Proposal - Bitcoin peer review board

[ThePiachu]

Recently I've seen a few articles and videos that contained blatant misrepresentation of Bitcoin (like this one - http://www.onlinemba.com/blog/bitcoins/). I'm afraid that if we let such sloppy journalism to continue, it might harm the Bitcoin community in the long run.

I propose establishing a Bitcoin peer review board. It could be working as a part of the Bitcoin Foundation. Generally, it would be a forum of knowledgeable people that understand Bitcoin who would be providing peer review of various papers, news articles, videos and the like. Those that would be representing the project fairly would be endorsed, while the ones containing misrepresentations and biases would be condemned. Initially the review board could take form of a subforum with restricted posting rights, possibly growing into something else should the need arise (a peer reviewed journal of sorts?).


Why would this be beneficial to the community?
The board would allow anyone to clearly see if the piece of information they read or watched is well researched, or should be ignored as junk. It would let people creating new content to know which sources are credible, so they can build upon them.



So, what do you guys think about this idea? Should we pursue it and establish some standards when describing Bitcoin?

[eldentyrell]

It could be working as a part of the Bitcoin Consultancy.

Bitcoinica consultancy… you mean the guys who ran Bitcoinica, right?  Have they even started paying people back yet?

I'm afraid that if we let such sloppy journalism to continue, ...

Generally, it would be a forum of knowledgeable people that understand Bitcoin who would be providing peer review

Unless you and all the other people on this board are journalists, this isn't peer review.

Moreover, peer review is for scholarship, not journalism.  The merits of scholarship in a specific discipline are (and should be) judged by experts in that specific discipline, and these experts should at least attempt to be apolitical.  The merits of journalism are (and should be) judged by the public at large since it is a legitimate part of the political process -- and an important one at that.

[ThePiachu]

Bitcoinica consultancy… you mean the guys who ran Bitcoinica, right?  

Whops, sorry, I meant the Bitcoin Foundation.

Unless you and all the other people on this board are journalists, this isn't peer review.

Moreover, peer review is for scholarship, not journalism.  The merits of scholarship in a specific discipline are (and should be) judged by [at least nominally] apolitical scholars in that specific discipline; the merits of journalism are (and should be) judged by the public at large since it is part of the political process -- and an important one at that.

Hmm, it could be a "review board" then. However, judging some papers could also be beneficial.

Letting the open public judge journalism might be tricky. Say someone started a topic here about some news article and 100 people posted their opinions. You might not get quality opinions, and those opinions might not matter to the people writing the article. However, if you have a few prominent figures of the Bitcoin community expressing their opinion on a variety of topics, you can check how credible they are. Having 10 reviews instead of 100 opinions would for me be more beneficial. But that's just my view.

[eldentyrell]

Letting the open public judge journalism might be tricky.

I like democracy.

[Bitcoin Oz]

I nominate @sgornick 

It might be a job for some of the larger bitcoin news blogs to do collaboratively and then issue a refutation of bad articles.

[shwoop]

It might be a job for some of the larger bitcoin news blogs to do collaboratively and then issue a refutation of bad articles.

this.

The bitcoin community isn't large or diverse enough for a proper peer reviewed journal and would just end up appearing biased in favor of bitcoin.

Really we need a well represented news website that tracks all mainstream publications referring to bitcoin and through a setup similar to stack overflow or yahoo answers allow people to post praise or retorts and they can be voted positively or negatively based on their merit as judged by the community at large (rather than electing some synod who would be expected to work on the majority of the articles).  The tricky thing would be making it all look professional rather than just a sprawl of comments.  Possibly hiding all responses until a certain threshold of positive feedback is achieved (via a "private" bitcoin community).

Personally I lack the economic education, technical knowledge and time to start such an endeavor.

[MysteryMiner]

Recently I've seen a few articles and videos that contained blatant misrepresentation of Bitcoin (like this one - http://www.onlinemba.com/blog/bitcoins/)

I watched the video and I see nothing wrong with it. Yes it focuses on the deep web use of bitcoins but it never says it's evil. The unregulated use of bitcoins and depriving big brother from it's control of financial transactions is the primary strength of Bitcoin. If You like to be taxed, you can't hack or want to be goatsed by government or any financial institution at any moment for no reason, use credit cards!

[Deafboy]

I watched the video and I see nothing wrong with it.

Agree. But the video was supposed to be about bitcoins. I heard 1 or 2 sentences about bitcoins. Most of the video was about silk road. It's like someone creating a video about EUR, but talking about a Tesco and forex market security issues instead.

[Stephen Gornick]

So, what do you guys think about this idea?

The law of unintended consequences comes to mind.

The more attention given to bad posts and articles, the more of them will occur.

Let the crap ferment at the bottom.

The ones that are worthy will rise to the top, organically.

[adamstgBit]

"the 2012 high was 33$"

its weird how the video itself is nicely done, but they can't get simple facts straight

oh well...

So, what do you guys think about this idea?

The law of unintended consequences comes to mind.

The more attention given to bad posts and articles, the more of them will occur.

Let the crap ferment at the bottom.

The ones that are worthy will rise to the top, organically.

agreed

[MysteryMiner]

I watched the video and I see nothing wrong with it.

Agree. But the video was supposed to be about bitcoins. I heard 1 or 2 sentences about bitcoins. Most of the video was about silk road. It's like someone creating a video about EUR, but talking about a Tesco and forex market security issues instead.

Maybe because Bitcoin technology makes Silk Road possible? Otherwise SR will go down like Farmers Market that used PayPal and Western Union.

[auzaar]

Recently I've seen a few articles and videos that contained blatant misrepresentation of Bitcoin (like this one - http://www.onlinemba.com/blog/bitcoins/). I'm afraid that if we let such sloppy journalism to continue, it might harm the Bitcoin community in the long run.

That is a very nice video about dark side of bitcoin, we may  not like it but it is not totally wrong. May be hire them to make video for "+ive side of bitcoin"

[Marco Polo]

Wow, if that is supposed to be a short presentation about bitcoin its clearly not objective.

Review board sounds like filtering information to me.
Bitcoin will succeed on its own merits, because my opinion is that bitcoin is so clear cut useful and ingenious that anyone will see it sooner or later.