Newbie restrictions (Please discuss forum policy here.)

[Chris Acheson]

Perhaps people might be more willing to consider this proposal now, in light of recent events?

I generally agree with what Jessy Kang has written, however the problem that needed to be addressed was that a lot of the newcomers were abusive.  It's fine to be skeptical, but a level of civility still needs to be maintained.  We don't want the Greater Internet Fuckwads driving away the genuinely curious and interested newcomers (along with everyone else, for that matter).

Unfortunately, a lot of libertarians (the dominant faction around here) feel the need to apply "laissez faire" to forum moderation policy, so I expect getting anything like this implemented will be an uphill battle.

[Alik]

Pretty obvious this promotes trolling. Small price I guess but avoidable in my opinion.

[Bitatoes]

Thank you king. I do have more accounts and I will make more accounts, and I cannot and will not be stopped, I don't know why the viciousness from the admin(the only thing i can gather is that they don't like being told their policies are flawed), but what they want is irrelevant, they can delete accounts, posts, block my IPs, but i will continue to speak my voice, and I will be heard. Oh, and this is kind of cute, if i do say so myself 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfmnGFDRkBI

enjoy 

[Jessy Kang]

As long as their agenda is served, they will do anything for anyone, under any circumstances to make bitcoin a success.

If the owners of the BitCoin.org website are committed to protecting prices at the expense of open dialog, and those same people have a large vested financial interest in concealing any flaws that may come to light, and stifling dialog- then that is a business not an Open Source Project.

In their defense the people making this decision went from having hobby, to having serous business interests- arguably worth millions of dollars within a VERY short period of time. I imagine it's hard to suddenly have that much money and still maintain your lofty convictions, or patiently ignore the forum settings while poster after poster write statements that threaten your newly acquired wealth- I've never been in that position so who am I do say I'd do better or show more restraint?

I do know that the foundation of Bitcoin, and the very reason for what success it has seen *is* lofty convictions. Bitcoins, and the philosophy behind them were never pragmatic, convenient or easy- but they were popular because we believed them to be right, fair and just.

Now that they are worth real money, the people holding Bitcoins and in a position to exercise influence over their prices, are making the same pragmatic decisions people with money always make to protect their interests. It was these same pragmatic "if you don't like it you can leave" decisions, that cause them to flock to Bitcoin in the first place.

Openness and marketable are always a problematic balance with any open source project, but Bitcoin was far from out of the woods, with a precious few merchants on board when the project heads decided, (somewhat over optimistically IMHO) to pull up the drawbridge. I think it's a mistake to try to have new adopters "jump the moat"- no matter how good your instructions, stickys and FAQ.

People just don't have a reason to jump the moat because what's in your castle is only appealing if it's convenient. You may feel Bitcoin is so awesome that people don't mind being locked into a demeaning, useless "Newbie" account for 50 posts- but really they are never going to think it's as awesome as you do because they won't stick around that long. If they don't stick around, if they don't join the Bitcoin community- because their posts would be "inconvenient" to experienced members and require unwanted scrolling, then those same members can't complain about volatility or the lack of adoption.

Inconvenient Bitcoin has value only as a novelty- and is not particularly compelling to merchants or buyers. The decision to pull up the bridge to protect short term prices and new found wealth, will in the long run do a huge amount of damage because you can't sustain Bitcoin simply as an investment medium among a select group of early adopters selling back and forth to each other.

But hey, based on the logical, articulate, well reasoned responses to our specific concerns that our Bitcoin Masters have handed down from their lofty perches explaining their dictates- I'm sure have it totally wrong

[Alik]

I like it. Do it.

[freequant]

We're not censoring you. Everybody can still see your posts; they're just easier to avoid.

If other (understand non-marginalized) users were really going to read all the messages inluding those of the newbie forum, there would be no need for a separate newbie forum in first place.
The corrolary is that messages posted in the newbie forum are in a dead end and will never reach their intended audience.
That's called censorship.

You don't serve bitcoin doing that.
Actually, you may already be ruining the business of other established participants whose services cater to new comers or casual investors.
For instance, the pools are massively relying on a regular flow of new comers, who by definition tend to have a variety of technical problems to get their rig up and running. If you don't let the new comers join the mining threads of these pools, they may never manage to get their rig running, and the pools and the bitcoin network altogether will bear a serious opportunity loss.

This is really the lamest moderation policy I have seen ever.
You are breeding a generation of angry trolls that are only going to play it nice for 50 messages until they are allowed to post somewhere else.

There are much better ways of getting the same result without resorting to totalitarian methods like censorship.
For instance, put a system of notation like it is the case on slashdot, and collapse automatically the messages that have been flagged as spam by the community.

I can only hope that you'll be smart enough to reconsidere the question and waive this stupid policy before most of the damage is done.

[Jessy Kang]

Perhaps people might be more willing to consider this proposal now, in light of recent events?

It was a great start- and in the spirit of open source. Any struggle or dialog to create a final version would have been well worth it. If a faster, more expedient solution was absolutely required it could have easily been accomplished simply by creating a poll giving a few options and asking the community how they wanted to deal with the problem. Furthermore this would have preserved the perceived impartiality of the project heads.

Instead they saw prices plummet and started carving rules into stone tablets to hand down to the peasants

[aral]

Yeah it's lame but completely understandable that something needed to be done because the sheer weight of newbies will swamp the forum.  That includes idiots, trolls (plenty of those on the main board anyway) and people with interesting opinions.  The forum model does not work well anyway imo when a community reaches a certain size.

[Alik]

I really don't mind it much. One day I will be free to roam the like a free range chicken.

[kajoman]

  mmm KFC...

[flyswatta]

Great idea!

[ecurrency.ec]

Great idea, I think 0.01BTC is too low amount, $10 equivalent maybe or more

[MindFunk]

You now need only 4 hours of online time plus 5 posts to become established. 8 hours seemed a little hard to get -- it might take some people several days.

The massive troll attack yesterday was really quite exciting to watch.
Luckily I have a brain.
I think you under-estimate the intelligence of the "newbie".
I have been reading here for a couple of days and it was quite obvious to me that this was a planned attack to drive down the price of BTC.
Why should I post when I do not really have anything to say?
Thankfully it's only 5 posts now instead of 25.
I really wanted to respond to something in the off topic section. (Send out your Women)
 

[yeponlyone]

account. Just stumbled across this and figured I'd do my part to help save this guy's

Look : if I am mining with pool xyz and there is a technical issue I want to raise to the pool operator, or if I found a bug in the bitcoin client and I want to report it, or if I am wanting to do business in the market forum, how am I going to do that now?

Unless you prove to us that you know the basics, you'd just be wasting those people's time. Don't worry, we can help you here.

yeah, relevant questions getting answered won't be a problem, if it is beyond the expertise of the other noobs in here then your post will be passed on. honestly, 4 hours ago i thought this was very gay, but think about this, after you do your time here, you will think twice about posting bs in the serious forum, b/c if your account gets clipped you have to start all over with a new account.

maybe try think of it like this, take whatever it is that you spend most of your time doing, whatever YOU are the expert at, now imagine you are having a complex dialogue on the subject and then in walks 1000s of 2 yr olds screaming like crazy about stuff that you learned your first couple weeks into the field. you would  hire some babysitters and go to another room as well, somewhere where you could hear yourself think...

i actually just made myself think that maybe a new secret invite only forum would be nice for the pros, but then again they prolly already have that and we just don't know about it..

[MindFunk]

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

same here!!!
This is bogus.
It "feels" like Government Intervention.

[Chris Acheson]

If the owners of the BitCoin.org website are committed to protecting prices at the expense of open dialog, and those same people have a large vested financial interest in concealing any flaws that may come to light, and stifling dialog- then that is a business not an Open Source Project.

I guess I disagree with you a bit more than I thought at first.  This is just a case of the forum admins applying a quick and dirty fix in response to user demand.  I agree with you that the solution chosen is unacceptable.  However, the trolling had extremely little to do with the price drop.  The forum already had plenty of loud detractors, and the price has been steadily climbing.  The project leads are part of the core ideologically-motivated group that is in this for the long haul; they don't need to worry about short-term price fluctuations anyway.  I just don't buy this "profit protection" theory of yours.

The price drop was the result of a "perfect storm" situation for bitcoin.  After having the largest price gains we've ever seen (as far as I know), MtGox started having trouble with accepting Dwolla deposits (currently the primary means of turning USD into BTC) due to an API change on Dwolla's end, restricting the flow of new money.  S3052, our resident technical analyst, was predicting a short-term downward trend.  It's fairly well-known that the price already tends to slump on the weekends, due to banks being closed.  On top of all that, SilkRoad (the infamous bitcoin drug bazaar) shut down for a day or two.  Like them or not, they're a fairly unique feature of the bitcoin economy, and without them, there's a reduced demand for BTC.  Put all that together, and the situation is ripe for profit-taking by bitcoin speculators.

[jamoes]

I'd just like to chime in and say that I agree this is a bad policy. I believe that there are many users like myself that mostly lurk, but do enjoy posting occasionally. This new policy effectively means I'll never be allowed to post unless I waste time making a lot of useless posts in this newbie section.

Most other forums don't have this type of policy, and are still able to deal with spam and trolls. I propose either that verifying your email address be used as an alternate method to unlock yourself from the newbie section.

Alternatively, maybe we could come up with some sort of micro-payment solution to prove you're serious. I'd be happy to pay something like 0.01 BTC to break out of this jail.

[NielDLR]

A dedicated newbie section, will have less of those posts, because there is no-one to scare or troll.

I'm sorry, i can't tell if this is a joke but i will bit anyway.. um.. so you are honestly under the opinion that the people the trolls are scaring are the experienced veteran bitcoin users and project developers? and NOT the new users who are trying to figure all this out for the first time? do you have a train of thought to back this insight up with?

I see where you could the misconception. My apologies for poor phrasing. What I meant is,is that newbies headed into the main forum sections to troll new and old. Of course the veteran users could see it, but it was an annoyance. Trolls of course thrive on attention, thus a bigger audience in the main sections, meant more bait. Not necessarily the veteran users, but the potential was there to hook more people. Here in the newbie section, there's less people, although maybe a bit more prone to deception, but the trolling is less satisfying. You get?

[mrNightowl]

Just a quick glance over this thread and I can see the problem here, people are lazy and want others to solve their issues for them.  I can clearly see a lot of those using bitcoin for their online ventures, know nothing about internet business and how to secure it for themselves.   

[MindFunk]

Sure, let's start with the basics :

Basic 1: an open society does not promote censorship
Basic 2: don't quick the hive if you don't want to get stinged
Basic 3: you can't repair trust once it is broken
Basic 4: don't give to your detractors additional reasons to bash you