Bitcoin Forum

Bad actors are using newbie account to spread FUD, lies, and disinformation in certain forums.

The things on the forum which encourage spam are allowed mainly because it's part of the forum's mission to be as free as possible.
~snip~

Limiting newbie participation is very harmful for a community. Newbie jail will never return: I consider the newbie-jail period to have been extremely damaging to the forum. When barriers to participation are too high, then the best people often just won't go to the trouble of joining, and the people who are willing to jump through the hoops are often people who aren't good for the community: people with nothing better to do, scammers, get-rick-quickers, etc. Having a permanent newbie jail policy would improve things a lot in the short-term, but would end up being a fatal poison to the community.

As much as I dislike that, it's not against the rules (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0).

It's very unlikely theymos wants to further restrict Newbies:

One example of such forums is the speculation forums.  As a newbie, they don't have enough knowledge or experience in crypto to speculate.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5154653.0

It's very unlikely theymos wants to further restrict Newbies:

It might be better if you quoted the FUD posts here instead of linking to the whole thread--I don't feel like reading through it to determine what might be a lie or misinformation, and I might not even know for sure anyway. 

I'll tell you, a lot of newbies use Speculation to drop multiple shitposts, because you don't have to write anything profound (or even coherent) in that section.  There's tons of nonsense and garbage posts, because the shitposters know they're not likely to have them deleted by the mods.  It's pretty loose as far as moderation goes.  Best thing you could do is to make a self-moderated thread, and don't think twice about doing so.  That way you can just nuke the idiotic crap.

No he doesn't, and that's fine by me.  That's what self-moderation is for.  They should be allowed to participate in any thread, but that doesn't mean if the OP is serious about his thread he shouldn't be allowed to nuke garbage.  Go for it, OP.

I wish I could self-moderate but I have never seen that option on creating a new topic.  Can someone show me how to make a self-moderating post?

When creating the topic click "Additional Options...." and check the "Self-moderate" box

<...>

Talking about posting shoulds and shouldn’ts, you’ve now got three identical running threads, with the same OP content in them, on three different sections. Besides this thread, you’ve also got:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5155752.msg51513461#msg51513461
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5155738.msg51513082#msg51513082

One would suffice, and you can move it if you placed it in the wrong board. It’s a bit of a mess having three running threads with the same objective and content, with answers in three different sections. At least I’d say you should lock the other two.

It's very unlikely theymos wants to further restrict Newbies:
----snip-----

Primarily, it's just that freedom + size = mess, and with bitcointalk.org I've chosen to keep freedom about as high as possible, for example allowing paid signature ads, poor English, micro-earning services which often attract a spammy crowd, etc. Banning these things (and other noise-generating factors) would be easily possible, and would immediately lead to a cleaner environment, but it'd also be a less free environment. IMO there are enough highly-controlled platforms around, and I'd prefer to try maximizing the freedom axis. (Maximizing freedom on the forum was a policy started by Satoshi when he was an admin, BTW, though it was years after he left before the forum became large enough for freedom to actually come in conflict with signal much.)

Bitcointalk.org is under active development on two parallel paths:

First, although the outward appearance hasn't changed much at all since 2010, I have made tons of changes to the code, including many features. About a year ago for example I added the Merit system, which has improved signal-to-noise quite a bit, by means of changing incentives.

Second, a completely new software platform has long been in development. This software is open source, can be run now, and an instance of it is available for example at https://www.cryptos-currencies.com/ . But I don't think that it's quite complete enough to migrate bitcointalk.org to it yet.

On both development paths, we try to tackle signal-vs-noise by methods such as categorizing posts better, improving incentives, trying to create smaller sub-communities, etc., but not via restriction, if at all possible.

While I don't claim to have nearly maximized the signal-to-noise which might be possible even given a high degree of freedom, bitcointalk.org is pretty anarchic, and it will always be so. (Though note that some sections are much better than others.) If that doesn't appeal to you, then you should use a different site. Smaller communities, like IRC channels and similar, can be both free and have a high signal-to-noise ratio. This was bitcointalk.org in 2010-2013, but it's now too large. You can also have large communities that are more strictly moderated, like /r/Bitcoin.

1. satoshi would disagree
2. theymos would disagree

because people wont understand the basics if those who were here wont allow it.blockchain needs social awareness,people needs to educate how blockchain works.

I guess you don't have to discriminate all newbie accounts. There are some rare scenario that those accounts are sometimes handled by knowledgeable on the industry, if you limit newbie not just on speculation board and onto others as well I guess that's stereotyping them. We can't restrict those who do FUD as that's what they do you can ignore them if you want.

At least the head admin does not have intention to reimplement Newbie Jail, and has not shown any signal that he will change this approach.
Disabling the right to wear signature of newbies, and restrict newbies whom can not earn a single merit to become Junior Members are good strategy to control them, and somehow motivate them to contribute more in the forum (to receive at least a single merits, before start to spam again  ::) ). There are some other contributions from forum community, such as Spambuster club, and plagiabot, are also helpful to eliminate Newbie-spammers, whom are too lazy and dumb.

I am support into the disabling of the signature of those newbie on some boards as some only wanted to comply the quantity of their posts because of what they wear, hoping more managers are onto this as well.

Due to excessive garbage-posting, you now need 1 merit to be a Jr Member. All existing Jr Members who didn't meet the requirement were demoted. Also, newbies can no longer set any signature or personal text.

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<…> Limiting newbie participation is very harmful for a community. Newbie jail will never return: I consider the newbie-jail period to have been extremely damaging to the forum. When barriers to participation are too high, then the best people often just won't go to the trouble of joining, and the people who are willing to jump through the hoops are often people who aren't good for the community: people with nothing better to do, scammers, get-rick-quickers, etc. Having a permanent newbie jail policy would improve things a lot in the short-term, but would end up being a fatal poison to the community. <…>

There are forums where newbies should not be allowed to post; forums where it is expected for them to have more experience levels before they can contribute anything.