Bitcoin Forum

For once this topic is not going to be a topic of a member complaining about a moderator, but of a moderator complaining about the members of his section.

I could have written this topic in the Staff section, but fearing the lack of answers and finding the subject interesting to get as many opinions as possible, I'm posting it here.

A few reminders :
I'm too lazy to find the exact quote, but Theymos said "the aim of this forum is to be as free as possible".
Free of speeeech.
Voltaire: "I don't agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for you to have the right to say it."

I agree with all that. And I was trying to moderate as best I could with all these parameters.

Current context :
Since 7/10, the world has fallen further into madness.

User A : a member who has become radicalized and is absolutely against immigration to Europe and can be described as islamophobic. Of course he's a supporter of Israel and its actions.
User B : a negationist member who sees Jewish lobbies everywhere. Of course he's anti-Israel.
User C : an openly zionist member who can't even write the word god (he would write g.d)
User D : a troll alt account that only gives links to extreme right-wing sites that list violent acts committed by arabs or africans.

Mix it all up and let them do for 28 pages in a single topic. Imagine the carnage. Because yes, I have decided not to moderate this topic, or very little.

But this morning you wake up with your head up your ass and see :




I give you access to my account for 5 minutes. What would you do ?
Are there no limits to everything, even here on Bitcointalk ?

(To be clear, I'm not jewish or muslim. I don't believe in any god. I deeply believe that we would live better without religions, but that's not the debate of this topic.)

Edit :
I can't ban an account directly.
The topic in question is already in the off-topic section.

Do whatever you like?

You are the mod. You should decide.

If you want the forum look like 4chan, then let people post mass killings, death threats, terror propaganda etc.

If you don’t, then delete these posts.

Damn, but aren't such words a kind of death threat? so these posts should be deleted.


But, since the moderators can make a mistake, why you're not try to delete their posts when you feel it's necessary to take an action? it's up to them to create a dedicated thread to complain why their posts are constantly get deleted, so you can restore these posts when the community say you're wrong?

OMG, why are you hesitant? Why are you even asking? You should ban them both, is that really so hard man? Do you need permission to do the right thing? Ban them and let them come here for appeal, THEY WON'T. believe me because the community will scar them for life if they appeal.

This is not about free speech, this is encouraging violence and is actually a serious crime, please don't let criminals roam this forum that easily.

It disgusts me to read the quote in, "D". I don't even care about the nationality of the person. Organ harvesting is as disgusting as racist comments. Now tell me, how on earth will someone have such a mindset and their post is allowed to breath five minutes of readership all in the name of free press? Gosh! Kindly do the needful and delete them. A fair judgment to the best of my perspicacity will be to give temporary ban on those accounts so they all can cool off.

I can be wrong but I think those posts are not necessarily deleted. Moving that thread to Off-topic and lock it.

I think so because I see those posts are toxic but very general and moderators can handle those posts similarly like doxes. It is general and you can find it in many places on Internet but if it aims at a specific person, those posts must be deleted and those posters must be banned.

Make a quarantine section in the local board called "Politics and Society" (but in french I guess) and just require all posts on the topic to be there or else they will go to the trashcan and also turn off notifications (for yourself) on that board.

This approach is very good for containing the BADecker types that never venture out of the Politics board.

Some hookers + some drugs too. 😉🤣
What are you saying man? This is how extremist born, if you don't stop them, we might as well allow people to do sex video online and broadcast it here live, then we can all watch and circle jerk each other, what a f'ed up community would that be I wonder?

user C basically made a death threat and as Despairo has said shared, it is against the forum rules and if I remember correctly, that is a bannable offence. also, I agree with ETFbitcoin to lock the thread instead of deleting it, what these people wrote needs to be out there to show how disgusting they are.

user D is a POS, that guy has never experienced what oppressed people have felt and their lives to be considered as nothing but objects that can be taken with a click of a button or pull on a trigger.

Nothing personal, just relaying what I heard from some members of our community

Extremists are born by the media they are shown on TV or video-sharing platforms. Bitcointalk is an old-fashioned forum where the only people typing this kind of stuff are the ones who've already been raised like that. If it was my forum, I'd probably delete all that stuff, but it's not and so it's Halab's decision to do as he sees fit with his local board.

Can someone show us those members mentioned 2 posts above?

The topic in question is: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5469514.0

User C is: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=377987
User D is: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3563417

I love your decision to have exposed the post here coupled with Despairo quotes reference to what mprep said it's against the forum rules hence should be deleted but since you don't believe in any God and you wouldn't to take laws into your hands you decided to share for a general overview., So in my opinion deleting is the best and those post aren't qualify to be left in a minutes because is against the forum rules.

Why post their profiles? Don't do that, don't expose them like that, if they are banned, they will never return here, it's not about opinions anymore, these words are considered a crime, legally.

Freedom of speech does not mean that people are allowed to give death threats or talk about organ harvesting. This is disgusting and should be controlled by the mods regardless of what has been spoken by Theymos. There should line within that freedom that should not be crossed. Of course, everyone should be allowed to have a discussion but when it goes into the negative zone a limit should be applied to stop it from going further. I feel such discussions are way out of human morality and should not be allowed or encouraged in the forum.

A mods job is to stop such kind of shit discussion before it reaches a stage when personalization or pointing fingers starts based on religion. I do feel being in a forum that was meant to uplift the lifestyle of those struggling financially the objective of discussion should not be hatred based on religion but on financial upliftment.

You are the moderator, and you are in a position to do the right thing or even consult the opinions of other moderators too. IMO, I have two suggestions: either for the topic to be locked and moved to the archive board or for a warning to be sent to the member who is making a death threat because it's against the forum rule to make a death threat on someone.

I would delete all of this comments or threads and would be forward that to the Global Moderators and theymos and Cyrus.
If that comments and thing will be coming and be maked again i also would request a temp or perm ban for them.
This kind of things has nothing to do with Bitcoin or the Forum and should be also not in the Off Topic section.

I'd likely delete all comments or threads with threats, hate speech, or incitement to violence.  Those kinda cross the line from free speech into infringing on others' rights.  I'd forward those posts to the main mods for penalties if that stuff pops back up. Freedom of speech is not without its boundaries. As a mod you have some duty to make sure people don't use their individual freedoms to infringe upon the rights and well-being of others.

I will send myself few trust and maybe merits hehe just kidding, well, I have read the first post by user C and I think it was made in BTC discussion and one another section, and it was totally off so I did not replied because I knew these posts will be deleted because posts other than English language don't stays there any longer.

You did the right thing, even if the forum has given us the freedom speech but we should not use that feature for spreading hate speech. World is full of religions, I am Muslim and religious person, I support Palestine. But still these words are so rude and harsh.

I am not a moderator, I don't know the rules, and what rules you guys have to follow but what I know is you have the right to remove there topics or any topic that is spreading hatred, if any don't like my support for Palestine or like me as Muslim then I can't do anything with it and it is freedom of speech, but if I starts to talk shit about other party's childern and started to disrespect them then that's bad for me, we are human but things are just getting out of hands for everyone (not talking about me). Let's just moderate these things.

Aaaah the "Off topic" board in FR section ;D

What a hell ! All my sympathy for you Halab, I guess it's not fun reading all that for the sake of moderation lol.

For my part, I'm "praying" that a bull will bring us more BTC-oriented conversations in FR section, that would be nice.


Perhaps the only potential limit is the boredom of conversing with 2 or 3 people on the same subject again and again?

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Below is an illustration of the French Off Topic board mood:

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/12/01/NsnCb.png

The way mods here seem to interpret the rules, only direct threats at a specific user would result in a ban, and even that's not always enforced. Saying that someone should be killed (but not directly saying "I'll kill you"), or that an entire nation should be exterminated is not considered a specific death threat... despite potentially breaking the law in some or many jurisdictions.

Just to be clear, that's not my opinion on the matter but an observation over the years of this shit happening here and reporting it. I personally don't see how genocide propaganda could possibly be good for the forum and if I were a mod I'd delete such posts.

Listening to the rumors in the corridors is not interesting and neither is reporting them.

Our moderator is very good, he does what he can and is currently forced to read horrors and clearly members who are crazy.

They just have to go to specialized hate forums of all kinds. The French forum is dying because of all these assholes who want to kill everyone. Obviously that doesn't attract crowds.

These psychopaths should just take their morbid press reviews elsewhere. Halab is an excellent moderator and he proves it by asking this question. I'd rather he fires all these idiots than resign.

I want Meuuuuuh back and all who wrote interesting threads.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that 98% of the forum has never visited the French Off-Topic section. Today was the first time I ever did. I for one don't care at all what goes on there. But if a post advocating the murder of one or many people is reported and I was mod, I would delete it... If they do it again and its reported again, perhaps a temp ban in order with a message telling the user how they are violating forum rules. For the 3rd time, a permanent ban is in order.

This happens in P&S all the time but these posts aren't deleted, they probably aren't even reported:

Some information and quick answers.

I deleted the message from user D. I had little doubt about it.
I left the message from user C. In the meantime there have been replies, and I know user C, he's very provocative (and he responds to other provocations), but he's not an total idiot troll. And (*)

The "Hors sujet" (off topic) section is already our Meta/P&S/OT section.

If I lock the topic, I've got 3 new ones opening up within 15 minutes, crying for injustice, censorship and infringement of freedom of speeeeeeech !!!



No, a mod can't do whatever he wants, it's not that simple. If it were up to me, we would all have the same haircut and talk about football and Miss France :).
And I have tried many times to reduce the pressure between the same members by advising them to ignore each other because they will never change their minds. But it seems that for some, talking about the conflict between Israel and Palestine (or whatever) is their priority in their life.

From my own experience, admins and GMs don't get too involved in this kind of case. You need clear evidence, and trolls know how to play by the rules.

Fake picture, the glasses of red wine are missing :).

Chuuutt, it's well known that everything is my fault :).

(*) This.

I'm not even sure that this moderator is French. This is probably why he doesn’t understand the requests of people who write in French.

I was told that this moderator does not fulfill user requests. He only knows how to refuse requests. Instead of fulfilling his moderator duties, he does what he wants.

But other moderators are more accommodating

Look, you ain't got no business with whatever thing they say.... except you believe but like you said, you don't believe in religion so you shouldn't be hesitant to obscure every form of tribal or religion wars/ retaliations.

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yunno why I said this? A time will come that some daft-headed fellow would lay down a threat in here to some known, opposite religious fellow and that won't be nice at all.. you are a moderator; stick that off your board and trash 'em.... This isn't a religious site!

Sandra 🧑‍🦰

genocide propaganda is probably illegal in most if not all countries, such comments could be removed by "authority force",  these comments put the forum at risk, probably not much less than mixers (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5476162.0), except that -- nobody had ever cared enough to point fingers at the forum for being an open-platform for genocide encouragement, but for how long? I think it would be best to remove the P&S boards altogether -- delete everything non-crypto.

What does Bitcoin gain from debating these conflicts here? exactly.

I have was consulted with theymos on this issue. I posted the results of this consultation in my post here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5231446.msg59899668#msg59899668). It doesn't have to be about a user on the forum. Prohibiting specific calls for violence on the forum also applies to anyone outside the forum or any nation.

Wow, that sounds like a really challenging situation. It's unfortunate when members take discussions to such extreme and offensive levels. Moderating such topics must be quite a task. You should do what you have to do... "moderation"!


Yes you are right theymos always talks about free speech and the quote you are referring to, I guess is the below one.


But at the same time theymos advocates about much needed moderation too, he said it many times that "free discussion" is not "unmoderated discussion".





So you should continue the moderation to keep the "things" within the rules and limits of a free speech.

Doesn't apply when BADecker does it though...

https://meem.link/i/nud6fvfv.png

The English off-topic section has this description:
Does that apply to your local section too? If so, why not just lock the topic?

What is "hate speech" is highly subjective. Apparently Irish Lives Matter (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-67566360) is hate speech nowadays. It looks like calling things "hate speech" is used more and more to silence opponents. So let's not go there.

AFAIK Bitcointalk is hosted/located on U.S. where first amendment doesn't apply to private platform. So you could mention that fact with some external references such as this one https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/17/18682099/supreme-court-ruling-first-amendment-social-media-public-forum (https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/17/18682099/supreme-court-ruling-first-amendment-social-media-public-forum).

I've never found that description logical. If we want to abuse language and play with words, we could start from the principle that we are all bitcoiners here (apart from a few newbies, perhaps?), and that following this logic, anything written by one of us here represents an interest for bitcoiners, since only bitcoiners write on this forum...  :D

In the case of the topic mentioned by Halab, we can assume that the topic is of interest to bitcoiners, as some of them post there on a daily basis...

Irrespective of what once stance may be on a particular subject, it does not give an avenue for such campaign. Wishing or mentioning that one must be killed or death be the consequences of people just because of their religious beliefs is not a welcome development.

Where on earth did the humanity in humans go to? I have seen and heard of these on social media and other places and the last place I expect to see such is in here.

As much as this forum might be neutral on certain issues. it is not a tool to incite violence of any sort.

I agree, it's definitely not free speech if you're intending to hurt someone over stuff that you're passionate about, that's probably the most deplorable thing someone with a belief can do, to try and see those outside of their beliefs as uncouth and evil that can never have a different opinion, inciting violence is such a Twitter thing and I don't think anyone in this forum even likes Twitter. It's admirable that OP is hesitant about this because he respects the person behind those stuff and why they're saying is second only to his concern because OP believes in absolute freedom of speech which isn't the best one albeit the ideal one, so I think helping in and weighing in would help OP and at the same time let's us see a glimpse in what they're dealing with all day.

For me, if someone were to start threatening me or using their faith as a shield against their beration or slander just because I didn't share their faith or that I somehow disagreed with their beliefs, I automatically lose respect for them and either I tell them that the faith they're in is just a leash that let's them act in an unnatural way.

I know who you are : you are Tullius Détritus. (The one who screws up in Asterix and Obelix "the discord")

French or not it doesn't matter, what matters is that Halab speaks and writes French better than most people in the French part.

He's an excellent moderator and the "I was told" is really the Tullius Détritus method: either you have proof or you shut up.

But that's off topic Tullius  :-X

Isn't this the practice of the west where you can mock anyone or hurt anyone in the name of free speech? Our criticism should be based on facts and respective words not only by using foul words to defame someone.

This is an excellent insiders view of one aspect of what happens within the forum from Staff/Moderator perspective. It is particularly poignant because I (and I would state probably most of us) have have never read something like this before.

Having to read through vile comments, to delete post or having to ask members to refrain from posting about various subjects (and/or sending a warning to them for persistent behaviour) cannot be easy for the average person to deal with on a near daily basis. Carnage as you described it, seems apt.

Slightly away from the essence of why you created this thread, what is the staff being paid to moderate the forum and does pay vary?

Mods have a Bitcoin address in their profile. If you're curious: check the blockchain.

Ah, I presumed an associated payment address would have been kept private. I will check the blockchain.