If you ever find yourself with a question like that, just note: anything that can be abused or used to its absolute limit to earn money on this forum will be.  I have not read all the responses in this thread, and there might be a correct answer from one of our more informed historians, but if I had to make an educated guess I'd say at some point animated signatures got way out of control.

I think that's the reason why there are any rules at all here--simply to keep the idiots who'd run amok in check.  Theymos has an extremely reasonable set of "unofficial" rules, which are much more lenient than other forums I've seen.  Most of those rules probably evolved parallel to the evolution of signature campaigns.

Heaven help us all if Theymos changes the forum format to anything akin to Reddit.  I know nothing about how Twitter is laid out, but I've seen screenshots of tweets and the whole thing looks retarded with a very big capital "R".  Should that ever come about, I think I would flee to my fantasy sig campaign castle and live there behind locked doors for eternity.

Yeah, I hate Reddit with a passion.

That's anyone's guess.  Sometimes you think he's ignored all suggestions and then suddenly one of them has been implemented.  It's a crapshoot with him--but I'd bet the house he's not going to lift a finger to act on this one.

OP, you might have noticed that I talk shit about bounty hunters and sig campaign spammers and the like, but understand two thing:

1) I have signatures and avatars on ignore, so unless I check a member's profile manually I have no idea if they're participating in a bounty or campaign.  The shit-talking I do is based on years of prior experience with people who are incentivized to post on bitcointalk.  Let me ask you, have you been on any other forum and seen a new member create a thread asking how they can rank up or make good posts?  I seriously doubt it, and if you say you have I'd like to see the evidence. 

Many older members did not come here so that they could get paid to post, even if they're doing so now.  If someone came here due to their curiosity about, or passion for, bitcoin then why wouldn't they want to get some extra BTC for what they'd be doing already?  That's true of a lot of old-timers.

2) It is without question the members who participate in bounties or bitcoin-paying sig campaigns that aren't selective about who they accept that are responsible for most of the garbage posts here, and it's the reason why Bitcoin Discussion (which should be the best section here) is infested with low-quality posts.  Campaigns and bounties primarily pay for posts in English, but this is a global forum and for many members English is probably not even their second language.  So what happens?  People who can't write English to save their lives come here to try to earn a living by writing the most insipid nonsense ever written in the history of discussion forums (except for the ones that still allow "+1", "great post", and the like).

Wonder why the merit system was introduced in the first place?  Go back to December 2017 in Meta, and you'll probably find that there were a bunch of threads about forum post quality.  It had been a major issue for years prior, but it hit its boiling point right before Theymos dropped the merit system on us in Jan. 2018.  And let me tell you, senior members were not a big part of the problem unless those accounts had been bought or hacked.

Don't get discouraged if you see a lot of shit-talking, though.  Any new member can establish themselves if they really want to, and I've seen that time and time again.  But I wish it wasn't as rare a case as it is for that to happen.  Most newbies are just here because they heard they could earn money online.

You can keep saying that until the cows come home, but if you do you're just going to make yourself a target of ridicule. 

You're also making a claim, specifically that bitcointalk members are more interested in shitcoins than they previously were.  You sure about that?  Even if you're gauging said interest by an increase in activity in the altcoin section, it could be due to bounty hunters becoming more active.  That entire section (including all the subsections) has been a cesspool and a haven for the worst posters this forum has.  That being the case, I don't think there needs to be another board added for shitcoin wallets.

Also: Theymos would never go for it, especially since he's rejected much better suggestions that have been made.

Huh, I never noticed that (but even if I had, I've got no faith in the trust system so I wouldn't have cared).  Lack of caring not withstanding, I do find it somewhat interesting if someone excludes me from their trust list.  JG doing it after 1.6 years, though?  Do you really think that's retaliation?  I suppose it could be, but I'd be curious to know the reasoning behind that move, because members are supposed to be excluded from your trust list only if you think their feedback-giving is wrong for whatever reason. 

Since JG and I aren't exactly on bad terms despite me excluding him from my trust list (we've actually discussed it via PM), maybe he's got a good reason for it?  Maybe?  Possibly?

Well I sure as hell would be--but this would not be the correct section for it (Economics would be my first thought), and I seriously doubt a brand new member is going to be dropping a bomb about a legitimate stock exchange on a forum about bitcoin.  Scandals just aren't revealed that way.  If anyone's got enough poop on a big enough organization such that it'd be newsworthy, they'd go to the press.

But hey, lookin' forward to all the juiciness OP promises to post (lol).

Yep--but the old rule is that you can't please everyone all of the time.  That said, this is the first time I'm seeing a request to delete any child boards.  What we usually see is just what you said, people requesting subsections for crap like NFTs.

I don't visit most of the sections OP mentioned, so I'm not sure how active they are (I'm curious about the new forum software section in particular).  What I'm fairly sure of is that if Theymos lifted his finger to create a board or a child board, it's not likely he's going to delete it anytime soon.  But he's surprised me in the past, so don't take my post as speaking for him.

If a board is obviously a dead one with little chance of being resuscitated, then I would agree with OP that Theymos ought to nuke it.  That only makes sense, right?

That made me chuckle--not because it's ridiculous but because the trust system is so ridiculous that its absurdity is deserving of such witty ridicule. 

As to the statement above by EFS, I would have to disagree unless I'm not seeing all the evidence that the majority of the forum members are liars.  That's not to say that I haven't seen hundreds of examples of dishonesty by scammers, bounty cheaters, and the like but bitcointalk has multiple millions of members.  Anyway.

The trust system really, really needs an overhaul.  When Theymos added the flag system, I just scratched my head and then rolled my eyes.  When he made the default trust list a rotating system, I entered ~DefaultTrust and said I was done with it.  But given how deaf he is to suggestions from the community I don't expect things to change anytime soon.

Just spitballing thoughts here, but perhaps you ought to provide projects that you want to work for a much more thorough explanation of why you got those negative feedbacks and why you think you didn't deserve them than you did in Solosanz's thread, because from what I saw your answers there satisfied very few of the members who challenged you.

I'm not saying that sarcastically, either.  If your hands are clean, it should be a relatively short conversation.

You really want another one of those?

JollyGood, to be fair you did attack his reputation even if it wasn't a negative feedback.  I don't know the circumstances behind the neutral you left, as I haven't looked into it yet, but something like that would probably ruffle the feathers of quite a few members who've been around since 2014 and have a lot of positive feedback.  And you know as well as I do that this isn't the first time one of your feedbacks has drawn some controversy--there have been numerous examples of that, and it's why I excluded you from my trust list a while back.

BenCodie appears to have the type of temperament that members like TECSHARE had, where he would defend himself against any slight, however minor and no matter who it came from.  If you're going to continue to leave neutral/negative feedback for reasons like BenCodie's case here, you've got to expect some blowback.  And your best course of action is probably to NOT escalate the issue by creating threads like this one.  He's got a decent reputation and a track record of positive feedback with supporting reference threads; you're a relatively newer member with some positive trust given for your efforts to call out the bad actors here, but no trade history that I could see.

So I've got no issues with either of you, except that you might be just a tad bit overzealous in your crusade to clean up the forum (which I myself appreciate, btw).  But again, I haven't looked into the details of the reason for your neutral on him, the issue with Whirlwind--but I will check it out.

No indeed.  There are liars who scam people out of their money--and those types deserve red trust, because if I remember Theymos's guidance from years back, that's what the feedback system (positive/negative, not neutral) is supposed to be used for, trade risk--and liars about other people because of interpersonal differences/dislike/outright hatred. 

There was a feud between Vod and OgNasty that went on and on, and each side told a different story.  That might have been one or both of them lying, or it could have been a misunderstanding of facts or a misjudgement of them.  Who knows, but just because you don't like a member, don't like what they write, whatever, that's not a basis for leaving them a negative.  That affects their ability to trade, and whatever your differences are (including whether you think they're a liar or even if they're giving out verifiable misinformation about something unrelated to trading), those should be handled by a neutral tag at best.

Disclaimer: Any discussion or judgement about the trust system or people's use of it should be given a lot of latitude IMO since Theymos set it up to be way too complex with way too much freedom in how to use it.  Even with that guidance he gave, nobody has to follow it if they don't want to.  I don't think it ought to be that way, but who the fuck listens to me?

Wow, I do not remember this thread at all (though I distinctly recall that 2019 was pure fucking armageddon in my personal life).  Sometimes when threads like this get bumped, I get a soft and squishy feeling inside--and one of the causes for that is seeing posts like this:

and:


Hey!  That's me giving my sage wisdom there.  Was I smoking something with any of the members here?

But on a serious note: I still hold the above opinion, and I didn't realize there were still issues bothersome enough these days to bump this topic.  There was a ton of drama in 2019, but not so much four years later.

I know the protracted drama you're referring to, and there was a lot more to it than just that accusation, and in fact if it was only that the pedophile accusation got slung I don't think the target member would have reacted the same way.

Oh, that's one of the joys of the forum and my heart doth flutter when I think of Theymos's extreme tolerance of language.  All of this racial stuff brings me back to 2016, when the world was only slightly less obsessed with victimhood trophies and identity politics.  Fun times they were.

Yep, that was a big deal when it happen, because he was a beloved member of the Collectibles section.  If I recall correctly, his family auctioned off some of his things here after he died; I wanted a keepsake even though I didn't know him, and I have a 100g silver skull that he owned--and some very nice copper commemorative coins that minerjones made.  That really is a tight community.

I was wondering the same thing you are a few months ago, because he helped me get on DT2 a few years ago.  It seems strange now because I didn't know him either, but I guess he liked my account seller tagging crusade between 2016-18.

There have been quite a few well-known members who've vanished, died, or said sayonara to the forum.  It just happens.

Hey, whaddya know, another thread asking about a mobile-friendly version of bitcointalk!  What's it been, like a month since the last one?  It's probably only a few pages deep in Meta, OP.

Just busting your....genitals, whatever kind you've got.  I think every time this comes up, I agree that Theymos ought to make an official app or whatever it takes to make the forum easy to use on a smartphone.  I know about the homebrew plugin(s), but since the New Forum Software development seems to have stalled, our esteemed leader should listen to the plebs who provide the site traffic and give mobile users a break.

This will fall on deaf ears just like every other request that's been made.

Nobody reads on this forum anymore.  I swear, it must have something to do with so much screen time shortening our attention spans, because I've found myself to be a victim of it as well (though I try to read as much of a thread as I can before I respond).

About the quality of responses being skunky: maybe there ought to be some threshold respondents have to meet in order to have their answers posted here.  That would obviously be OP's call, but I know damn well that if the answers have to be written in English a huge number of people here won't be able to get their points across coherently.  No fault of their own, but I don't think anyone wants to spend valuable brain time trying to decipher a bunch of nonsense.  I sure as hell don't.

OP, I very much appreciate your post--you didn't explain a lot of things in detail, but that's OK because I came away from reading it with a lot of questions about terms I've seen in various places but never bothered to learn the meaning of.  That's me being relatively stupid and incredibly lazy (typical me).

But god I love legacy addresses.  Am I the only one?  I can't be, even though I do understand some of the drawbacks.

I never read bitcoin's whitepaper or even what was written way back when about its "true purpose" but I'd agree that the unbanked population is who it should be for.  Unfortunately, here we are in 2023 and it hasn't really turned out that way.

Never heard of it, but I looked at the website and immediately got frustrated by shit like this:



That's the "how does it work?" section, obviously, but instead of just laying all the info out for you to read, you have to click on those stupid little bars--and the first one one is an astounding head-slapper: You gotta buy the wallet first!!  Derpitty-derp.

Sorry, it's stuff like that that puts a bad taste in my mouth about things, especially when it comes to crypto products that might be me-too items like the Keepser appears to be.  It does look like a Tapsigner as FinneysTrueVision mentioned.

OP, are you affiliated with the company that makes these by any chance?

Edit: Hey, what happened to my image?  It was from TalkImg.

Those are two very separate questions you're asking, though they're somewhat related. 

My opinion is that if you're saving for something you're going to have to pay for in the medium-term (like tuition or real estate as you mentioned), I wouldn't invest your money in anything like the stock market or crypto--it's just way too risky, and with those expenses you need to be certain you're going to have the funds.  Something like a money market account or a CD at a bank would probably be the best way to go, because you'd at least be earning some interest while keeping your savings secure.  But I can only say that about my country; I don't know how trustworthy banks are in other countries or how much interest they're paying.

As to the question of 'being vs. having' I'm going to suggest that if you've got children that you might want to leave an inheritance to, being acquisitive isn't a bad thing--and that would also go for anyone who is even planning on having a family but doesn't yet.  But what's good for one's soul?  Being able to do something in your life that has meaning for you.  If that happens to be your career, all the better.  And boy oh boy that's been an issue I've wrestled with my entire life.  Eek.

That's the first thing I thought, too, because I've played around with many different wallets (Trust being one of them, and I'm not a fan) and I can't think of a single one that requires an e-mail address--and certainly Trust didn't. 

What I'm thinking is that these dipshit scammers got their e-mail list dump from one of the big data breaches in the crypto space, maybe Ledger.  Hell, maybe even bitcointalk if e-mail addresses were accessible.  With so many of them, the chances are that there would be a decent number of recipients who use the Trust wallet, and it would only take a small number of suckers with large balances to make the scheme worthwhile.

But I wonder if anyone did fall for this shit.  Sometimes I see various crypto subreddits in which people confess to getting scammed by methods like this one, but they aren't numerous as far as I can tell.