Roger Ver and Jon Matonis pushed aside now that Bitcoin is becoming mainstream

[midnightmagic]

I agree it's unjust to hand-pick a small group of "bitcoin representatives" for the press page. The bitcoin-press mailing list is not very democratic or transparent either. I vote for removing it.

sirius, please reconsider what you've just been lured into doing. You're giving weight to venom, vitriol, and cruelty which is matched in its rhetorical slipperiness only by its sheer determination.

[jgarzik]

I agree it's unjust to hand-pick a small group of "bitcoin representatives" for the press page. The bitcoin-press mailing list is not very democratic or transparent either. I vote for removing it.

sirius, please reconsider what you've just been lured into doing. You're giving weight to venom, vitriol, and cruelty which is matched in its rhetorical slipperiness only by its sheer determination.

Perhaps true, but hey, pointing it to the Bitcoin Foundation seems reasonable.  If other press centers grow organically, maybe just a link.

That moves the press stuff off bitcoin.org at least, which doesn't seem unreasonable.  Many of us have been saying that bitcoin.org should focus more on the open source project and technical aspects.  Let's put those words to the test.  I certainly prefer a more apolitical bitcoin.org myself.

[cypherdoc]

I agree it's unjust to hand-pick a small group of "bitcoin representatives" for the press page. The bitcoin-press mailing list is not very democratic or transparent either. I vote for removing it.

sirius, please reconsider what you've just been lured into doing. You're giving weight to venom, vitriol, and cruelty which is matched in its rhetorical slipperiness only by its sheer determination.

lured into what exactly?

upholding free speech, upholding the concept of a majority, upholding the right to a vote, upholding inclusivity vs. exclusivity?

supporting Roger Ver and Jon Matonis, probably close to the 2 most visible and hard working Bitcoin supporters of the last 4 yrs?

give me a break.

[Herodes]

I certainly prefer a more apolitical bitcoin.org myself.

Supported. Doing that, we could also avoid all this controversy. (at least attempt!  )

I've heard Gavin's suggested that the Foundation should control bitcoin.org as well. Very bad idea if you ask me, the more decentralized it is, the better. I would also not suggest linking to the Foundation website from the bitcoin.org site. As we can see from this thread representatives for the Foundation are largely uninterested in answering valid questions.

[cypherdoc]

I certainly prefer a more apolitical bitcoin.org myself.

Supported. Doing that, we could also avoid all this controversy. (at least attempt!  )

I've heard Gavin's suggested that the Foundation should control bitcoin.org as well. Very bad idea if you ask me, the more decentralized it is, the better. I would also not suggest linking to the Foundation website from the bitcoin.org site. As we can see from this thread representatives for the Foundation are largely uninterested in answering valid questions.

+1

the devs should stick to what they do best.  develop.  i would never expect to get a vote on dev matters since i'm not a developer.  but what happened the other nite on github was something entirely different, ie, a political matter.

[marcus_of_augustus]

Many of us have been saying that bitcoin.org should focus more on the open source project and technical aspects.  Let's put those words to the test.  I certainly prefer a more apolitical bitcoin.org myself.

Agreed.

bitcoin is an open source software project ...how many other OS project pages do you see with "Press Centers"? The thing was an interesting idea, if a little pretentious, and quickly got turned into a "big microphone" for political hobby horsing ... get rid of it.

Lets' keep bitcoin.org focussed on the s/ware, technical and even avoid financial. Linux.org doesn't have sections on how it is changing the world, yet linux does. bitcoin.org should be completely apolitical, like the s/ware tech. itself .... just covering the full range of clients and technical development in the space is a huge job for such a website already. I'm not even sure it should take upon itself the job of educating newcomers or any kind of public outreach of that nature, since it is easy to link to those efforts.

There is nowhere, except diverse wiki pages, that are concentrating on keeping a solid bank of documentation on the core technology ... this is correctly bitcoin.org mission imho. Provide a framework for development of the tech., everything else is fluffery and can be linked to outside groups.

Edit: if powerful groups start developing alternate clients, wanting to push s/ware changes into the core, etc, as has happened with linux kernel, bitcoin.org is going to have it's hands full just keeping up with that
e.g.
http://www.linux.org/

[midnightmagic]

lured into what exactly?

upholding free speech, upholding the concept of a majority, upholding the right to a vote, upholding inclusivity vs. exclusivity?

supporting Roger Ver and Jon Matonis, probably close to the 2 most visible and hard working Bitcoin supporters of the last 4 yrs?

give me a break.

Like I said.

[Mike Hearn]

This thread is still going, huh.

All this is very similar to previous rounds of arguments. Let me recap two of them here.

The first dispute is the one that led to forum.bitcoin.org becoming bitcointalk.org. As a reminder, what happened there is that theymos and sirius had a moderation policy on this forum that was so lax it was virtually nonexistent. People were openly trading drugs, hacked servers and other things directly on the forum. This triggered what can only be described as a developer revolt, as none of the people who were working on Bitcoin-Qt at that time thought this was OK. The result was development talk which had previously been done all on the forum moved to a mailing list, the forums got moved off the bitcoin domain and rebranded as unofficial, and in the end a moderation policy was established anyway.

So sirius, your position on this isn't really surprising to me.

The second dispute was over the Bitcoin wiki. It has a trade page. You will notice at the top it says services illegal in the USA or Japan are not fit to be listed. That warning wasn't always there. Back in 2011 that wiki page was the subject of numerous edit wars by people who wanted links to online drug markets to be there. Someone would add Silk Road links (and other sites). Someone else would take them off. To nobodies surprise the anarchists have more time to waste on edit wars than people writing software or running companies did. I got in touch with Mark Karpeles who hosts the Bitcoin wiki, and he set the rules that links to drug trading sites were forbidden.

You can see these arguments as just a third round of the same dynamic. A bunch of anarchists turn up and want the project to explicitly support their viewpoints, often by promoting illegal activities. A bunch of other people who are actually forming businesses or writing software turn up and want the project to stay apolitical and certainly steer clear of illegal activity.

Very often these arguments are phrased as, "Bitcoin should be open and democratic and everyone should be able to put whatever they like into it because otherwise YOU ARE AGAINST FREEDOM!". We know what the result of that kind of approach is. It's that our common spaces get overrun by anarchists who spend all day engaging in edit wars and trying to spray-paint as much illegal activity over Bitcoin as they can, any way they can.

So that's why these days we have a website that tells people to pay their taxes, doesn't talk about the Silk Road, and has people listed as press contacts who have a track record of not encouraging illegal activity. That's actually as apolitical as it gets. What would NOT be apolitical, is to have a wiki page that would turn into the Trade page circa 2011 where agorists who want to overthrow their governments camp on the page and misrepresent the views of everyone else involved in the project.

[Herodes]

So that's why these days we have a website that tells people to pay their taxes, doesn't talk about the Silk Road, and has people listed as press contacts who have a track record of not encouraging illegal activity. That's actually as apolitical as it gets. What would NOT be apolitical, is to have a wiki page that would turn into the Trade page circa 2011 where agorists who want to overthrow their governments camp on the page and misrepresent the views of everyone else involved in the project.

Are Matonis and Ver encouraging illegal activity ? If so, I've never seen it.

[cypherdoc]

Very often these arguments are phrased as, "Bitcoin should be open and democratic and everyone should be able to put whatever they like into it because otherwise YOU ARE AGAINST FREEDOM!". We know what the result of that kind of approach is. It's that our common spaces get overrun by anarchists who spend all day engaging in edit wars and trying to spray-paint as much illegal activity over Bitcoin as they can, any way they can.

that's pretty narrow minded. 

i'm probably old enough to be your father and have my own family.  i've been around here for a while now and encourage paying your taxes, avoiding illegal activity, and being a good citizen.

perhaps you're still living in the past.  personally, i've seen an evolution in Bitcoin in more ways than one.

[aantonop]

Don't bother asking for rational and consistent rules. That's the problem. It's not about "anarchists" soiling the good name of bitcoin. It's about a misguided effort to control access, based on a naive and selectively applied litmus test. For all the reasons Mike Hearn covered above, I'd suggest that jgarzik doesn't belong on the list. However, that would be applying the rule consistently.

There is no solution here other than a fork.

I'm building bitcoinpresscenter.org to be inclusive and dedicated only to press contacts.

This debate ran its course because there is no recourse, no rules, no consistency. At the end of the day, this was an effort to dictate policy to the community, based on what Hearn and Garzik and a few other believe is "moderate" while they can't even meet the standard themselves. It's arbitrary and capricious, and that's what people object to, not the specific individuals.

Game's up. bitcoin.org is not your private playground where you can pretend to speak for others or to take "the high road" which happens to coincide with your beliefs and opinions.

[Mike Hearn]

I was responding to the suggestion of replacing the website with a wiki, not on the case of those two people. I don't think I've commented specifically on particular cases, just been pointing out why it's not implemented as a free-for-all.

For what it's worth, I actually read a lot of what Jon writes, I comment on his Google+ stream pretty often, I never met him but I hope I will at the conference and I think I'd probably like him. Heck I think I'd like Roger too. I don't think either has actually encouraged people to break the law though I don't follow everything they say closely.

Part of the reason this whole thing has blown up is that some people are projecting a grey-area decision on a couple of people as much bigger than it really is. I didn't take part in the discussion about Jon or Roger because I don't see it as very significant - they've both been big supporters of Bitcoin, they both have spent time talking to the media so those are very positive points, at the same time some other people who have done a lot of work on Bitcoin expressed concerns. There's no point in having hundreds of people up there, given the point is just to explain the project accurately. So if there is extended debate it seems a better use of time to just move on and find other people where there's no risk of upsetting key contributors. It's not personal (for me), it's not a statement about politics or democracy, it's just about the best way to use limited time and webpage space.

cypherdoc, I wasn't making a reference to you (or anyone in this thread). I was talking about the kind of people who were edit-warring the wiki in 2011 or spamming SR threads back then.

[Herodes]

I didn't take part in the discussion about Jon or Roger because I don't see it as very significant - they've both been big supporters of Bitcoin, they both have spent time talking to the media so those are very positive points, at the same time some other people who have done a lot of work on Bitcoin expressed concerns.

Yepp, I would think those people are the men in suits doing business...

[sirius]

Moving forum.bitcoin.org to bitcointalk.org was a good move that made bitcoin.org less political. I would say the same about moving the press stuff out.

Resources page (http://bitcoin.org/en/resources) is already useful for press, we don't need a separate press page. There we can add links to the interviewee wiki page and possibly other sources.

With all respect to Saivann and others who have worked with the site.

[charleshoskinson]

Moving forum.bitcoin.org to bitcointalk.org was a good move that made bitcoin.org less political. I would say the same about moving the press stuff out.

Resources page (http://bitcoin.org/en/resources) is already useful for press, we don't need a separate press page. There we can add links to the interviewee wiki page and possibly other sources.

With all respect to Saivann and others who have worked with the site.

Thank you Sirius.

[midnightmagic]

You should consider reading your rants before you click "Post."

Game's up. bitcoin.org is not your private playground where you can pretend to speak for others or to take "the high road" which happens to coincide with your beliefs and opinions.

Is it yours to determine this? Or are you just hoping that through rote, crowing, shrill repetition, eventually it will become so?

[charleshoskinson]

Is it yours to determine this? Or are you just hoping that through rote, crowing, shrill repetition, eventually it will become so?

You're not exactly being fair in this assessment. Some people the community feel that decisions are being made about defining "legitimate" bitcoin versus "out of mainstream" bitcoin by a small cabal of individuals. No one should have such power or even believe they have a right to try. However, the media needs to have a singular head entity to discuss bitcoin and it is very clear the foundation is attempting to position itself for such a role.

If they are successful, then the foundation would gain the ability to exclude certain voices if they desired. While such voices can always blog, tweet, etc, they would not speak with the authority of the "official" bitcoin group and therefore be outside of the mainstream. Now, it is fair to point out the argument presupposes the foundation's intentions and media strategy, yet it is also fair to say the community should be sensitive to these issues.

I recall working for the Ron Paul campaign in 2007-8 and watching the tea party turn from a very tangible third party against the status quo into a proxy of the republican party after some incredibly well funded entities hijacked it. I really don't want to see the same thing happen to the Bitcoin movement.

[Mike Hearn]

I think an interesting solution to these arguments would be to find someone with totally extreme political views who can be absolutely trusted to talk about Bitcoin in a neutral light, and make it clear that it's a project which is made up of many people with different beliefs and backgrounds. Someone who is a hard core anarcho-capitalist but isn't going to claim Bitcoin is inherently anarchist if they're given a soapbox, or imply the point of Bitcoin is being able to evade the law, etc. Then maybe everyone can be equally annoyed together. Perhaps Mike G would take it on

Charles, I think the tea party analogy is an interesting one. Obviously I wasn't there. But perhaps you can see that your analogy is invertible. There are plenty of libertarians that are doing productive and useful stuff with Bitcoin, but there are also a people who are trying to essentially hijack Bitcoin and make it linked in peoples minds with their own agenda. You can see it in these endless threads where some of them claim Bitcoin is inherently anti-government and anyone who disagrees "doesn't get it". They just can't or won't mentally separate the two things.

This is the root cause of the desire to keep Bitcoin and bitcoin.org apolitical, which is something there's a lot of support for. The problem is how to actually do that. A wiki page won't work. Wiki pages on controversial topics just turn into exhausting edit wars in which the final result is decided by who has the most time and zealot-like dedication. That's not a way to achieve an apolitical result, as we learned the hard way with the Trade page.

We could just delete anything that some random forum poster finds controversial. That won't work either. Some people genuinely believe Bitcoin shouldn't have a website at all. Maybe one day that'll be the case (hopefully!), just like how the dollar doesn't have a website, but we're far from that state.

We can rename stuff so it seems less "official", but there's already a very obvious disclaimer on the website saying that the people there aren't official or spokespeople of any kind.

We could just abandon the entire concept of a press center, but there are reasons it was created (oddly, nobody found it controversial when I first proposed it here in this forum). Mostly that a lot of the coverage Bitcoin got was really clueless or riddled with basic errors, and could have benefited from people who knew what they were talking about being involved. It'd suck to give up on trying to fix that.

So we're left with the worst solution except for all the others - have some kind of process for submitting changes, and look for alternatives in cases where there's controversy or people who have a long track record of contribution would be uncomfortable. In this case there are plenty of people who nobody really disagrees on, so there are lots of alternatives available.

[charleshoskinson]

Charles, I think the tea party analogy is an interesting one. Obviously I wasn't there. But perhaps you can see that your analogy is invertible. There are plenty of libertarians that are doing productive and useful stuff with Bitcoin, but there are also a people who are trying to essentially hijack Bitcoin and make it linked in peoples minds with their own agenda. You can see it in these endless threads where some of them claim Bitcoin is inherently anti-government and anyone who disagrees "doesn't get it". They just can't or won't mentally separate the two things.

I disagree with the notion that it isn't a thorn for governments. The problem is that governments issue the money and regulate it as they see fit. Bitcoin both attacks the standard economic models they tend to use for monetary policy (hurting the intellectual integrity of central banks) and also removes almost all economic controls governments can enforce upon their people. For example, wallets can't be frozen. It is incredibly difficult to measure a person's income (hurting the integrity of the tax system). There is no central agency to regulate or dominate. No one to answer for the crimes of the system as a whole.

It's a unique and difficult animal to even properly define much less integrate into the existing legal structure of money. Therefore, it is very naive in my opinion to believe governments will look kindly if only we cleaned up our act enough. They will never accept something that removes power they currently have. Thus unless we capitulate and surrender things like anonymity and free commerce, they will actively fight to destroy Bitcoin.

In my humble opinion, we have to treat bitcoin like the Internet of the 1980s and focus on bringing as many actors as possible into the system. The more people who both understand and use bitcoin; the easier it will be to prevent governments from trying to destroy bitcoin. The best way of doing this is to adopt an inclusive system and crowdsource educational efforts. 

[aantonop]

In my humble opinion, we have to treat bitcoin like the Internet of the 1980s and focus on bringing as many actors as possible into the system. The more people who both understand and use bitcoin; the easier it will be to prevent governments from trying to destroy bitcoin. The best way of doing this is to adopt an inclusive system and crowdsource educational efforts.  

Hear Hear!

Bitcoin is neutral. The attempts to force certain agendas on it, through exclusion are well-meant but misguided. We've done this before for the Internet and for crypto. We didn't win the arguments against broad-based availability of crypto by hiding the fringe voices, we did it by adding more, and more and more voices ,until you couldn't but see it as a mainstream activity. Once 128-bit crypto was anarchist and terrorist anathema. Now it is weak protection for grandma's pot-pourri purchase. We did that through addition, not subtraction.