Some people disagreed and remained civilized. Others disagreed and started to suggest solutions, and even work on them. That is great and helpful. I don't call that category "troll".

The press center is dividing people as long as people oppose to each other. Removing the press center won't change anything, so don't point at me. If you want this to stop dividing the community, it's up to you to help finding a good consensus. Because you are among the ones who keep making this a dividing issue.

This is mostly what is suggested by moving most interviewees to an external website. That is a good example of what would probably have a good consensus and be a good compromise for everyone.

I also love Ver and Matonis BTW. And exchanged briefly with them. Roger Ver was not postponed because of his presentation. Everyone seemed happy about how he was presenting Bitcoin. And because of all the noise on this forum, we could not discuss about them. I was about to recommand myself to open discussion about Roger inclusion a few days ago just before trolls started back to disrupt everything. So this thread actually played against himself.

Funny. To work together, the opinion of everyone must be taken into account. Both yours, and mine. I already don't 100% agree with everything myself and I defend others opinions, but searching the best compromise for everyone is my goal. Not just a few. As said before, I also like the idea of an more open press center. I'm just respecting the reasons why bitcoin.org might not be the right place for this.

Absolutely. Giving them choice is not censorship. And that is why bitcoinpresscenter.org is so interesting. Because as a "non-authoritative" website, it can have a longer list.. Making things easy for journalists doesn't mean they are forced to use our list. But it can help them to easily find people who know what they are talking about.

I am looking at the world straightforward, just how any serious project are doing. And no, I feel pretty bad when lies are being told in the medias about Bitcoin and I keep straight with the reality. That's why I take time trying to help many inacurracies to stop spreading in the medias. Like "Bitcoin is anonymous" or "Bitcoin cannot be regulated".

Each time people buy a cell phone, use their car, or use the US dollar, it is a political choice. My argument is that Bitcoin is no exception to this rule. And many people are going to keep thinking that what they do is apolitical, no matter what we do.

My rough translation would be : work together, not against each other.

I understand, and it's not going to happen regardless of what people say or think about Bitcoin, all that matters for it to remains the same is in the code and all levels of decentralization. If you are thinking otherwise, I think you are not realizing that you are loosing faith on what Bitcoin really is.

I think it's time for the community to enter in a maturity phase and realize a few things. Including that Bitcoin is in a decisive turning point right now. Journalism might sometime represent free speech, but mass medias are not free speech at all. It's a big strategic game. And any businesses that is confrounted to this world must have a good strategy or fail.

The current press center has been developed not as an open recognition board for community members we all respect, but as a PR strategy. Like it or not, the overwhelming majority of the people are either not really politicized or have diverse views opposed to whatever you'll say. And about no business in this world is doing philantrophy. That means that associating Bitcoin to any ideology or "bad thing" in the mass medias most likely equates to prevent Bitcoin to develop. As simple and cruel as that. There is a lot of room to speak about politic, but there is a difference between that and making Bitcoin "an ideological battle" not every Bitcoin user agrees on.

So if you care about Bitcoin to develop for ideological reasons, you most probably have no choice but to be wise enough to help Bitcoin to "change the world peacefully". It's much less exciting and it's more pragmatic and efficient. Most future Bitcoin users don't want to approve anything political when they are using fiat money, and they want to use Bitcoin the same way. Even though we all know that every choice we do in life has political consequences, that is how most people and businesses work. If Bitcoin is perceived as "the money of criminals", or then again "the money of anarchists" or "libertarians" every people using it will feel like they will be perceived either as criminals, or as anarchists or as libertarians. Those are a very restrictive part of the world population, and it remains inaccurate to say Bitcoin is exclusive to any of these ideology.

Hopefully, in a few years, a press team will be fully obsolete and people associating Bitcoin to any political idea will not scare new users. But right now, it's different. Bitcoin is confusing for most people and it is about to become either a niche for activism, or a global innovation with no borders. What is going to be the turning point will be the public perception and adoption of Bitcoin. Just for the picture, Internet at its beginning was not labelled as a "political tool for free speech and individual freedom" but as a competitive technology. And that is how it became both.

So before you interfere with this process, please keep in mind that it is being done by involved people having a long-term view. Constructive work in order to improve or change things is always appreciated. And it starts with questionning what's being done before fighting it.

A lot of interesting issues has been raised and there is constructive work being done right now. Please learn to do some compromise and understand valid issues pointed by others. I've been doing this all days despite the hostile environment during weeks.

Could you please pay attention to the people actually working on solutions?

aantonop at least is working, and not only complaining.

All these philosophical discussions are becoming off-topic. And this thread has been poisoning enough for a lot of contributors. We've got enough people trying only to accomodate their own personal opinion or to attack the reputation of each other. This is just creating division, and it is a harm to the Bitcoin community. If you are not willing to recognize the value of what has been done, identify existing problems, consider the opinion of others, search for a better compromise and explain your thoughts in a constructive way, then it's probably not worth complaining.

Moving interviewees elsewhere than bitcoin.org can help on one thing. In a space that is not perceived as being "authoritative", there is more room for diversity without controversy. Thus probably fixing the Matonis/Roger issue. But still, even if it mitigates the issue, Mike Hearn is right that it won't be fixed regardless of the approach, edit wars will happen. Choosing interviewees will always remains a challenge. And not everyone can speak of Bitcoin clearly and accurately, so a "anyone is a Bitcoin PR expert" press center doesn't make sense.

Personally, I like the idea of a dedicated community-driven press center, managed by an independant team, with transparent guidelines and discussions. And I think that as long as such a community press center is well organized, that it is clear that it is community-driven and that it has decent guidelines, we could link to it. And we could remove most interviewees from bitcoin.org and only keep a few "boring ultra-neutral technical ones" like developer, Patrick Murck for legal questions. And/or link to https://bitcoinfoundation.org/contact . I've encouraged such an idea since a few days.

That said, I would also like to point out that as Mike said, this drama appeared only after the project has been reviewed and published. Roger and Matonis were more civilized and calm themselves than most people on the forums and most moderate voices seems to be exausted. I would personally prefer to let enough time for a good solution to appear than to rush things and cause even more outcry. Because the current press center also have many supporters. And it is not arbitrary, even though the process is too selective to some.

I'm afraid that the links to volunteers on the wiki will actually be the exact same problem, moved in another place. It will always seems unjust so some as long as there is any "notability requirements". And if there isn't, than you can imagine. The thing is that to some point, we can't add any links on bitcoin.org and remains just. It's just impossible. And if we don't, then we're missing a great opportunity to promote excellent Bitcoin speakers in this community. The same issue also happens with any pages that contains links, such as the choose-your-wallet page and resources page. Just to a lower level.

The list on bitcoin.org does not intend to be short and not Bitcoin representatives, there is a disclaimer to make this clear at the top. I planned to add more interviewees over time. And choosing who is on this list happens transparently on github, not in a closed press mailing list.

Most of this is right. I am Saïvann, and I speak on my own without Gavin instructions, hoping to allows him to stay concentrated on the code. He's already busy enough.

However to make things clear, I didn't close/reject Pelle's suggestion (issue still open). Nor did I reject Roger or Matonis forever. I pushed the Press Center without them simply because people didn't agree on them. To allows these discussions to happen seperately without blocking the whole project. And before we really had an opportunity to go any further on these matters, this thread appeared and created interference with various unverified claims and drama. Though it also generated interesting points of views. I'm reading everything, but I can't satisfy everyone.

Meanwhile, I'm keeping things on hold until it calms down. And I'm trying to see what can be done to achieve a better consensus. Dropping all the interviewees list is a drastic change and is likely to create more outcry and confusion if we do it right now. And I still believe that we can find a better solution.

Most of last comments are based on the assumption that jgarzik, luke-jr and gmaxwell are selecting interviewees based on political adherence. In regards to their comments, that seems reductive.

Their main concern seems to be accuracy. And that also applies to the fact that Bitcoin is not exclusive to any ideology. Speaking in a way that let people think otherwise is inaccurate and restrain audience, even interfering with pragmatic goals to bring Bitcoin to the masses. Although many would like Bitcoin to be a political revolution, it will only change the world if it spreads. And it will only spreads if anyone can adopt it regardless of their own personal opinions.

John Matonis : There is apparently many quotes from him that are really inaccurate about Bitcoin. And often politically orientated.

Roger Ver : Don't have the full support of the community. Roger Ver got two NACKs from other contributors before being discussed on IRC. Developers didn't explicitely ACK or NACK themselves, but shared some concerns like his criminal records.

Yes, this was added by Trace and ACK by me and jgarzik a few hours ago. This might help finding a good compromise add better address the issues that has been raised. We shall see!

Bitcointalk to manage a team? Seriously. This group has been announced on bitcointalk before the group was actually created.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=156364.0

I am the one who pushed the press center without Roger Ver and John Matonis. If they were still on the page, the page wouldn't be online at all because there was legitimate discussions and disagreement on them. Not only from developers, most criticisms came as comments from contributors I don't know, and they presented good arguments. So I took action to make sure that this wouldn't block the whole project for two interviewees that we can add later if needed.

As said in the github issue, civilized criticisms and arguments are welcome. An issue for Roger Ver has been opened already.

However, choosing interviewees will always generate accusations and criticisms no matter what is the final choice. I don't mind being a target for criticisms. What matters to me is that we have a press center with great quality content for journalists and we didn't have it yesterday. We can continue to improve it. The current interviewees list is really just a beginning, we want much more.

If you want to participate in the press team, there it is : https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/bitcoin-press-team

We need people to review!

There is three translations that are almost ready to push. But we need native speakers for the languages listed below to review all sentences and report the following :

- All typos
- All improvements that can be made to make for the translations to sound more native.
- All differences in the meaning with the english version.

Italian :
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.org/pull/127
http://bitcoinit.us.to/it/

Russian :
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.org/pull/124
http://bitcoinru.us.to/ru/

Arabic :
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.org/issues/105
http://bitcoinar.zapto.org/ar/

Sure. Initially, you were "BitcoinJ Developer" and Jeff was "Core Developer", but you asked me to remove BitcoinJ. You've created a hierarchy against your will ;-) But yes, I think Developer is more appropriate for everyone. I will change that today.

That is why web wallet have a warning before user can actually see them. The rest of the wallets are open source. And enforcing an update in a short delay into users to inject malicious code cannot be done (at least, not in an efficient way)

Yeah BTW, what would you put instead of the ? to bring people attention to them so that they hover with the mouse, see the warning and click to show them?

This has been discussed before. Bitcoin-Qt is not suitable for most users (downloading the whole blockchain does not make sense, and it will get even worse with time). My initial design had the nice download button with OS autodetect, and most of people disagreed.

However, I plan to try to make it more visible from the "choose your wallet" page with a "download" button or something..