Are you embarrassed to post in the ivory tower?

[Jet Cash]

The Cambridge dictionary defines the meaning of the phase "to live in an ivory tower" as

To live or be in an ivory tower is not to know about or to want to avoid the ordinary and unpleasant things that happen in people's lives:

Obviously this applies to the current UK politicians, but how does it apply to Bitcoin Talk users? My understanding is that it distances members from the boring and repetitive sig spam posting on the discussion and other boards. I hope it will take us back to the old cafe society era where intelligent and erudite discussions could take place in a pleasant environment. This is a great alternative to the modern fast food "restaurants" with all the loud music, swearing and rubbish conversations based on photo exchanges via cell phones.

Bitcoin is maturing and taking a unique place in the world economy, and it will be nice to have a board to discuss this development. Comparing Bitcoin with cowry shells, gold or fiat currencies for the hundredth time, just obscures the more interesting issues. Bitcoin talk has a large number of very knowledgeable members - please visit the board and help people like me who may have been around for a while, but who have fairly focused knowledge. We need to expand to use the emerging Bitcoin economy.

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[mprep]

As I mentioned in the announcement thread for the new sections, the "Ivory Tower" name (and in part the board itself) feels like something that'd be joke in a Meta thread about declining post quality forum-wide, not an actual board. While giving a space for coherent discussion is great, this really does seem like an attempt of dodging the problem. I wouldn't say I'm embarrassed, moreso a bit baffled - it just feels kind of surreal when we start dividing the forum into neighborhoods, as if it's a social experiment and not an actual place where discussion and business happens. "Here's where the rich and cool people hang out, this other district is for the middle class and the rest of the city is slums".

I dunno, the entire thing just seems to leave a bad taste in my mouth.

[Jet Cash]

I don't think that the intention was to create an elite Bitcoin class. If that were so, then I don't think that I would be included.  I understood it to be an attempt to escape threads with topics like "Will Bitcoin cause Theresa May to wear longer skirts?" Would it be more popular if it was called " The frog pond", or just simply the lounge?

[hilariousetc]

As I mentioned in the announcement thread for the new sections, the "Ivory Tower" name (and in part the board itself) feels like something that'd be joke in a Meta thread about declining post quality forum-wide, not an actual board. While giving a space for coherent discussion is great, this really does seem like an attempt of dodging the problem. I wouldn't say I'm embarrassed, moreso a bit baffled - it just feels kind of surreal when we start dividing the forum into neighborhoods, as if it's a social experiment and not an actual place where discussion and business happens. "Here's where the rich and cool people hang out, this other district is for the middle class and the rest of the city is slums".

I dunno, the entire thing just seems to leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Sadly the forum has essentially become a joke really. These new boards are silly if you really think about it but are essentially a necessity now and are just a sad symptom of signature campaigns and how they've been left to degenerate into what they have become and the issue with paying people to post is so bad that there needs to be some sort of quarantine free from disease. The fact that this site is a bitcoin discussion forum is pretty much an afterthought now as the vast majority of people signing up here don't care about that at all but just the fact that they heard you can earn money here (and most of it isn't even paid out in bitcoin but alt coins or tokens etc). When you don't actually care or know anything about bitcoin and can barely speak English and on top of that are forcing yourself to make posts to hit your quota what is going to happen? Add to that that most people create numerous accounts to maximise profit then there's just wall to wall spam and abuse. If we had actually cracked down on what campaigns can get away with then this problem wouldn't be here today but because we've had a laissez faire attitude and let campaigns do whatever they want it has just led to laziness both on the campaigns themselves and their actual participants. When we let people have an unlimited amount of accounts and let campaigns pay people for whatever drivel they can be bothered to make what do we expect to happen? Pure abuse on both sides. Why would campaigns waste time policing their campaigns when that costs time and effort and why would users bother to write more than a sentence when they don't need to? If we made it so this behaviour/attitude was unacceptable and punished those who were causing the problem then things would have turned out a lot different. I've always said that signature campaigns could actually help improve the quality of discussion here but that's only if people who run them do a good job and only accept and pay for quality posters and there's punishments for those that don't. At the moment there are campaigns that will accept an unlimited amount of newbies and pay for them to make any old crap so of course it's going to be abused. This behaviour can't be acceptable but if it is allowed to continue then the forum is just going to get even worse than it is now.

I don't think that the intention was to create an elite Bitcoin class. If that were so, then I don't think that I would be included.  I understood it to be an attempt to escape threads with topics like "Will Bitcoin cause Theresa May to wear longer skirts?" Would it be more popular if it was called " The frog pond", or just simply the lounge?

The intent is simple: People shitpost to lazily rank up their accounts and get paid from signature campaigns. If there's boards that won't further them in their goal of achieving activity and postcount then those shitposters won't waste their time posting in there as it's counter-productive and hopefully the only people who will post in there are those that actually want to contribute to decent discussion.

[pugman]

Sadly the forum has essentially become a joke really. These new boards are silly if you really think about it but are essentially a necessity now and are just a sad symptom of signature campaigns and how they've been left to degenerate into what they have become and the issue with paying people to post is so bad that there needs to be some sort of quarantine free from disease. The fact that this site is a bitcoin discussion forum is pretty much an afterthought now as the vast majority of people signing up here don't care about that at all but just the fact that they heard you can earn money here (and most of it isn't even paid out in bitcoin but alt coins or tokens etc). When you don't actually care or know anything about bitcoin and can barely speak English and on top of that are forcing yourself to make posts to hit your quota what is going to happen? Add to that that most people create numerous accounts to maximise profit then there's just wall to wall spam and abuse. If we had actually cracked down on what campaigns can get away with then this problem wouldn't be here today but because we've had a laissez faire attitude and let campaigns do whatever they want it has just led to laziness both on the campaigns themselves and their actual participants. When we let people have an unlimited amount of accounts and let campaigns pay people for whatever drivel they can be bothered to make what do we expect to happen? Pure abuse on both sides. Why would campaigns waste time policing their campaigns when that costs time and effort and why would users bother to write more than a sentence when they don't need to? If we made it so this behaviour/attitude was unacceptable and punished those who were causing the problem then things would have turned out a lot different. I've always said that signature campaigns could actually help improve the quality of discussion here but that's only if people who run them do a good job and only accept and pay for quality posters and there's punishments for those that don't. At the moment there are campaigns that will accept an unlimited amount of newbies and pay for them to make any old crap so of course it's going to be abused. This behaviour can't be acceptable but if it is allowed to continue then the forum is just going to get even worse than it is now.

Signature campaigns aren't bad in the services section, most of the managers are okay, the bounty managers, they are way too lazy. There is one manager who isn't checking the post quality of users I guess, he's just accepting the users if the parameters are  correct. Here's his campaign that he is managing :- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2705913.0
I do not mean any personal offense to him but clearly I guess that's what is happening there.

The intent is simple: People shitpost to lazily rank up their accounts and get paid from signature campaigns. If there's boards that won't further them in their goal of achieving activity and postcount then those shitposters won't waste their time posting in there as it's counter-productive and hopefully the only people who will post in there are those that actually want to contribute to decent discussion.

The intent might be in the right direction but yet shit posters will spam there. So what if activity doesn't count? The activity raise is only to a limited number of posts per week, campaigns expect users to post like 25-30 posts on an average. Users would post in as many sections they can, so that they get accepted in future campaigns. Because there are some managers who expect users to post in many sections, as one of their goals would be diversification of posts.

[actmyname]

The intent might be in the right direction but yet shit posters will spam there. Users would post in as many sections they can, so that they get accepted in future campaigns. Because there are some managers who expect users to post in many sections, as one of their goals would be diversification of posts.

Nah, but their posts would be chucked away. Account farmers and spammers can't deal with that kind of risk, which is why they spam the shit out of Economics, Bitcoin Discussion, pretty much every fucking board. Those posts are far easier to come up with, and you can spam a shit ton more due to the amount of vague and general threads (spam megathreads incl.)

Plus, posts in the Ivory Tower and Serious Discussion are kind of over most spammers' heads. All they know about crypto is how to send coins and join bounties.

[Jet Cash]

Hopefully good moderation will help to build those boards into useful reference resources.

It all depends on the posts and support that the quality members give to those boards.

[pugman]

Nah, but their posts would be chucked away. Account farmers and spammers can't deal with that kind of risk, which is why they spam the shit out of Economics, Bitcoin Discussion, pretty much every fucking board. Those posts are far easier to come up with, and you can spam a shit ton more due to the amount of vague and general threads (spam megathreads incl.)

Right.. If their posts gets deleted,they won't be able to meet their weekly minimum posts requirements,so they won't get paid. But posters just want to rank up are posting,which angered theymos I guess,so he had to increase the restrictions on posting in those two boards. Wondering why theymos doesn't do the same to boards like off-topic,politics and society.

Plus, posts in the Ivory Tower and Serious Discussion are kind of over most spammers' heads. All they know about crypto is how to send coins and join bounties.

Touche.

[actmyname]

Right.. If their posts gets deleted,they won't be able to meet their weekly minimum posts requirements,so they won't get paid. But posters just want to rank up are posting,which angered theymos I guess,so he had to increase the restrictions on posting in those two boards. Wondering why theymos doesn't do the same to boards like off-topic,politics and society.

Perhaps it's better to sacrifice the weak rather than let the infection plague the strong. These are relative terms, anyway. Off-topic and the Politics & Society boards are far greater density cesspools than the other boards. If you let spammers handle their one-liner (or one-word) bullshit there then you prevent that from leaking to the other boards. Kind of like delegating all the ponzi spam to the child board investor-based games.

It prevented the shit from spreading all over the important board.

[hilariousetc]

Signature campaigns aren't bad in the services section, most of the managers are okay, the bounty managers, they are way too lazy. There is one manager who isn't checking the post quality of users I guess, he's just accepting the users if the parameters are  correct. Here's his campaign that he is managing :- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2705913.0
I do not mean any personal offense to him but clearly I guess that's what is happening there.

There are several campaign managers who aren't up to the job and don't really do anything other than accept and pay anyone who bothers to sign up. Sylon is one of the worst managers here and as far as I can tell he doesn't do any sort of quality checks at all and as such his campaigns are routinely abused by hacked accounts and farmers. I honestly don't know whether he's just grossly incompetent or is directly involved with the farming.

The intent might be in the right direction but yet shit posters will spam there. So what if activity doesn't count? The activity raise is only to a limited number of posts per week, campaigns expect users to post like 25-30 posts on an average. Users would post in as many sections they can, so that they get accepted in future campaigns. Because there are some managers who expect users to post in many sections, as one of their goals would be diversification of posts.

I can't see why shitposters would bother. There might be the occasional one who lingers in there but the Ivory tower board contributes to neither activity nor post-count so I can't see why anyone who is here just to earn or rank up would waste their time and energy with that board.

[Jet Cash]

I can't see why shitposters would bother. There might be the occasional one who lingers in there but the Ivory tower board contributes to neither activity nor post-count so I can't see why anyone who is here just to earn or rank up would waste their time and energy with that board.

In fact there aren't many people posting there at all. If I start one more thread, I'll ask if it can be renamed "The Jet Cash board".
 I must be one of the least competent of the eligible members, and I support the board, but I would love it if some of the more knowledgeable and interesting members would pitch in.

[theymos]

The name is supposed to be fun. I don't actually mean that people who post in the section are "living in an ivory tower".

I hope it will take us back to the old cafe society era where intelligent and erudite discussions could take place in a pleasant environment.

How about I rename it to Le café d'or, then?

Someone should create a poll.

[mprep]

The name is supposed to be fun. I don't actually mean that people who post in the section are "living in an ivory tower".

I wouldn't have an issue with the name and it's connotations if the forum was in a better state than it is now. There's a fine line between parody-level satire and Ajit Pai satire. With all the hordes of shitposters continually degrading any discussion they come upon, this seems to slowly veer of into the latter.

[Quickseller]

To be entirely fair, the signature spam, and related nonsense posts is fairly unpleasant...

My issue with the ivory tower is that its placement within the forum more or less makes it an off topic section that allows for a broad variety of threads that I may not be interested in reading. I would say I would rather have the ivory tower be a child of bitcoin discussion, and allow any non-marketplace, bitcoin related threads, even if said thread would also be appropriate in technical discussion, trading discussion, and similar. 

[The Sceptical Chymist]

The name is supposed to be fun. I don't actually mean that people who post in the section are "living in an ivory tower".

I hope it will take us back to the old cafe society era where intelligent and erudite discussions could take place in a pleasant environment.

How about I rename it to Le café d'or, then?

Someone should create a poll.

Wow, that's your main concern?   Did you read hilariousetc's post?  It's spot on and you're "la-la-la-la-la, I can't hear yoooou!"

[plasmodesmata]

This has been some great reading, you guys are definitely the cool kids. I haven't seen anyone one who's used the word "erudite", or even known what it means, since grad school. It seems as though at one time there was a chance to moderate content in relation to advertisements for bounties and airdrops and such. Why was that not acted upon?

[ibminer]

I found the name to be more humorous than anything else. Although, reading some of the responses, I can understand why there would be issues with the name, because most people around here don't seem to appreciate humor much. For me, I guess this brings up the question of whether theymos made this a "fun" name because he is mocking or does not agree with the perception of where the "state of the forum" is at, if he just made it fun... for fun?, or merely created the subforum to respond/acknowledge requests by other members and made the name humorous because he doesn't really take it all that seriously?  I may be overanalyzing, although I'm leaning towards the fact that theymos created this in a serious manner, with a bit of humor, to address or at least acknowledge that the forum is not in a great state with content and spam-like behaviors. Maybe I am being too gullible. 

I'd agree the placement of the subforum may not be well placed, assuming it is intended to be a serious subforum, it does make it less serious under "Other". While it would gain more attention and possibly more posts higher up... the issue with putting it under "Bitcoin Discussion" is that having "Serious Discussion" underneath of "Bitcoin Dicsussion" seems to imply Bitcoin, or "Bitcoin Discussion", is not serious... and in that case, why not just jump to changing "Bitcoin Discussion" to similar limitations that exist with Serious Discussion/Ivory Tower, and try to make Bitcoin Discussion "serious". Or eliminate "Serious Discussion" and create a child board for the "IvoryDistinguished Tower" under Bitcoin Discussion?   

[Jet Cash]

OK here is my suggestion.

Change the discusson board to " The Frog Pond"
Change serious discussions to a simple " Bitcoin discussions"
Change the Ivory Towwr to " In depth discussions"

[hilariousetc]

The name is supposed to be fun. I don't actually mean that people who post in the section are "living in an ivory tower".

I hope it will take us back to the old cafe society era where intelligent and erudite discussions could take place in a pleasant environment.

How about I rename it to Le café d'or, then?

I think that will confuse most and they'd avoid it, which is a good thing  . How about La Tour d'Ivoire?  

I found the name to be more humorous than anything else. Although, reading some of the responses, I can understand why there would be issues with the name, because most people around here don't seem to appreciate humor much. For me, I guess this brings up the question of whether theymos made this a "fun" name because he is mocking or does not agree with the perception of where the "state of the forum" is at, if he just made it fun... for fun?, or merely created the subforum to respond/acknowledge requests by other members and made the name humorous because he doesn't really take it all that seriously?  I may be overanalyzing, although I'm leaning towards the fact that theymos created this in a serious manner, with a bit of humor, to address or at least acknowledge that the forum is not in a great state with content and spam-like behaviors. Maybe I am being too gullible.  

I think he's more than aware of the issue with spam here and you'd have to be blind or have your head in the sand not to see that. I think he takes it seriously otherwise he wouldn't have created it, but that doesn't mean we can't have a little fun in naming it, which may or may not be an attempt to also acknowledge the ridiculousness of the situation, but I don't think there's anything wrong with a little humour especially on this forum.

OK here is my suggestion.

Change the discusson board to " The Frog Pond"
Change serious discussions to a simple " Bitcoin discussions"
Change the Ivory Towwr to " In depth discussions"

I vote for just Srs Bsns.

[Jet Cash]

I vote that girl should join us for some serious discussions. I don't mind if it's in the ivory tower either.