End of newbie restrictions; ban changes

[CMMPro]

Theymos, I'm sorry to say the lifting of the 'newbie' restrictions has made the board noticeably worse. To the point where I am seriously considering to stop using "my" subforum (speculation).

The number of new accounts aggressively opening useless threads is through the roof. I never had to put so many people on ignore as in the last week. And all of that, despite the subforum being run by a very competent mod (Blitz).

All in all, it really backfired, and I sincerely ask you to consider adjusting your decision.

How about the following: Allow sub-forum mods to set a certain 'activity' value that a user has to have reached before he can post in this forum, and keep at least one forum unrestricted ('beginners' comes to mind), so the newbies can earn their activity points there.

I'm not proposing anything elitist here, so maybe you could rule out too high activity numbers being set for a sub-forum, but some "credence check" really seems necessary to keep signal/noise in acceptable levels.

+1

Since the removal of newbie jail, we've been overrun with new accounts starting trollish/FUD threads, especially in "Speculation" and "Bitcoin Discussion."  I think Oda's suggestion above makes a lot of sense.

+1 also, saw the thread title and came here to find out why the Speculation, Economics etc. are all clogged with bullshit and useless to read now...now I know why. So many idiots...you can't weed out any useful news/info at all. 

I may still pop by to try to find some specific historical info but other than that I can't see any reason to be here any longer.   

In any case, the big players and intelligent people have moved on to the new forum anyway.

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[tysat]

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Is there any discussion going on between the mods or admins about bringing that section back?

I support it and I think a few others do too, but it's up to theymos.

[oda.krell]

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Is there any discussion going on between the mods or admins about bringing that section back?

I support it and I think a few others do too, but it's up to theymos.

Thanks for the staff feedback. Glad it's not only a bunch of users feeling that way.

[creepywheepy]

Can't say if I like new rules or don't as I am newbie here and actually it doesn't matter, the rules have been changed. Let's live move on and we'll see how it is going to work. Btw like the idea of breaking users up into a group and it's cool you can see his status (Newbie, Jr Member etc)

[Welsh]

Theymos, it seems that the community want's the Newbie section back, since it has been lifted we have seen increased spam, off topic posts and threads being put in the wrong section constantly. Although, we can't eliminate it completely with the Newbie section it does stop bots registering and the people who just want to ask one time questions and don't bother reading up on the moderation policy and just posts any where to get their answer answered. I've seen a few threads in the wrong section and when confronted by others asking why they put that in the section they did they responded: "It's the most active board".

In fact most boards are now littered with "This thread has been moved", legitimate posts are now getting drowned out because of this and the general spam on the boards. Yes spam did occur in the Newbie section but at least we could control it in one area rather than having it spread out in multiple areas of the forum.

You did say you were going to test if this would work, well it didn't and it's time to bring it back before the people start a revolution.  

[oda.krell]

Can't say if I like new rules or don't as I am newbie here and actually it doesn't matter, the rules have been changed. Let's live move on and we'll see how it is going to work. Btw like the idea of breaking users up into a group and it's cool you can see his status (Newbie, Jr Member etc)

Please understand that the request to re-open some form of "newbie approbation period" is nothing against *individual* newbies, or even against newbies per se. Also, you're not going to be put back into newbie hell  retroactively I'd say :)

The point is that, as a result of lifting the newbie restrictions, the forum became flooded with low quality posts -- or at least that's what's a large number of posters seem to believe. So "let's live [and] move on" probably isn't going to cut it if btctalk wants to stay relevant in the future...

[Kaligulax]

any changes is a positive changes.... and here are some interesting changes....
I hope it will contribute to forum growth...

[freedomno1]

Can't say if I like new rules or don't as I am newbie here and actually it doesn't matter, the rules have been changed. Let's live move on and we'll see how it is going to work. Btw like the idea of breaking users up into a group and it's cool you can see his status (Newbie, Jr Member etc)

Please understand that the request to re-open some form of "newbie approbation period" is nothing against *individual* newbies, or even against newbies per se. Also, you're not going to be put back into newbie hell  retroactively I'd say

The point is that, as a result of lifting the newbie restrictions, the forum became flooded with low quality posts -- or at least that's what's a large number of posters seem to believe. So "let's live [and] move on" probably isn't going to cut it if btctalk wants to stay relevant in the future...

To be honest its sort of like mainstream society slowly moving down the pendulum to lower intelligence

2010 - Satoshi and High Level Devs
2011 - Those who follow crytography and some users
2012- Rush of users steady inflow of business and financial individuals
2013 - Early 2013 Waves of adopters continuing from 2012 followed by later waves of adopters as the media starts pouncing on bitcoin guess around November see the posts starting to drop in average quality
2014 - Early adopters and since the removal of newbie hell a lot more uninformed users who just throw gun-ho questions around
The future is bleak indeed (As price rises for the rest of us and more people use it we will see the average users knowledge of technical aspects and quality posts dropping Tragedy of the Commons)

[hilariousandco]

Can't say if I like new rules or don't as I am newbie here and actually it doesn't matter, the rules have been changed. Let's live move on and we'll see how it is going to work. Btw like the idea of breaking users up into a group and it's cool you can see his status (Newbie, Jr Member etc)

Please understand that the request to re-open some form of "newbie approbation period" is nothing against *individual* newbies, or even against newbies per se. Also, you're not going to be put back into newbie hell  retroactively I'd say

The point is that, as a result of lifting the newbie restrictions, the forum became flooded with low quality posts -- or at least that's what's a large number of posters seem to believe. So "let's live [and] move on" probably isn't going to cut it if btctalk wants to stay relevant in the future...

To be honest its sort of like mainstream society slowly moving down the pendulum to lower intelligence

2010 - Satoshi and High Level Devs
2011 - Those who follow crytography and some users
2012- Rush of users steady inflow of business and financial individuals
2013 - Early 2013 Waves of adopters continuing from 2012 followed by later waves of adopters as the media starts pouncing on bitcoin guess around November see the posts starting to drop in average quality
2014 - Early adopters and since the removal of newbie hell a lot more uninformed users who just throw gun-ho questions around
The future is bleak indeed (As price rises for the rest of us and more people use it we will see the average users knowledge of technical aspects and quality posts dropping Tragedy of the Commons)

This is to be expected; it's just natural growth, but with a little snobbery thrown in. You can apply computers and the Internet and pretty much anything new to this as well. It's also like when one of your favourite obscure bands becomes big. On the forums you'll have the supposedly enlightened few 'early adopters' talking about how cool and superior they are whilst complaining that the band doesn't get the recognition they deserve and moaning that they're not more popular, then suddenly the band releases a hit single/album and become mainstrean and in come the influx of newbs and people start to dislike them for several reasons and then complain it was better before. Some valid, some not, but when anything becomes more popular it's going to draw in a lot of idiots, but you can't have it both ways.

[oda.krell]

I'm sure everyone in here knows about Eternal September, so the phenomenon is not exactly new.

Does that means all is hopeless, and the community is just destined to become useless because of signal-to-noise going to zero?

I personally (and not just me, but other users and some mods) think we  can battle it, at least to a degree...  in the sense that it might be helpful after all to ask from newly registered members to "prove" themselves for a short while in a separate forum, thus mitigating the effects of Eternal September a bit.

[Liam W]

I was looking for the user title info! Thanks

Quick suggestion, could you paginate the Patrol page? It loads really slow and is really long...

Thanks

Liam

[freedomno1]

I'm sure everyone in here knows about Eternal September, so the phenomenon is not exactly new.

Does that means all is hopeless, and the community is just destined to become useless because of signal-to-noise going to zero?

I personally (and not just me, but other users and some mods) think we  can battle it, at least to a degree...  in the sense that it might be helpful after all to ask from newly registered members to "prove" themselves for a short while in a separate forum, thus mitigating the effects of Eternal September a bit.

I was implying eternal September as well with some bad comes some good I do like the changes in the way signatures are advertised, so maybe we can battle it to a degree.

Anyways I was not implying they are all idiots or spam bots rather we have intelligent users and progressive users learning the ropes, anyone can learn over time and help to grow Bitcoin as the goal is always towards mainstream adoption, but there will always be bumps towards that goal ^^.

[stsbrad]

I think it was a good experiment. I also think it's run it's course and has failed. Respectfully request you reinstate the old methods. The forums are full of trash and scammers now.

[hilariousandco]

I think it was a good experiment. I also think it's run it's course and has failed. Respectfully request you reinstate the old methods. The forums are full of trash and scammers now.

Very much doubt brining back newbie jail will get rid of the trash and scammers. People who are determined to scam or spam will do so regardless of restrictions, but I agree it should be brought back.

[spooderman]

Really miss the stained ignore buttons.

[jzulli]

I'm a n00b to this forum, but I can see why you guys want to make it harder to spam. It's kind of a pain in the ass for me to use this site as as newbie, though; I'm still restricted to a post every 360 seconds. Curses!

[oda.krell]

I'm a n00b to this forum, but I can see why you guys want to make it harder to spam. It's kind of a pain in the ass for me to use this site as as newbie, though; I'm still restricted to a post every 360 seconds. Curses!

Yeah, I really think a 'post per time' limit like that is annoying, and probably not even helpful: in the speculation subforum, a number of aggressively dumb spammers manage to cause quite a lot of damage despite that limit (or maybe they're not newbies anymore).

I would really like the idea of a simplified 'approval' system: Newbies are at first restricted to post in a 'newbie' board, asking questions about the protocol, etc. and in general, showing that they can adhere to good form. Any user who is a member for 1 year or longer can go there and 'approve' a newly registered account .... by which I don't mean you should only be approved based on merit or super-smart posts, that would be too elitist/restrictive, but more on the *absence of total idiocy*.

A bit like how some of the Wikipedia projects have 'sighted' versions of articles: anyone can edit, but it takes an established account to confirm that an edit wasn't spam/trolling, and mark the article as 'sighted'. It's a really low-level form of approval, doesn't require much other than that you are *not* an idiot

[btcpay86]

many peoples ask me the rules, now i get it!

[honghaisea]

Wait, so you can get banned and come back again by paying a fee?

i  have the same  question

[BadBear]

You shouldn't, that's ban evasion, which only make things worse for you.