[POLL] should the "securities," "lending," etc. sub-fora be moved to a new site?

[finkleshnorts]

This is a hot-button topic on the meta board, so here's a poll to voice your opnion.

I think that if we are going to host this kind of activity, then we are handling it well.

Keep in mind that it would be much more work for mods to enforce a ban on lending-type posts here.

[greyhawk]

How am I gonna reach my recommended daily intake of humour if all of these are moved to bitscamtalk? No one would 'invest' in these any more.

We'd have to go back to exchanges being "hacked" and I think this trope is really played out for now.

[evolve]

Yes. Please.

Those subforums make bitcoin look like a bigger scamfest than it already is. Its bad for the community and it is bad for bitcoin.

[Rarity]

There are plenty of legitimate businesses in those forums, Dank's Bank being a prime example.  Instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater it would be better to find a way to separate out the scams from the legitimate enterprises.

[evolve]

They're all scams....like scientology.

[Bitcoin Oz]

While you are at it you better move all topics about BFL since they are selling thin air and have no actual product.....what is the difference ?

[Rarity]

They're all scams....like scientology.

This thread is not about your views on religious matters, please take that kind of thing elsewhere.

[evolve]

I was simply drawing a comparison between two similar organizations...scammers on bitcointalk and scientology. Both "organizations" prey on the ignorant and rob them blind. Both leave willing victims that thank their attackers for the opportunity. Niether pay taxes....

Do you just not like analogies or something?

[organofcorti]

Evolve, please start a new thread and pool and make your opinions known there.

If I may, I suggest a name for the proposed poll/thread:
[POLL] should the "Scientologist" members of bitcointalk.org be moved to a new site?

[evolve]

Nah, I'm done...I was just trolling rarity, I could care less about scientology.

[Rarity]

Trolls like you are ruining this site.  Please take your immature antics to another forum.

[repentance]

I don't think it should be done purely for the sake of preventing the possibility of this domain being seized.  

I understand the desire of the mods to avoid having to make judgements about the various high risk investment opportunities being made here, but I think that sometimes works against the interests of the community.  

People can continue to post here as VIP members and promote other schemes even when one of their ventures owes large amounts of money to its users.  While I'm not sure that the "scammer" tag is appropriate for those people, the absence of any kind of "flag" can be seen as tacit endorsement given that people have been given the scammer tag for a whole lot less.  The scammer tag is of little use if it's not applied to people who are still actively peddling their wares here despite major, unresolved financial problems from other ventures.  

Moving some of the forums promoting high risk ventures to another domain might be one option for dealing with the perception that this community both allows and supports the promotion of scams.  I don't totally buy the argument that various scams damage the perception of Bitcoin per se, but I do think that scams which are born in this community and promoted in this community damage the credibility of these forums, and that we'll start seeing more legitimate operators abandoning this community to avoid having their own services associated with what currently looks like a scam incubator.

[evolve]

Trolls like you are ruining this site.  Please take your immature antics to another forum.

You are including yourself in this right? Don't try to play the pariah now, your ignore button isn't orange on accident.

[Rarity]

Please stop trying to troll this thread.

[finkleshnorts]

I don't think it should be done purely for the sake of preventing the possibility of this domain being seized.  

I understand the desire of the mods to avoid having to make judgements about the various high risk investment opportunities being made here, but I think that sometimes works against the interests of the community.  

People can continue to post here as VIP members and promote other schemes even when one of their ventures owes large amounts of money to its users.  While I'm not sure that the "scammer" tag is appropriate for those people, the absence of any kind of "flag" can be seen as tacit endorsement given that people have been given the scammer tag for a whole lot less.  The scammer tag is of little use if it's not applied to people who are still actively peddling their wares here despite major, unresolved financial problems from other ventures.  

Moving some of the forums promoting high risk ventures to another domain might be one option for dealing with the perception that this community both allows and supports the promotion of scams.  I don't totally buy the argument that various scams damage the perception of Bitcoin per se, but I do think that scams which are born in this community and promoted in this community damage the credibility of these forums, and that we'll start seeing more legitimate operators abandoning this community to avoid having their own services associated with what currently looks like a scam incubator.

At this point, I agree with everything you just said.

[Endgame]

Splitting bitcointalk up would be a mistake, and it will not solve the problem of scams. The scams found in the lending and securities sub-fora are just a small subset of the scams present on bitcointalk - there are also scams in mining, newbies, trading, and all of the other marketplace sub-fora. I don't know what the answer is to preventing bitcoin scams but it is not this.

[finkleshnorts]

Splitting bitcointalk up would be a mistake, and it will not solve the problem of scams. The scams found in the lending and securities sub-fora are just a small subset of the scams present on bitcointalk - there are also scams in mining, newbies, trading, and all of the other marketplace sub-fora. I don't know what the answer is to preventing bitcoin scams but it is not this.

Gavin wants to sever the entire marketplace.

[repentance]

Splitting bitcointalk up would be a mistake, and it will not solve the problem of scams. The scams found in the lending and securities sub-fora are just a small subset of the scams present on bitcointalk - there are also scams in mining, newbies, trading, and all of the other marketplace sub-fora. I don't know what the answer is to preventing bitcoin scams but it is not this.

Gavin wants to sever the entire marketplace.

To be honest, I'm not sure that's a bad idea.  The Bitcoin world has grown large enough that it could probably sustain a stand-alone market-place messageboard, I think it would be a healthy thing if people relied less on this forum as a primary means of promoting their businesses.

Scams have come to dominate the conversation here because they've taken place here.  Had they not been launched and promoted here, there'd still be discussion of them but not thread after thread of "where's my money" across multiple forums.  The number and scope of scams is only going to increase so we need to think about ways to ensure that they don't continue to be the dominant topic of discussion here.

[greyhawk]

We'd have to go back to exchanges being "hacked" and I think this trope is really played out for now.

Told you so: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=105818

[Gavin Andresen]

I'd like bitcointalk.org to be in the spirit of the Internet's original ".org" -- For Non-Commercial Use Only.

But... it is hard to figure out what is Commercial Use and what isn't (e.g. some mining pools are non-profit, some for-profit, and I'm sure there are some in the fuzzy middle), which is why there really aren't any rules for .org any more.