Newbie restrictions (Please discuss forum policy here.)

[bcpokey]

Good suggestion, will get people reading guides too so theyt can start mining to start posting heh.

And if you don't wanna pay you can still do it the old fashioned way. Thumbs up.

[Bind]

I need the ability to post as I have trade to engage in.

Additionally, many of my custoemrs can not post in the Marketplace > List of honest traders section because of this new rule.

Lastly, many of us traders have 3rd party sites and services with customers willing to post of their experiences on the list of honest traders, but not willing to spend weeks building up the required post count to do it !

At least open up the List of honest traders to everyone.

[ironwolf]

Due to a mass of trolling, only established posters are able to post in non-newbie sections.

Spam is irrelevant, trolls are inflammatory. This was not an issue of deleting Viagra adds. By the Mods own admission this was an issue of removing unwanted, but on-topic discussion.

As far as I can tell, trolling is not "on topic." The topic here is Bitcoin, not teh lulz at the expense of people striving for a new economy.

Bitcoin.org forum discussion by it's very nature has a considerable effect on Bitcoin prices. It's not like anything clever was done or that journalists are not going to pick up on it- Bitcoin is hot and and they will jump on anything. Why give them something that juicy AND so negative to report on?

You mean like someone advertising "Beatings for Bitcoins?" Doesn't sound negative to me if you're into that, but what do you think Schumer would say? Or Weiner, once he's been through his therapy.

Temporary is a meaningless statement without a timeline, everything is temporary. The Patriot Act was temporary. The moderation team is seemingly quite happy with the current arrangement and is showing no particular sense of urgency to transition to a more open solution.

I've said it elsewhere and I'll say it again here now: Internet fora are not "Free Speech Zones", they are private clubs... not unlike dungeons. If you want to have a successful club then you have to have entrance requirements and standards of behavior.

The mods wanted to silence (rather than waste time converting, persuading or simply ignoring) Bitcoin detractors. One of these detractors main arguments was that Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme that rewarded early adopters at the expense of newcommers. So the Mods solution to this argument was to effectively filter out the critical questions of newcomers and limit substantive forum dialog to early adopters.

Some questions come up so often it's clear the poster either 1) hasn't bothered learning the first thing about Bitcoin before spouting off accusations from ignorance, or 2) is actively trying to subvert the project. This is not a forum for subverting Bitcoin. I'm sure there's a space on 4chan or somethingawful that would be happy to hold those conversations.

[bitcoinewbie]

Good idea, If admin won't do it, PM me and I will, but it will take me about 12hrs to do a full 50 reasonable thought out posts.

[Karmicads]

I think it may take up to four hours for the board to update your member group. (Otherwise, maybe I have to do it manually with a cron job or something.)

WOW! You have to do something as system dependent as a cron job, to update a member status?   Never flew a SMF board, but at least you don't have to do peek and poke memory locations with assembler. Has the management ever considered porting the board DB to phpBB? Don't think you'd have to do 'cron jobs' then.

[kajoman]

yeah 50 posts is killing me. ive been a member of a specific automotive forum for over 2 years, <100 posts.

i dont join forums to shoot the shit and act cool and get a rep.
i join to occasionally offer my insight.

with this forum, ...

you know what? fuck it. im off this forum. this is ridiculous. feel free to delete my account admins.

Totally agree. But don't let them get you down, stay! They all vouch for 'liberty' yet we stand here with rights less than those of "higher rank"... What you (moderators...) are really doing is promoting a bunch of "noobs" writing excessive amounts of BS just to be able to join with you ordinary folks...

[swusc2]

yeah 50 posts is killing me. ive been a member of a specific automotive forum for over 2 years, <100 posts.

i dont join forums to shoot the shit and act cool and get a rep.
i join to occasionally offer my insight.

with this forum, ...

you know what? fuck it. im off this forum. this is ridiculous. feel free to delete my account admins.

Totally agree. But don't let them get you down, stay! They all vouch for 'liberty' yet we stand here with rights less than those of "higher rank"... What you (moderators...) are really doing is promoting a bunch of "noobs" writing excessive amounts of BS just to be able to join with you ordinary folks...

The purpose of Bitcoin is not politically motivated. Differently ideologies support Bitcoin. If your concerned about the Newbie forum and freedom youve gota lot more issues coming to you.

[Amechan]

Dedicated scammers or trolls will still be able to spam out the required 25 posts. Newbies with something of interest to say will mainly be frustrated and may abandon the forums altogether. I don't see this as being a smart move.

edit: lol 50

+1

[Stephen Gornick]

Uhhh, Only if we get it back in BTC credit when 50 is reached.  

  This is the thinking that led to witcoin:
  - http://www.witcoin.com
  Pay to post, but each time there is a reply or upvote, you earn back what you paid.  Anything over you keep as profit.

[kajoman]

yeah 50 posts is killing me. ive been a member of a specific automotive forum for over 2 years, <100 posts.

i dont join forums to shoot the shit and act cool and get a rep.
i join to occasionally offer my insight.

with this forum, ...

you know what? fuck it. im off this forum. this is ridiculous. feel free to delete my account admins.

Totally agree. But don't let them get you down, stay! They all vouch for 'liberty' yet we stand here with rights less than those of "higher rank"... What you (moderators...) are really doing is promoting a bunch of "noobs" writing excessive amounts of BS just to be able to join with you ordinary folks...

The purpose of Bitcoin is not politically motivated. Differently ideologies support Bitcoin. If your concerned about the Newbie forum and freedom youve gota lot more issues coming to you.

First off, the purpose of Bitcoin is what u make it, just like the purpose of you eating your pizza (comfort, hunger, bulk etc.). However I believe most would agree that Bitcoin stands for non-regulatory transactions, where any man or woman can easily buy, send or whatever, without discrimination. I'm too tired at the moment to elaborate on that so you'll have to activate that grey stuff just a tad bit. Anyways, a forum is a place where every man or woman stands equal - just because you open your mouth a lot doesn't mean you good rational shit to say (yes I'm referring to all those classified as "safe and intelligent" forum members - nonetheless, even these should be free to spread their word, even propagate if you will. Stop being whiped.

[swusc2]

yeah 50 posts is killing me. ive been a member of a specific automotive forum for over 2 years, <100 posts.

i dont join forums to shoot the shit and act cool and get a rep.
i join to occasionally offer my insight.

with this forum, ...

you know what? fuck it. im off this forum. this is ridiculous. feel free to delete my account admins.

Totally agree. But don't let them get you down, stay! They all vouch for 'liberty' yet we stand here with rights less than those of "higher rank"... What you (moderators...) are really doing is promoting a bunch of "noobs" writing excessive amounts of BS just to be able to join with you ordinary folks...

The purpose of Bitcoin is not politically motivated. Differently ideologies support Bitcoin. If your concerned about the Newbie forum and freedom youve gota lot more issues coming to you.

First off, the purpose of Bitcoin is what u make it, just like the purpose of you eating your pizza (comfort, hunger, bulk etc.). However I believe most would agree that Bitcoin stands for non-regulatory transactions, where any man or woman can easily buy, send or whatever, without discrimination. I'm too tired at the moment to elaborate on that so you'll have to activate that grey stuff just a tad bit. Anyways, a forum is a place where every man or woman stands equal - just because you open your mouth a lot doesn't mean you good rational shit to say (yes I'm referring to all those classified as "safe and intelligent" forum members - nonetheless, even these should be free to spread their word, even propagate if you will. Stop being whiped.

What you don't seem to understand is the Internet is Open and Free. But each individual site is private property.

You can go anywhere you want but if you walk into a persons house, be prepared to accept the consequences of what your do there.

[bcpokey]

I see a lot of angry ranting, and not a lot of constructive criticism. THis thread makes me think more and more that this system was a pretty good idea.

[Stephen Gornick]

how are we supposed to buy and sell?

  Orders can be placed on the #bitcoin-otc marketplace:
  - http://bitcoin-otc.com

[gkolt]

I'd like to be whitelisted.

[Jessy Kang]

The question you ask yourself if the goal of a poster is to detract and hurt the community and the system the community is trying to promote is it not in their best interest to get rid of him? If people are going to hurt you do you not protect yourself? I'm not referring to people who say "bitcoin is flawed, should have this change that change this."

Uhm, this is a question for you? What community do you live in where they "get rid" or silence people who disagree with, or question the consensus?

And the Ponzi scheme argument was answered there is sticky about it. There is no need to repeat a question over and over again. Then the only purpose is subversion.

Just because YOU have answered it over and over, that does not mean that the person whom is asking has heard you answer those other people. It is "over and over" for you- but not for them. This may make the question annoying for you, but it does not make it less relevant for them- and you have the option of ignoring the thread.

The advantages of having an open forum with censorship limited to true spam, IMHO overrides the inconvenience of some posters having to scroll down the page a little bit.

Yes, people *should* read stickies, FAQ pages etc- this is a struggle for every forum. The issue was not people asking the same questions, it was stopping them from posting specific uncomfortable or inconvenient questions and statements. In order to do that, they simply dismissed all new questions and prospective users into an unproductive ghetto.

Rather than simply allow posters to decide for themselves to ignore a repetitive or negative threads they made the choice to make it unlikely they would see them at all- that kind of censorship is a mistake and it undermines the credibility of the Bitcoin. If Bitcoin can't survive a few people saying mean things about it, then it's not much of a currency.

[bitcoinewbie]

I see a lot of angry ranting, and not a lot of constructive criticism. THis thread makes me think more and more that this system was a pretty good idea.

Yeah, but thats because you only are peering through the bars of the cage from the outside and have failed to imagine what it is like from inside where you must run up your post counts ASAP if you want to be permitted to join the real discussions.

Do us and yourself a favor and stay away if you only intend to troll.

[natenjo]

I dont post, and im not a troll :-D ..PLEASE set me free!

[kajoman]

What you don't seem to understand is the Internet is Open and Free. But each individual site is private property.

You can go anywhere you want but if you walk into a persons house, be prepared to accept the consequences of what your do there.
[/quote]

No shit? Don't you worry about my understanding. I wasn't talking about what they are according to law CAN and CANNOT do. I was talking about the freakin purpose of a forum.

It seems that people here don't like differientiating opinions...

[saberinde]

Dedicated scammers or trolls will still be able to spam out the required 25 posts. Newbies with something of interest to say will mainly be frustrated and may abandon the forums altogether. I don't see this as being a smart move.

edit: lol 50

+1

I can offer myself as an example.  I have been reading about bitcoins for the last couple of days and have been giving some thought to buying some.  I also wanted to offer some feedback to a forum member who has started a bitcoin giveaway site designed to help people like me 'get on the ladder' so to speak.

This policy absolutely drives me away as a matter of principle.  This forum appears to be THE source for BTC related information and you are shutting people like me out who may occasionally want to contribute or offer feedback.  I have no intention of making 50 posts just to 'earn' the right to play with the big boys.  

Do you want bitcoins to gain wider acceptance or do you want it to be an exclusive club that can be entered into only by those 'in the know'?  I get the impression of the latter at the moment.

[swusc2]

What you don't seem to understand is the Internet is Open and Free. But each individual site is private property.

You can go anywhere you want but if you walk into a persons house, be prepared to accept the consequences of what your do there.


No shit? Don't you worry about my understanding. I wasn't talking about what they are according to law CAN and CANNOT do. I was talking about the freakin purpose of a forum.

It seems that people here don't like differientiating opinions...

There is a difference between a public and private forum. And no the purpose of the newbie section was to make it harder for trolls and people who just bitch and don't do anything to help Bitcoin.

If that's not you well you got cut in the crossfire. But I don't see you doing anything for Bitcoin so I'm going to assume you aren't here to help Bitcoin.