Jon Matonis is a board member of the foundation (which also owns bitcoin.org) and a regular contributor to Forbes.

According to the devs making the decision on the Press Center page, he is not a suitable spokesperson for bitcoin.

Is the irony 2x4 hitting you in the forehead yet? Is the absurdity burning your brain cells?

they would love to just leave the status quo which is not only limiting candidates but also maintaining control. You can comment and suggest more candidates, so I can revise my proposal. Or you can let them keep the list closed, that's exactly what they want.

I'm also setting up a counter weight, but that doesn't address the issue of the power grab over a domain owned by the bitcoin foundation and now being used to exclude a board member of the bitcoin foundation, in complete disregard of the vociferous support of the community. It's absurd, it's exclusionary, it's censorship.

The power is yours, if you believe the process is not a sham -

You can signup for github here, for free: https://github.com/users

Then just go to this page https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.org/pull/162

and if you like the proposal add the word "ACK" as a comment. Stick around to debate for more inclusion and openness if you like.

Journalists will look up bitcoin and they will find BITCOIN.ORG.

Don't make disingenuous arguments that it doesn't matter that a well established page, that like it or not becomes the first page new people see, is being controlled without any regard for the community, by people ostensibly nominated by the "foundation".

None of the previous candidates had to submit to such a test.

That's the whole point. The rules keep changing and are being applied selectively to new candidates who were VERY conspicuously excluded.

It's a naked and transparent attempt to exclude some individuals and they're making up rules to fit the decision. The exact opposite of an open process. Matonis is just the catalyst that shows the complete absurdity of the claim that this is an open and fair process.

I am joining it, I am not doing nothing. I did the pull request and made the addition to the code.

Really? You're going to control who gets added to the Press Center based on whether I was in the original discussion?

That's exactly the problem. There is purportedly a process, yet when I try to follow it, it immediately reveals itself to be a charade and a way to distract and dismiss requests.

Nobody owns bitcoin, but 2 or 3 people control bitcoin.org and who is on the Press Center.

The Press Center is on bitcoin.org. They chose to add it and make github the way to "nominate" people. I followed the process and discovered the process was a charade.

Sure, give me commit access to bitcoin.org and I will agree no one controls.

Don't pretend that bitcoin.org doesn't matter, won't affect press relations or that anyone can go fork it. This is a major high-profile entry point for most journalists and pretending otherwise is disingenuous.

They even tried to use the red herring argument: If you don't like it FORK. Which just goes to show why developer geeks don't understand media and shouldn't be deciding questions about media relations.

You don't just pretend that bitcoin.org is not a center of power, because of the domain name, the existing traffic and the search ranking. It is naive to say "go fork your own" and insulting the intelligence of the community to call that an open process.

Please, don't just shrug and let them get away with it. Sign up on github and just add your voice. It takes 2 minutes to post an "ACK" on the proposal and prove that the community does care and is not willing to let 2 people decide who represents us.
Sign up on github, go here:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.org/pull/162

Post a comment supporting the expansion of the Press Center - just an ACK will do, but a cogent argument in support of the candidate Jon Matonis, or a proposal for another good candidate not listed - even better.

Technically yes, but in this case it is the people who have commit-access on the repository for the website who are deciding.

Because nothing gives you more press relations experience, than knowing all the parameters of the GIT command!

Just to add insult to injury, the very first post by one of the devs in response to my pull request was a series of quotes from the candidate I nominated (Jon Matonis) attempting to paint him as some kind of extremist (you know, the kind of extremist Forbes features weekly). The quotes themselves were not of Matonis, but of Matonis quoting someone else. Basically the person who posted this failed to do the most basic quote check and fact check. How's that for credentials for the person deciding who should do press relations: unchecked, sloppy quoted, defamatory posts.

There are a couple of people on that list who not only have the idea that they can judge who is a "moderate" and who is not, but that based on that judgment they can decide who to KEEP OFF the press list.

I submit that the burden to include someone with more than a hundred articles and press references should be low, while the burden to EXCLUDE someone like that should be high. Instead, it is the opposite. They are quite happy to maintain the status quo, because that keeps the list to their liking.

Furthermore, we are one month from bitcoin conference 2013, an event that will generate hundreds of press requests. I already have 6 interviews scheduled for myself, and that's just because I am a speaker at the conference. There is not question that the exclusionary policy on the Press Center is already having an effect.

Welcome your new overlords. They can code and commit, so now they are in charge of press relations.

What do I know anyway, I just spent almost a decade as an analyst working the press and taking press requests every single day.

The entire situation is so absurd it is comical.

bitcoin.org is a community site with enormous reach and influence. It now has a Bitcoin Press Center page.

Several prominent bitcoin press contacts have been purposefully excluded from this list.

How is the process decided? Well, in order to nominate someone, you have to use the source-control software git and know how to do a pull request on github. That certainly made it difficult for the vast majority of the community to express an opinion. Kinda like a git-literacy test at the voting booth. Cute eh?

To top the exclusionary process, unlike any of the previous candidates already on the page, a new nominee has to pass some bizarre litmus test and be a "moderate voice". Who decides what's moderate? Why the two or three developers who have commit-access of course!

If this doesn't already strike you as arbitrary and capricious, wait till you hear more. Each time someone has objected to the process, they get called "offtopic" and the goal posts are moved. The people smearing some of the candidates said that there wasn't enough interest from the community. Funny how that literacy test works to suppress participation. Then, when others added "pull requests", they were flooded with misquoted articles and vague and slanderous accusations against the candidates. Then the pull requests are unceremoniously closed, shutting down debate and leaving the status quo - essentially enforcing the exclusion and censorship of view points.

It's a raw power grab and it should concern the entire community.

As a last attempt, I added a "pull request" asking that the page be expanded to add *several* people, thus diluting the influence of any one and broadening the roster. That one is still up for discussion.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.org/pull/162

You can signup for github here, for free: https://github.com/users

Then just go to this page https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.org/pull/162

and if you like the proposal add the word "ACK" as a comment. Stick around to debate for more inclusion and openness if you like.

They say the community doesn't care and they want to make this decision in an obscure forum, excluding press representatives with a long history of contributions and without any accountability. Feel free to show them that's not how we do things in an open community.

Yeah, they said no one cared enough to do a pull request. When I did one they moved the goal posts.

You're one specious argument behind, catch-up will you?

By making that equivalence, you only show yourself to be biased.

No one said free for all. The made it plenty hard to apply, and once I put in the pull request they started showing their bias and how fake the "open process" was.

Even that accusation is so flimsy as to be laughable. As "evidence" I got a dump of four quotes, one from Google+ (!), one from twitter, one from an article. Given the context, it basically amounts to "I disagree with Matonis".

Adding to the list capriciously is annoying, but whatever. Make no mistake: Keeping valid candidates off the list is censorship and it is odious.

I demanded "extraordinary evidence" for the extraordinary step of denying the pull request to add others (which has happened before).

This is not code, it will not break the build, it does not impose a single spokesperson. I'm not requesting that *only* Matonis is on the list. The burden to refuse such a request should be high. Instead it has been the opposite - capricious.

They are exercising an extremely powerful authority, by not pressing "Merge" and being able to simply cancel a pull request.

Ask yourself: What is the basis for that authority?

Well Beck *is* a nutcase and Taibbi is an excellent journalist. That is the difference.

The Libor scandal is a REAL conspiracy, as in a criminal conspiracy, shown by copious evidence and testimony. Not a conspiracy theory.

Yes, the world is full of he-said, she-said and a lot of crazy theories. But there are *actual* facts under all that and in the case of the Libor rate fixing, those facts are known.

Smearing Taibbi because he supported one party is a bit of a stretch, don't you think? Lots of people (56 million to be precise) voted for him and Taibbi has done plenty of critical commentary on Obama.

The claim that nobody cares enough to make a pull request has been put to the test and show to be a lie.

Somehow, deciding on the representation of the community is dependent on knowing the full parameter and switch set for the git command and the pull-request mechanism of github.

As soon as someone overcomes that barrier, out come the slanderous accusations, cherry picked quotes and vague scenarios of doom. Matonis will destroy bitcoin if he's allowed to represent bitcoin.

I didn't much care about the issue. Until it became an issue of power, control and censorship.

See, there's a huge difference between using your power and control over the bitcoin.org domain to invite your buddies and favorite pundits, and using that control to exclude people because of your opinion.

Despite all the hand-waving and word games, it's a power grab, it's censorship, it's condescending and it makes me furious.

The conversation is exposing these excuses for the bullshit they are.

Whether you care about Matonis being on the press list or not, some of you might care about the fact that 2-3 people are arbitrarily making the decisions, based on personal animus and a purposefully convoluted opaque and capricious process that is being used as a cover for raw abuse of power. That's enough to pick a fight with me.

Join github.com use the free account and make your voice heard here:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.org/pull/161

Based on previous experience on this topic, they will arbitrarily shutdown discussion in a few days at most. Do it now, or accept that bitcoin.org is the personal playground of a couple of people who don't care what the community thinks.

It's a pretty transparent attempt to use the control over bitcoin.org and github expertise to completely shut out the entire community.

The attitude in the previous pull request and most of the discussions I've read has been entirely obnoxious, elitist and patronizing.

It's quite appalling to read grown men behaving like high-school bullies.

The only people who think Taibbi is biased are the journalists who he is making look like fools. He is doing more research and better reporting than the vast majority of the 4th estate. The simple truth is that we now only get the truth from Rolling Stone, Comedy Central and blogs. That's how distorted media has become (not left, not right, just profit-biased and contemptuous towards the truth)

With pleasure. Please send me a PM with more details.

Thanks,

Andreas

Pull request to add Jon Matonis to Press Center added.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.org/pull/161

If you have a github account, you may participate in the ensuing discussion

Apparently the only reason the press center is decided in such a small group is the lack of pull requests. That claim will now be put to test.

Let's see...