequently buried under everything else and difficult to find. I am of course biased being new myself and not likely to be included in a private section, but my thoughts really lie on this forum turning me onto crypto currency despite having to sift through things to learn how to get started. If there was an easy section with lots of worthwhile idea's for new people to start on it might encourage others to take the time to learn and get involved.

Hopefully we can see something like the 'enlightened members' section here.

Sadly, I imagine that TPTB here on bitcointalk are more interested in pageviews and ad revenue than they are in fostering an environment for intelligent discussion.  I'm off to join the Bitcoin Foundation to see what their forums have to offer.  I imagine the presence of a paywall will lead to a higher quality of postings.

And there was much rejoicing amongst the intelligent and stupid alike.

*sigh* He's talking about kids like you

this is a public forum so you have to take the good with the bad. if you want an exclusive forum you should create one (irc is pretty much made for that)
I dont really see the point of complaining tho. you just come off as a whiner, and, you know what??? sometimes people you wouldn't think were very smart have valid points to make. you should keep an open mind and do your own editing i.e. skip dumb posts.
I've always held the opinion that the one's complaining about the quality of other people's words, posts, opinions, usually have only that negativity and criticism to offer, and rarely contribute anything of value themselves.
think about it. you're obviously really really smart. (sarcasm)

In OP's defence, I think the idea might not be so bad. There's a lot to sift through to find good quality posts, and although I think the ignore button is a good concept, I find myself reluctant to use it because occasionally the trolls have something relevant to say. Perhaps invite only would be a bit unfair, as I think that quality posts should be accessible to everyone. But I think the suggestion of an 'enlightened members' type section could work quite well. A place for quality discussion amongst those who have been here long enough to gain a real understanding of the bitcoin world, available for all to view.

But yeah this topic should be in Meta.  ;)

Same thing happend at the bubble top in 2011.

You seem like a boring pretentious douchebag.  That said, I think the donator's/VIP's have their own private section of the forum.

Couldn't agree more. About 1.5 years ago I've tried to start a separate forum only for people who have actually contributed something tangible to Bitcoin, but it didn't go well.

Maybe the solution is to just make a forum with a small escrow payment - you put some BTC to activate your account and then can withdraw them and terminate your membership if you don't like it anymore. This alone should cut a lot of noise.

Most of the devs have come to the same conclusion.

So if this weren't for some certain project or such would they be more than just circlejerk?

And is allowance deniable, so if you don't agree with someone he is just removed...

There is already self-moderation option, so this could be done in that way.

I don't like it when people compare these morons to children/teenagers because they're a lot more intelligent than this the majority of the time, chances are these are 30+ year old neckbeards, spoilt traders or neo-keynesians out to do some trolling and are incapable of being told they're full of shit or they are sore losers.

Haven't you seen the kind of bullshit that our politicians and leaders get caught writing on facebook and twitter?

Cough...Bitcoin Foundation...cough...

Something to think about....Bitcoin is worth paying for. And it's worth paying to make it better.

This I like and have done before  ;D

I like this idea since I agree completely with the OP, but I would also hate to see the quality threads really hidden from view from the average user. It would also be great to be able to refer to those threads when someone does have a more serious question or tries to understand something about some aspect of Bitcoin.

I guess it could be a create new topic option - "restrict replies to established members".

Moderation of growing communities is always a challenging problem. You will piss some people off, no matter what you do.

I am not saying that kids are dumb, but teens with less life experience pretending to know it all it irks me every time.
The equalizing effect of the internet (making feel that a teen has the same authority than a professional), plus the trolling effect that we all know, causes really exasperating situations.

I applaud any kid who has a inquisitive mind, and some of them may try to learn through arguments.
But you can really tell the mental age of someone by paying attention to the proper usage of vocabulary, terminologies and their reasoning pattern... Which is in turn always matching with their life experience.

Preteens typically make you refer to the dictionary. They have difficulties understanding that professional terminologies have specific meanings that are not reflected in vernacular usage.

Teens typically want to pretend to be cultured and most analyses are purely logical, they don't understand the difference between tautology and truth. They have hard time understanding fallacies. They heavily use rhetoric to cover their ignorance. They are still trapped in a word of definitions, but now less about semantics and more about of conceptual definitions from textbook. Male teens have a very hard time being flexible, they are still living in a world of absolutes. They may grasp conceptually but they lack understanding of fundamentals.
Existential questions abound, and their ideologies are paved with zeitgeist and 1984 instead of actual philosophy.
And those who eat better ideologies, they become fanboys. Basically because they lack of actual criteria, they are looking for authorities to respect and follow.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is fairly predominant in both preteens and teens.

Adults because of their life experience, they bring case studies and they understand the exceptions to the rule. We use models to understand the world, but we use empiricism to confirm. We learn that the world is neither black nor white, but gray.
Existential conflicts are mostly gone with puberty, although it may return at your 30's or 40's in what people call "middle life crises". But those are more in line with "what did I do with my life" instead of the teenage "why do I exist".

OP is right: your vocabulary and orthography reveals a LOT, and the way that one formulates their ideas exposes even more.
If you read enough how someone formulates their question and/or reacts, you can infer fairly accurately their educational level, and therefore estimate their (mental) age.

Now, I am not criticizing the kids, this is all part of their learning process. Also, there are very bright ones out there. But most of them are just adding noise.
Having an invite only forum would be fine, but those posts shouldn't be isolated from the public, instead it should be something like a +v channel... only those invited can reply and post. The rest just watch and listen.

That's exactly what's missing from both Foundation and this forum's "premium" hidden section.

You don't need to hide things, this will only feed conspiracy paranoia. Just make it read-only for non-members.
And if people can't see what's inside, it's hard to know whether it would be worth paying for.

Overall, I don't think the problem is how to do it, it's just the lack of will (or organization).
I've been off bitcoin for 18 months and came back to the same sorry state of affairs as it was back then :(

Plus they won't get off my lawn!

I have also become more exasperated, there is not much enriching information being posted here (and the search function doesn't work correctly to show refreshing old search results), nor is there much point in posting to an audience who didn't bother searching for obvious sources, or who's response to the information they pretend to seek is TL;DR. The kind of people who think that the stuff they don't know how to do is easy to do.

I think that like the Internet itself (which was great before all those AOLers...), you will see segmentation between content creators and content consumers in Bitcoin media. We will cordon off the latter's banal exchanges (e.g. youtube comments) in a way that doesn't distract from the thoughtful word. The question is whether to keep rearranging deck chairs in this forum.

On the positive side, I think we are at the saturation point of conspiracy survivalists here (you know who you are), and will see more mainstream users joining.

Are you defining intelligence as IQ? A large component of an IQ measurement is verbal skill, which implicitly includes vocabulary. Your argument is tautological.

I would like to point out to my older suggestion of personalized tags for users: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=160900.msg1704296#msg1704296

However, this is probably not the right time (it is too turbulent these days) to promote such functionality.

IQ is one thing. And having a high IQ, I guess it indicates you're 'smart'. And that's not a bad thing. However I've seen many people with a high IQ, still making mistakes on many levels. For instance I had a professor at a university once, he was a complete ass. There was a clear hierachy. Undergraduate students were not allowed to contact him directly, because it was beneath him. Also it was important not to disturb him early in the morning, because then he was grumpy. Also he liked to plaster images of himself everywhere, letting everyone know about all his 'important' trips. Also, he was also always the master of everything computers, and for every assignment we got to know at the top of the paper that this stuff was written LaTex, vim or whatever obscure method he used to produce whatever. He always liked to use the most difficult methods to make something, so if he could write an assembler program to output gif's to give some nice graphs in the pdf's he produced, he'd do that.

Then immediately when students were enrolled, if they didn't know all the things that the curriculum was about for every session in class, the students were ridiculed and laughed at. He also used to write complicated calculations on big sheets of paper and plaster it on his office windows facing outwards, so that everybody that went by his office could gawk at his awesomeness.

If you sent him a question on e-mail, most of the time he either did not answer, gave an evasive answer, or was downright rude. At one time I was swamped in assignments as I also took extra subjects, and I sent him an e-mail asking him when the next assignment came out, so I could be better able to plan my time.

I got an e-mail back telling me that I must be in an idiot to be in this much of a hurry. But if I really was pressed for time I could have (insert very difficult assignment in assembler programming language here), and it was to be completed over the weekend and delivered to his office first thing in the morning the nextmonday (about 4 weeks before the general assignments were done). I gently declined and told him I'd rather wait for the official assignment.

Supposedly he was a brilliant man, or at least so he said himself, and he naturally had a few fans also. Maybe he had a very high IQ, I honestly don't know - but he was a complete ass. If I could chose I would chose a professor with 30% less knowledge but a better attitude.

As for the signal to noise ratio on this forum, using the ignore button usually helps. But it seems to be an influx of noise every time we have much activity in regards to speculation on the bitcoin price.

Imo, the most pleasant people to be around, are the ones with a relaxed attitude, helpful, friendly and with good intellects. Or simply put: Adults that can behave.

IQ only signifies a capacity for holding knowledge.  It says nothing about knowledge held.  For example, if Bill had a cup the size of 130 IQ, and Jane had a cup the size of 150, how can you tell how full their cups are?  Would Jane's cup necessarily be more full than Bill's because it's bigger?  It's possible, but not always the case.

That is, if you believe IQ is a legitimate method of determining how much potential a person has to understand.  If someone can improve their IQ, everything gets thrown out the window.

Although there's much noise here, I find this forum more intellectually stimulating than youtube comments. Youtube in itself limits the length of any conversation, so it becomes like twitter on steroids, ie. not good for discussing things in depth.

I think there's a place for everyone on the internet, we just need to find that place.

IQ is good to have, but so is EI. No matter how intelligent a person is, if he's constantly attacking, being negative and in general being a douche, I have no interest of dealing with that person. Now, if he has the occasional heated moments, that's not an issue. But some people just have a very bad attitude overall. And no matter how much you ignore it, if you stay around people like that, it will eventually eat at you, and your own attitude will be contaminated by theirs.

True true.  There are many forms of intelligence.  Nothing bugs me more than someone who doesn't know how to handle other people.  I can't imagine someone like that would be all together wise; most of life would be a series of failed relationships and anger at people in general for not accommodating their lack of social ability, furthering the hole they're in.  I generally try to be nice to these people; when you attack someone who attacks you, it makes them believe it's okay to act that way.  Throwing them a curveball forces them to think about why nobody's acting like they are.  Doesn't always work, tho :P

If we had more filtering abilities, I think it would help increase the signal to noise ratio. Right now I can't even find the good comments worth responding to. I'd like to completely exclude posts from users under X number of months old from every single thread I read. If I had this option, I'd participate more, but lately I'm finding coming to the forums more of a chore. I still read Meta and the Custom Hardware categories, but I think after my Avalons come in, I'll be visiting the forum only sparsely.

Perhaps a voucher-only system for getting out of the Newbie section would be good. I'm not sure. It seems like a lot of these new folks need to read more than they post, however.

IQ isn't really about capacity for "holding knowledge", in that case it would test memory, encoding and retrieval, which isn't really tested there.
IQ is more about your capacity of processing information, and that's it.
Visual processing, pattern processing are the most typical ones.

Potential for knowledge might fit what I was trying for better...

Neither that.
They do find correlations with academic performance, but that doesn't really prove potential for anything.
Ie. You can have a high IQ and be deluded to know it all, in that case you will never learn and be an ignorant ass all your life. You can find those examples quite often.

Have you tried the "ignore" function?  With some discipline, I am able to remove low-IQ contributors, whilst keeping most of those who have something to contribute - even if I totally disagree with it.

But the invite only/read only subsection is not a bad idea either.

I beg to differ. We're already getting accusations of elitism.

Like it or not, as Bitcoin adoption grows the forums are going to attract a lot of users who have little interest in intellectual discourse and even less interest in reading what others have written.  Many of them will have no interest in discussing concepts.

Other boards handle this by having dedicated forums with tougher rules.  The problem with that here is it takes a great deal of pro-active moderation to enforce and there's neither the will nor the resources to do that effectively.  This particular messageboard has an over-arching philosophy of minimal intervention by moderators and that's probably not going to change.

You know what, I am imagining a collective moderation mechanism, where people vote privately each other if someone is worthy. Something like the "thanks" mechanism. Someone who received kudos/thanks/whatever, automatically gets authorized to get into the exclusive forum.

The ones who gets the voting feature would be only those who achieved Hero Members, VIP and Donors, this would prevent gaming the system by registering new accounts massively and flooding each other with votes.

I think it may work pretty nicely.

Yes, we do. But don't bother to buy your way there. There is not much extra insight there compared to what you can find in the public area.

Yeah, that was my suspicion all along... Besides, 10 BTC for a forum access is kinda pricey nowadays :)

The problem is that noobs are just so damn annoying.  

This was my 666th post (http://www.freeimagehosting.net/newuploads/6klhm.png), which I promptly erased after assuring Theymos I would stop acting like a child.   Maybe the devil made me do it?

http://www.freeimagehosting.net/newuploads/6klhm.png

I can think of three nice features that might improve the level of discourse:

1) integrate google or similar search function. perhaps people won't need to start so many threads if they can find the thread they are looking for.

2) integrate voting.  People often have the same question or same opinion about something.  If in a thread a person could vote for anothers post it would minimize trash like ("this!" or "^^^^" or "i agree with that").. just click an up or down arrow.  Then popular positions could move to the top of a thread and you would eliminate repetitions of the same mind numbing "i agree" sentiment.

3) allow hot heads to opt out of threads they've posted in.  It is infuriating to see people posting nonsense and from time to time my ego forces me to want to tell them off.  By putting in my face the very same threads each time I log in (America is a Police State) you force me to want to reach into the thread and smack down the ______'s.

I REALLY appreciate and HIGHLY ADVOCATE use of the self moderated thread function.  In the next version of that I'd love to see the deleted thread posters get a specific message surrounding the reason their post was removed.  Not sure if editing can be improved for the non-html savvy...  

Thanks again, Theymos.



 

Google has a site: operand. Use it. Love it.

This is slated for the new forum software, but god only knows when that will come in. In the meantime, too much overhead.

Use of the watchlist and unwatch link is advised for these sorts of situations.

Report the troll posts you see rather than bitching about them.  If they merit action, then something will be done.  We (mods) can't clean up the forums all by ourselves, posts need to be reported for us to see as well.

I've been watching this thread for some time. One could argue that you're stalking me. I gave you valid suggestions, which are essentially what Theymos would have told you. If you don't like them, you don't have to take them.

You mods don't do shit.  I have been reporting oldsport as a scammer for almost two months and he still runs around the currency trading forums stealing peoples money.  Don't give lame excuses like you are too busy, you are too lazy is what you meant to write.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=244413.0

He completely erased my post leading to five seperate threads where people call oldsport a scammer.  All of the threads are unresolved and the scammer is still scamming.  The scammer is sending offensive emails to me in pm.  The scammer is attacking my reputation in the threads.  The mods do nothing.  It's been almost sixty days since the first post about the known scammer's actions but nothing has been done.  In the time since the first crime oldsport has stolen from at least a half dozen people and the mods sit around doing nothing.

I'll tell you what I'm going to do.  I'm going to demonstrate to all you mods how a forum should be run.  I'm going to replace this entire forum with a better one of my own making and I'm going to pull all the traffic off this forum to my own.  I'm sure theymos will ban me for this post but I don't give a shit anymore... just like theymos.

I care about the community and for this reason I'm going to duplicate this forum and provide a place where people can discuss bitcoin with a better and more professional set of moderators and admins.  

Mark my words, one year from today this forum will be only a shadow of what it is today.  Better spend that $600k now to improve and advertise this forum because YHBW.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=224769.0

There are more threads than those but I can't find them now because Maged thought it would be a good idea to remove my post from the forum completely.  For the record Maged is the worst mod I've ever come across, fucking moron.

edit

Help me build a better forum here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=244678.0

Marking your words

Until I get banned for poking the bear I have already begun.  Come join me.


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=244678.0

@Viceroy:  "Thee who maketh dah Mighty thine enemy resideth at The House of Fail." --The Teachings Of Crumbs, Red letter edition.

Oh please, I'm sooo scared of the mighted maged LOL.  

I'll just make a sock puppet like you did crumcake, your main was banned and you are still here.  So I guess you live in the house of fail, huh?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=244678.0

You won't be banned for deviant sexuality AFAIK.
http://s16.postimg.org/w9lsbzq85/Capture.jpg (http://postimage.org/)

removed from my new post and placed here instead, where it belongs:

"Inaba will never get banned because he pays Theymos $2500 per week to advertise here but I do not and I will probably be banished for even posting this thread.  Let's see if Theymos can stand a little heat, I'm betting he does not have the balls to let this stand". - Viceroy


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=244678.0