Bitcoin Forum

I created two boards:

 - Serious discussion (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=250.0). No limit on topic, but moderation of on-topicness and general sanity will be extra harsh. No advertising of any kind. Signatures are not displayed.
 - Ivory Tower (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=251.0). As above, but you must be at least a Member in order to post there.
 
Currently these boards are not treated specially in the activity calculation. I'm currently feeling that:
 - Removing them totally from the activity calculation is kind of unfair to posters there.
 - Allowing them just to activate a potential-activity period isn't much different from treating them normally for activity.
 - Treating them normally for activity won't be so bad, maybe.

But we'll see how it goes. These boards are largely experimental.

Update:

That's the first thing I noticed today upon visiting this forum. Nice to see an addition of a new childboard which focuses mainly on sensible topics (and not like the ones posted mainly on other boards and whatnot). Though I'd like to ask, would these new boards cater all types of serious discussion such as altcoin discussion, politics and stuff or is this still Bitcoin Discussion 2.0 but only with serious flow of conversations? Kinda confusing since there aren't much details on what topics these boards would and could contain.

Oh and just a suggestion though, since Meta is mainly about account bans, retrievals, new addition to the forum and forum-related topics, wouldn't it be best to just remove the signature display in here as well so as to maintain the integrity even of the three boards and to remove signature spammers in here as well?

Altcoin talk is OK there as long as it doesn't look like an advertisement. Any topic is OK unless explicitly banned (eg. Investigations content).

What exactly is the motivation behind this? Which of the existing forum's problems is this supposed to solve?

I like the Idea and it's a step in the right direction to Avoid Sig Ad Spammers but i think what you said above is going to backfire and it's going to be a mess in there in a few days.

A big thumbs up. It is a small step.
If most of the non-spam discussions shift to the serious discussion board, we will know what the forum members really want.

What about topics which would normally reside in Meta? I think keeping forum related topics should be kept in meta. Potentially adding one serious child board for each section could also be something to look at so it's easier to filter if this is successful and popular enough.


As theymos stated, it's entirely experimental which means if it's abused then more defined restrictions could be put into place once it's been tried and tested.

Readability. I think it was JetCash awhile back complaining that his constructive thread was getting drowned out by the mass of signature spammers and account farmers. Hopefully, this will be a place which can rectify this and allow people to discuss what they want without being exposed to the bullshit responses.  

A step, in sort of a decent direction. A few issues with the current approach though:

• Not excluding these boards from activity and post calculations is going to result in some people attempting to pad their post count (though considering the strictness, they might avoid it since it's easier to do so elsewhere)
• As a user already mentioned, avatars and personal text (and as such avatar and personal text campaigns) are still enabled (a minor issue but still)
• If the name "Ivory Tower" wasn't intended as a satirical jab at the current situation of the forum as well as the new boards' position within the aforementioned context, you might've misnamed it.

Sounds like a good move,

I'm getting interested in the RMG blockchain because of its association with physical assets. Is this something that could be discussed there, or should it be kept on the current alt boards?

Ditto.  I applaud Theymos for (sort of) acknowledging how lousy discussions have gotten here and actually doing something about it.  If it doesn't work, it doesn't work, but if nothing is tried, then no problems are going to be solved.  So kudos.  I do hope the "extra harsh" moderation and lack of incentive will eliminate no-English shitposters, but it'll definitely be interesting to see what happens.

Ivory Tower is an interesting name for that subsection.

Yeah, without removing it from post count/activity calculation all it is is another board for farmers to post in and a lot of lazy campaigns will still end up paying for posts in that section. Making it heavily modded just adds a crazy amount of more workload to already overworked staff as well and it's still going to be heavily abused by lazy posters and their halfassed one liners as long as a posts in there count. I get that it's unfair to penalise users in there but if it's stated that contributions in that sub don't count towards your total count then there's nothing to complain about and I'm sure most users will just be appreciative that we're trying to do something about the spam. Why don't you experiment and have one board that counts and one that doesn't and see what the results are?[/list]

If it were somewhere at the top, I'd understand. However, this section is listed under Off-Topic which itself is listed far down.

It doesn't solve issues at all, so what direction are you talking about? All this board is supposed to do is create a small environment for legitimate people to *possibly be serious*. It does literally nothing to combat any problem that exists in any board.

Since theymos doesn't want to untie signatures from activity (as suggested by hilariousandco), which IMO would solve the issue of both illiterate spammers polluting the forum as well as stop account farming, this seems to make at least a couple of sections where discussion won't get usurped by inane sig spammers. As I said, while not a step in the exact direction I would've wanted, it's better than nothing.

Maybe if these experimental boards work as intended, we'll have some forum-wide changes for cracking down on spammers.

It probably should be at the top or under Bitcoin Discussion (though I'm not entirely sure what discussion the sub board is intended to include right now (just bitcoin related topics or any kind of worthwhile/important discussion not necessarily exclusively bitcoin related)).


I really hope he address why he is so against this as I really can't see any other way we're going to put a stop to account farming. As long as sigs are tied to activity/post count then shitposting/farming is always going to be an issue and will in fact only continue to grow worse over time.


Well it doesn't solve much currently but maybe lets see how the experiment goes. Hopefully it's just the first change of many but at least it is a start. Removing some boards from activity or disallowing certain ranks from posting in them would be another and not difficult to implement (especially the latter and some boards are already restricted from certain ranks). Punishing signature campaigns in various ways is another and is what should have been done with the Signature Guidelines thread.

I see that newbies were already posting junk in Serious Discussion, so I made changes:
 - The member limitations are moved up one rank. You must be a Jr Member to post in Serious Discussion and a Full Member to post in Ivory Tower
 - Posts in Serious Discussion only activate a potential-activity period. They do not increase your post count.
 - Posts in Ivory Tower neither activate a potential-activity period nor increase your post count.


The name is supposed to be whimsical and slightly self-deprecating, not to imply that the idea of such a section is stupid/wrong.

I'll admit I glanced at the calendar when I saw the name.  My first thought was, "It can't be April already."

Why is that required though? Aren't we well aware of how enormous the problem has become?  Haven't we discussed a numerous amount of suggestions for tackling the problem?

Looks like the intent is various kind of serious discussion (not limited to Bitcoin), but the board is not placed properly IMO.

A simple way to start the combat against this issue is adding a rule that both account farming and account trading is permanently bannable. Dislocating signatures from activity/post is a more *radical* change IMO, but that I'd agree with too.


Both of these are needed badly. :-\

I would suggest an even higher rank requirement for that section. Maybe Senior Member. Although that is no guarantee that the poster is legitimate at all.

I suspect that we should wait and see how the characters of these boards develop. We can help this process by supporting them. I started a thread in Ivory Tower. If this is unsuitable, then please move it, but I hope that after the first 50 or so threads, we can get a feel for the use of the boards.

Can we implement some of these restrictions in Off Topic and Politics and Society boards as requested here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2694534.msg27528982#msg27528982

I think we should restrict them both to at least Junior member but personally I think a higher rank of something like Full Member and above would be better and far more effective in combatting spam and farming because it's become ridiculous in there and only continues to get worse the longer we leave it.

My initial thoughts... I like it. I'm curious to see how the threads develop and maybe one day I will feel legitimate enough to post in the "Ivory Tower"  :D
All in all, this seems like a step in the right direction... and is at least some sort of acknowledgement that theymos hasn't completely left the forum to build a seastead, and still has some interest in improving the forum. ;D

After a week, it doesn't seem if people are shifting en-masse to the 2 new boards, to avoid signature spam. Looks like paid signatures are essentially the drivers of this forum.  :)

Paid signatures may drive the majority of noise on this forum, but they are not the engine. There could be many reasons there are not more threads being started... partially visibility, and the fact that serious conversations take time to develop and are on a smaller scale when compared to the current noise. The fact that there are not a bunch of useless posts and threads being started in the serious discussion may symbolize that the majority of noise on the main discussion boards is due to paid campaigns... regardless, it's probably too early to conclude anything with these new boards, and I'm not sure they are really getting a fair chance for visibility sitting under "Other".

Well I don't think that was ever really up for debate. I'd say easily 90% of users are here just for signature campaigns these days, but even those people who aren't here to just bleed them dry may just think what's the point and if they're going to post they might as well get paid for it. There's not really that much to discuss in there right now though either so I'm glad people aren't just forcing themselves to post but people not posting much in there doesn't matter. I would rather those boards be free of spam as they were intended than just crammed full with a load of semi-decent topics or a load of 'fake-deep' ones just posted for the sake.

I also notice that this thread ( Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178336.msg1858442#msg1858442) ) we can't view our signature. Is that part of this movement? Or Its been already implemented before this and I'm just late to know about that?

This was implemented before. IIRC it was because there was a debate about the trashing (??) of the thread and rather than get rid of it because it was a source of information, theymos simply removed signatures for it. Find the thread discussing this if you want more precise information.

How about in all stickied Meta threads too? I constantly see them being used by newbies to just farm up activity. They agree or say it's a good source of information and are doing fuck-all to the forum. And then there's the ones that are asking questions which are answered in the thread.

I think it is a shame that people think this. I've started a couple of specialist threads - crypto domain names, and Bitcoin nodes over public wifi for travellers.

However, I'm surprised that my threads about the first settlement day for Bitcoin futures, and the imminent prosections for manipulating exchange prices didn't garner any responses.

I don’t usually follow the Serious Discussion forum, for four principal reasons:

0. I believe that all forums should be for serious discussion—or at least, for high-quality discussion.  I don’t want to contribute to the Bitcoin Forum following some internal version of the well-known “Lifecycle of an Internet Forum”, whereby old-timers are driven out by trash.  Inevitably, the old-timers then proceed to found a new forum—where the lifecycle repeats, just as inevitably.  I would prefer to either contribute my energy to making the ordinary topical forums good places to be—or leave this place entirely.

1. I dislike the idea of my signature being suppressed.  I need my PGP key fingerprint (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3107429.0)!  Why should I be punished to combat spam?  Likewise as for the post count rule.  Rather than than take these restrictions upon myself, I will choose to post elsewhere.

2. Excluding new accounts from discussion can decrease quality.  Vide my “Newbie” debut in the Development & Technology Discussion forum (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2469397.msg25696091#msg25696091), made three days after I started actively posting.  That would have been excluded from “Serious Discussion”.

3. A quick skim over threads in “Serious Discussion” shows that its rules do not actually guarantee discussions more serious than I could find elsewhere.  Perhaps the overall S/N ratio may be higher; I’d need to read that forum more to find out.  But if I desire a very serious discussion, I would rather seek out, say, the best threads in Dev & Tech.  Those are serious.

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I’ve had the foregoing thoughts ever since I first saw notice of “Serious Discussion”.  Now, I am driven to air them by a bit of irritation:  I created a brand-new role account (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1935564) sooner than I’d intended, due to having inadvertently discovered a relevant thread in Serious Discussion.  I wanted to use the new account to reply there.  I bought a Copper Membership for it.  Then, I realized that it is disallowed from posting there; I’d forgotten the Jr. Member rank requirement, since I rarely ever pay attention to that forum.

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I suggest that Copper Membership should permit immediate posting in Serious Discussion.  I just tried; it doesn’t.  Willingness to pay a nontrivial fee is likely to be a far more reliable indicator of quality than the ability to farm an account for activity, with no merit requirement to reach Jr. rank (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3114287.0).  Moreover, the nontrivial fee makes the ban hammer much more painful for those who may be inclined to create throwaway accounts.

For Serious Discussion, at least, this would provide the “legitimate means to bypass” mechanistic rules (#post_safety_valve) as mentioned below.

Amidst an Internet “gimme” culture wherein most people expect everything for free, anybody who is willing to pay money for an Internet forum account must be presumed to be—well, serious about it, ipso facto.

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As for the “Ivory Tower”:  I’ve never set foot in there.  I am excluded from posting in the Ivory Tower, and will remain so until sometime after Activity Period 1257 starts at 19:40:00 (UTC) today, 13 March 2018.  Although I know the virtues of lurking (and did so long before I even created an account), I would not read a forum where I am forbidden from replying.

Although I am not at all against exclusivity, it is important for any strict social exclusions to be based on other than fully mechanistic application of rules such as the activity system; and where mechanistic rules are used, it is important to provide a legitimate means to bypass them where warranted.  Think of it as a social safety valve.  Or perhaps now that the merit system is in place, merit (which is non-mechanistic) should be used as the criterion for “Ivory Tower” access.

For my part, the most valuable discussion I’ve had here has been in Development & Technology Discussion—most of all in a self-moderated thread, where I can nuke trolls without heed to their cries of “censorship”.  That is my ivory tower.

I support the serious discussion board, and I am pleased that new members and alts are restricted from posting there. There are plenty of other boards for them to use, In fact, I think it should be restricted to members and above.

Having to create self-moderated threads on other boards, just shows that there is a need for a moderated board with posting restrictions. Self-moderated threads seem to develop a bias as a result of the centralised control of the posting.

I don't like the idea of my signature being suppressed either, but I am prepared to accept that restriction, if it keeps out the very low grade posting from the sig spamming polluters of the other boards.

I don't think anyone posting here for some grand motivation only and nothing else, except for those earlier developer of BTC, now most probably if not all have something motivating them to post here, either ranking up, merit, signature campaign, even those who have supposedly only informative website on their sig were motivated to post some useless reply just to get backlink to their website, but they hide behind their no campaign sig ideal when in fact they are not any better than those sig campaign spam poster.