Bitcoin Forum

I'm not sure why it was allowed to happen but the Bitcoin forum has become a liability to the entire project.

As I type this the majority of posts in the the main forum... the only one that most people see... are mt gox rants.
How is someone discovering Bitcoin today supposed to wade through this mess to find information?

The threads are filled with gigantic signature pictures and ridiculous trolling. Several of the top level threads are just joke pictures.

Why is this being allowed to happen?
All serious discussion of bitcoin gets moved to subforums while the main is left to wallow in garbage.

Moderators, you know that this site is linked from the the main bitcoin page and this is the first place people turn to ask questions.
The state of the forum today makes the whole project look like a joke.
If this had been the state of the forums when I first got interested I would have dismissed the entire thing.

agreed. when someone comes here, they'll think this is a project run by 10 year olds.

Yes it is, as many people have noted many times already in this Meta forum.

I feel it should be unlinked from the bitcoin.org page and moved to another domain (bitcoinanarchy.org? :P). Bitcoin.org (the "official" site) should have a tech support/development forum at most.

Two months ago I would never have believed I'd support this idea. Now I think it's best.

This whole thing needs to be exported somewhere else (hell?) and a new forum with essentially two sections needs to be made: Serious Bizness and Please Help Me. Both need to be heavily moderated. Serious Bizness should probably be a whitelisted post area.

I think the Day of the Trolls was not as bad as all these ongoing Mtgox rant threads.

I like to clean my eyes with the Mining sub-forums, they're so much more tame than Bitcoin General.

Yes

While I feel the general discussion section has gotten out of hand, this forum has helped some people.  I got into bitcoins through a friend who was mining.  I thought it would be a cool excuse to build a sick computer at subsidized cost.  However, around the time of the big coverage on silk road and the allinvain incident, I turned here in order to understand what I was doing.  After all people should know what they are getting involved in.  When I started I could not explain how bitcoin worked.  Thanks to the forums I do have a much better understanding. 

the forum is great.
yes, it is an anarchy.

stop being nazi´s and trying to force people to behave after some norm

Well it looked pretty embarrassing when I joined a couple of weeks ago. Visit the Marketplace and all you see are what looks like a yard sale. Pretty huge liability to the idea that bitcoins can be a real currency that is used to buy and sell goods and services if you ask me.

Don't blame the latecomers, they're asking the right questions of this community which are essential if bitcoin is to survive.

Sounds like the admins need to clarify what the purpose of the forums are.

Is it for open discussion or for furthering the adoption of bitcoins? Perhaps the home page needs to more clearly delineate the sections for support/help and open discussion. On Ubuntu Forums any thread that is not user-support related has to be the sections for Community Talk. Admins move the rants or non-support stuff there when seen.

Nothing wrong with open discussion but does it need to be top story when users seek help?

The forums facilitate the community. We need a strong community for Bitcoin to grow  - it's one of the most important things to have in place if Bitcoin is to become financially relevant.

Each forum has sticky threads that all newcomers can start with and they are informative enough for all but the most hardcore users, who probably don't have a problem finding information in a public forum.

The promise of great fortunes is drawing them in.