I Propose A Large Multi-Sub BCT.org section called "The Free Zone": Please Lis..

[Bit_Happy]

>> Danger, danger late-night edits!!
The Original OP "I Propose A Large Multi-Sub BCT.org section called "The Free Zone": Please Listen To Why" is preserved and still open for discussion below.


An Urgent Call For Voluntary Community Action!

Good People sometimes like the truth "straight-out" even if it hurts. The majority of the content currently posted daily at this "Once Great" forum is embarrassing and (actually, literally) damaging to the mainstream, long-term value of Bitcoin. Every day, Newbies - some "almost as brilliant as Satoshi" land here and see the painfully-uniform blocks of often boring 150 to 200 characters, and they probably never come back. While the people paid to churn out the "sig campaign compliant" junk are paid to continue with more, and, more, and more....
The community clearly needs a way to reward good, quality content providers, so how about (for example, open for discussion please)

An Urgent Call For Voluntary Community Action!
>>> Note: This is an example, if possible please either try it, and/or propose ways to fix this "ugly BCT.org perma-mess", thank you.

In an "arms-race" to prove they care about quality, many sig campaigns now require 120, 150, even 200 characters for a post to qualify. A "picture says a thousand words" and I could easily post screenshots of "typical bct threads", but that would risk unfairly featuring specific people.  
What if a "noticeable number" of prominent sig offerings voluntarily (competitively!) dropped the requirement back down to ~40 or 50 characters per post, what would happen?

1) The "hardest-working sock-puppets" would be thrilled   .... oops, wait there's more...
2) Those "visionary" campaigners would have a valuable, new advantage leading to potentially much higher-quality content and more valuable advertising returns, how?
3) ~40 or 50 characters per post is plenty to <>judge quality<>, show "some level of effort" by the poster, and your now more valuable sigs are not suffering from looking like standard 150 to 200 word blocks of often unnecessarily-extended, often very boring crap..
4) You ads will shine by often being presented in a way that is suddenly different and better, compared to your - sometimes truly lame - competition.


>> Final "late-night edit", this is the Big Money Shot BTC$$$$$$$$$$BTC!!

"There are single thoughts that contain the essence of a whole volume, single sentences that have the beauties of a large work" -Joseph Joubert

Now, please - if YOU CAN - ((((Get Paid Daily!!!, Start TODAY....lol)))) Who can be the first to turn that amazing, beautiful statement into 150, 200+++ characters without destroying it!






I Propose A Large Multi-Sub BCT.org section called "The Free Zone": Please Listen To Why.


<>Time saving-edits<> I am cutting out some Awesome, Happy Memories of how "truly Great this place used to be". Perhaps, we will do that another time....<>/Time saving-edits<>


When I try to come back and enjoy "my old home" now I see mostly, uniform-sized paragraphs of boring, often completely unreadable text.
The "quality" has honestly improved some the last 5 to 7 years. Translation software (for example) is much more accurate these days, and/or some of the worst sock-puppets finally gave up?
The issue which makes it "almost unreadable boring garbage" is not necessarily a lack of "good content", but the sometimes-brief, simple, powerful, useful ideas are buried in a tedious effort to reach 150 to 200 characters. "Nice try", but your system is still very broken, and I am not the only person to whom this is obvious.

Can we please get a Large Multi-Sub BCT.org section called (for example) "The Free Zone". As we all know Bitcoin is/was supposed to give people "new options, choices, and freedom", so a Free Zone sure sounds good to me:

Some easy, "obvious" features - open for discussion please:
> posts do not count towards "activity, rank, etc"
> no sigs are showing (like in "serious discussion" here at bct), or incentive to spam
> posts do not have to be long to be good!
Etc...

>>>>> Please let us be free to be Real People, thank you!

[Plaguedeath]

> posts do not count towards "activity, rank, etc"
> no sigs are showing (like in "serious discussion" here at bct), or incentive to spam
> posts do not have to be long to be good!

#1, I don't understand why you're ask the forum need to remove activity, rank etc when those stuffs were happen before merit implementation, before signature campaign are really big?

#2, most of users are really active because of signature campaigns, removing signature space will ruin the traffic, what's the point to be in here when the place is really quiet? after all if you think there are many posts are spam, use report to moderator. If you don't want to see avatar and signature spaces, go to Look and Layout Preferences >> Don't show users' avatars., Don't show users' signatures.

#3, correct, but 150-200 characters are actually short.

[Hatchy]

~

I think you didn't understand fully what op was suggesting. In his request, he is proposing that a new board should be created and it should be called the free zone. In this board, you can post what ever you want, with no character count. Which he feels makes a thread not enjoyable.also, in this board the signatures and avatars will be disable just like in the wall observer thread. And post won't be counted towards activities and ranks.

Back to your suggestions op, your suggestions seems okay, but some board like the off topics section is the closest with what you have describe in this free zone. There you can post with no character count but signatures aren't disabled. Your post still counts up your activities.

There are two other section, where your signature doesn't appear and that is the
Ivory Tower.
Serious discussion
In these boards,as stated by Theymos

- Posts in Serious Discussion only activate an potential-activity period. They do not increase your post count.
 - Posts in Ivory Tower neither activate a potential-activity period nor increase your post count.

 

[Bit_Happy]

Hatchy, you are close, thank you. Avatars add character and are currently allowed in serious dissuasion, Ivory Tower, etc. ** or at least they used to be.
Avatars are cool and fun, no need to trash those, imo. Also, "Off Topic" is not nearly enough, we need something bigger, please.

[digaran]

Please think about a way to stop organized sig farms.
Ps, Ivory and serious boards, are a failed experiment.
 

[goxcraft]

I think I understand what you are trying to say. You want a board where post, activity, rank won't be counted. Also signature or other things won't show up. Where people can say whatever he/she may want. Am I right?

What you proposed is good but somehow not needed. We already have many threads & boards for that. Yes, some of your conditions may not follow completely but they can still be called "The Free Zone". Like WO, Off Topics etc. My personal opinion is post count is not that important. You can post less & be a good poster. You can post a lot & be a shit poster. As for activity, there is a limit & for earning merits, quality posts can also be found in WO or other threads. One thing I completely agree, the last point you mentioned "posts do not have to be long to be good!"

[Plaguedeath]

I think you didn't understand fully what op was suggesting. In his request, he is proposing that a new board should be created and it should be called the free zone. In this board, you can post what ever you want, with no character count. Which he feels makes a thread not enjoyable.also, in this board the signatures and avatars will be disable just like in the wall observer thread. And post won't be counted towards activities and ranks.

Thanks for the clarification, but even understood it incorrectly, but my point is still right.

We have Serious discussion and Ivory Tower boards where @OP is looking for, however as we can see there's no activity on there and that's what Bitcointalk looks without signatures campaign.

@OP there's no rule you must create 150-200 characters to post in this forum, you can create as low as 40-50 characters and wouldn't be deleted if it's high quality.

[Bit_Happy]

Hey digaran, thanks for your feedback:
"The community clearly needs a way to reward good, quality content providers," I have done a major edit to the OP.

Please think about a way to stop organized sig farms.
Ps, Ivory and serious boards, are a failed experiment.
 

Failed why? Some of my best memories here the last few years are contained "up there". Not a failure at all, imo.

My original OP doesn't make it clear enough: We need more room for simple, honest, fun! + The "Real Stuff". We don't need "often-uniform and over-extended blocks" of excess text struggling to turn a "simply great idea" into 200 characters. 

[Woodie]

Tbh this proposal sounds like window dressing an existing board called off topic, which is pretty much a freezone that gets bitcoiners talking about anything and everything from there.

Perhaps the solution to get users in the right discussion board was to suggest for a name change  or addition of freezone to  off topic name in an effort to redirect traffic...

Btw in regards to incentive to spam , most boards that managers find not to help in the marketing side of a project are usually excluded, and in cases were a manager can't pick out spam posts...BCT community members do report these directly to the CM and sometimes the mods...I think the safe guard's are working well

[Rikafip]

The majority of the content currently posted daily at this "Once Great" forum is embarrassing and (actually, literally) damaging to the mainstream, long-term value of Bitcoin.

While bitcointalk had a big influence on Bitcoin at some point, those days are long gone and bitcointalk is unfortunately completely irrelevant in that regard so I don't see how anything that's been done here (especially not shitsposts made by random people) could affect Bitcoin in any way.

I Propose A Large Multi-Sub BCT.org section called "The Free Zone": Please Listen To Why

As others pointed out, we already have something similar to that (Serious Discussion, Ivory Totwer) and you can see the results and your "The Free Zone" would end up exactly the same, if not even worse.

Please let us be free to be Real People, thank you!

As someone who is active on various forums for 20+ years, I have to admit that bitcointalk lacks genuine conversations between its members (compared to other forums ) and majority of posts are simply statements but unfortunately I don't think that anything can be done at this point to change that.

[digaran]

There are only 2 admins, one of them acts like a robot with no signs of emotions, the main one well is just 1 man, imagine there were 200 posts on meta for example and only 5 of them contained useful ideas, how can 1 man read 200 posts to find those 5?

Now where is the problem?
Problem is trust, if he could set a certain policy, a few rules and then let 5 or 6 admins to operate and maintain the forum following those rules, it'd be great. But now with the current situation, whatever he does, it will only satisfy 10% of the needs this community has.

Bitcoin is trust-less, it has influenced him in a bad way, hence he doesn't trust anyone to make changes other than himself.

A solution for anyone coming here is the ignore button, if you are tired of sig farm robot like members.😉

[TheUltraElite]

Ps, Ivory and serious boards, are a failed experiment.

Truth, the entire activity on the forum would be like in those sections at this point, if signature campaigns never existed. Visit the other cryptocurrency forums that do not have an incentive for posting and you will see similar result as well.

OP wakes up after a year and posts a huge wall of text, nothing special here, hope they are doing well.

But the campaigns are the reason why this forum is so happening and active, no question there. Merit system has been gamed by certain communities to allow steady flow of merits - not sure if its purpose is being completed.

I appreciate the OP's attempt to the "old school Coffeeshop chat" but seriously, humans have inherent primitive nature hidden inside everyone, survival is a basic instinct here. That is why the need for money and campaigns.