Giveaway threads are not allowed

[KeyserSozeMC]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=435204.0

[kalus]

...Either remove alts from the forum or let people do their own stuff.

Thats the next plan if this doesn't help.

Stop being such a gangster.

''before the whole alt currencies section gets deleted'' <= Wont happen, ever. Capone.
It's staff's mistake, not people's mistake. They could make a new sub-forum AGES ago, instead of closing threads.
Most of the admins/mods are lazy, bored to move their little finger. That's what happens....

Could be as soon as today if I can't get things straightened up.

You would be surprised by how many reports the Alt Currency section generates per day, far more than the rest of the entire forum combined. I'd say about 200-300 on a non busy day, but I've seen 1,000+ on heavy traffic days. At 30 seconds to finish an action on reports that dont involve reading a page of context to decide a report's validity, you are looking at a minimum of an hour and a half worth of Alt Coin reports to deal with, thats like on a Sunday when there isn't much traffic.

managing a large forum is a thankless job, so a big thanks for this.  

I appreciate the altcoin forums being hosted here as it got me into scrypt mining in the first place.  however long they stay here, i'm happy to read and participate.

However, the conduct and signal:noise is completely different in the altcoin subfora than the rest of the site.  The useless crap that's spewing out of this forum means i can't even read the altcoin forum anymore for information, which is why i came here in the first place.  I can only imagine what users that have been here for years think about the shitty spam-spewing altcoin forum, or the shitty users that inhabit it (like me!)

lots of people in this thread should check whatever entitlement they think they have at the door.   This forum has close to a quarter million members, and anybody that thinks admins that run this site are lazy or bored has lost the plot.  

[drakoin]

Lawmaker:
Reasons:
Pro-giveaways:
Ideas, solutiontalk
the whole altcoin section causes problems

I am very happy.
It's always fascinating to see a self-reflecting system trying to change itself.
And I am optimistic, afterwards will be better than before.


A few thoughts about possible improvements.  What about:

• Hiring people to clean up subsections - there are lots of newbies who would like to work for cryptocurrencies, and if any place then it is this here which is full of money to finance jobs.
  
  
• Acknowledging that it's the need for money which encourages to ask for donations, and participate in give-aways.
  
  
• Improving the search function?  I found the built-in one to be rather useless, because it's time locked. No way of making a search incrementally better. But a solution came quick, I have gotten used to using google with site:bitcointalk.org.  But still, better search functions will help a lot. Why not have a search where I can exclude whole branches of the subtopic trees from my results, and save that as one of my default searches?
  
  
• Giveaways create too much garbage here, yes. But if we solve that, they do something positive - they invite to try and download a new software. It's more than "download, install, make address, post, hope, sell". If I like a certain variant of the wallet, it binds me to that currency. It gives programmers the chance to have a few hundred testers within a day. It actually accelerates the evolutionary process.
  
  
• Answers to giveaway calls ... only by PM. Now that the trouble is named, it's so easy to see. Why at all put wallet addresses into an open forum discussion, I can send them by PM to the OP. More privacy, too.
  
  
• Introducing a new button "Downvote / I-judge-this-as-spam / Don't want to see this", which increments a counter, and above a certain threshold, a human has a look a the posting.
  
  
• A bounty for programming a stand-alone give-away website, where all give-aways can happen. In bitcointalk.org only one link needs to be posted.
  
• Crowdbounty funding until someone says "yes, I do it, I built that". Can't be too difficult. Please donate 3% of your profits to me and my projects, and you can take this idea :-)
  
  
• Until that website is ready, trying out if a giveaway sub-subsection will save the day. Of course, remove that from the "what's new" stream.
  
  
• Removing certain subforums completely from the main "what's new" stream. Whenever any subforum gets too active, it will always annoy the rest. Make another "What's New in Altcoins" news stream.
  
  
• A separate Newbie section in altcoins?  Newbies would graduate into being able to post in altcoins, but still not yet in other subforums, until they develop a respect for the rest of the larger world outside those crazy coin starts.
  
  
• Acknowledging, that altcoins ARE a gamechanger, already. Evolution.
  
  

Please don't shoot the messenger, those ideas are not perfect, I am just brainstorming ...


Enjoy whatever you do. Bon appetit.

And: Happy mining!
(click)


P.S.: This discussion has already found a lot of viewpoints and angles onto the problem at hand, and I don't want to add much more to it, just one observation: The Four Agreements could help.  The level of anger, resentment, hatred, insults, allegations, assumptions, accusations, complaints, fraud ... and what-have-you ... is quite shocking for a newbie.  I have entered this forum here only 2 months ago, and I am mainly in the altcoin section.
Man, I have seen darkness since then, it's quite incredible.  You learn to ignore and overlook a lot.  But still, it's very ugly.  Why why why?
Is it because ... what money means for (some) humans?   My question: Is this aggression a special aspect of the altcoin subforum, or is it a general problem in bitcointalk?

.

[Bigeyeone]

It is pretty obvious the mods are overwhelmed with all the posts here in the altcoin section, but if you have 5 mods or something that have to mod 5000 people that is obviously not going to work.

so they basically have 3 options.

1 = more mods, so there can be more effective moderation, dealing with the ever growing number of posters and post.
2 = try to limit the number of posts by banning certain posts.
3 = create an unmoderated forum section , called wasteland or something, where folks can spam all they like and focus moderating on the other forums.

Looks to me the handfull of mods here have lost control, because the forum just became too busy and now they are hitting the emergency breaks, even considering banning alt-coins all together, well. It is their site and they can do with it whatever they like of course, we are just guests, but right now this forum is the epi-center of the entire cryptocurrency world and I'm pretty sure if they get rid of alt-coins it wont stay this way and this forum will just became one of many little places where folks talk about bitcoin. So basically they will just remove themselves from the market. It is like if a big retailer would say, it is just getting too busy in our shop, we cant handle all the customers, we dont have enough staff, from now on we just going to sell one brand , so it is not as crowed in our store anymore.  

[rnp]

I think eradicating them from the Announcement section made sense. It was crazy. I participated, and it was even fun to a point, but crazy.

I was even one asking in meta about trying to sort through threads.

I think adding a sub-forum makes the most sense. Just label it "here there go dragons" and disable the report button there. Don't offer support or mediation. You still get the traffic.

Or dump altcoin altogether and linking offsite to someone willing to put up with it.

It will be funny if enough enemies are made that an altcoin (is Lightcoin considered an AltCoin?) overtakes BitCoin.

Don't be a Whig, LaserDisc, BetaMAX or RIPScript (challenge: which references do you get?) in this political battle. You had almost worthless coins noone respected once.

In the end it's your site, and as big as it is, your power to wield.

Just try to be a little more diplomatic.

And anyone claiming free speech, free market or unfair as an excuse for saying this isn't right misses the point of all three.

Those complaining about AltCoin spam probably look at unread threads forum-wide or something like that (I do). Everything on that page was giveaways.

Hopefully your new forum software addresses things like this so people can put blinders on forums. After all, not everyone cares about politics either.

Just my 2¢

[qiwoman]

I just noticed now all the threads being closed. I think it would be nice just to have a giveaways section so it would make the forum more tidy as opposed to banning them as many of us wouldn't get to know of all the coins and the giveaways are incentives for peeps like me who don't mine to get the word out on our social sites for the new coins as we never know what coin will last the whole hog and it is a bit of fun too. Just my 2 bit.

[matthona]

I just noticed now all the threads being closed. I think it would be nice just to have a giveaways section so it would make the forum more tidy as opposed to banning them as many of us wouldn't get to know of all the coins and the giveaways are incentives for peeps like me who don't mine to get the word out on our social sites for the new coins as we never know what coin will last the whole hog and it is a bit of fun too. Just my 2 bit.

it seems pretty obvious that the 'some people' that are complaining about it are heavily invested in BTC, and with the slump in BTC price the last couple months, I would imagine they are blaming it on so called 'shitcoins' (their word for them, not mine) that are catching the attention of new investors - thus SEEMINGLY hurting BTC value, most of realize that new coins that draw more and more people to cryptocoins helps everyone, but a very loud few are only worried about their precious BTC price... all the while slinging mud and saying that new coin devs are only here to pump and dump their own coins... it's f'ing ironic isn't it??

[ltcifc]

This sucks. Everybody should have a chance for free coins.

[moriartypants]

I just noticed now all the threads being closed. I think it would be nice just to have a giveaways section so it would make the forum more tidy as opposed to banning them as many of us wouldn't get to know of all the coins and the giveaways are incentives for peeps like me who don't mine to get the word out on our social sites for the new coins as we never know what coin will last the whole hog and it is a bit of fun too. Just my 2 bit.

+1    A separate section  (That doesn't contribute to post count) would be a good solution.

I actually do agree that having the altcurrency section cluttered with giveaways was kind of dumb.

[KingGoon]

Love it  thnx

[instacalm]

Just create a subforum for giveaway threads

[Dilapidated]

While I'll agree that the altcoin subforum needs to be more organized, I think this is completely the wrong way to go about doing it. I also think the "get over it" attitude will further inflame the situation and push many users to competing forums. It's to be expected after allowing giveaways for so long then locking/banning users on such short notice. I can't help but think this could have been handled a lot better. From my understanding the altcoin section was added due to that fact it caused spam within the main forum. To combat this the altcoin subforum was born. Why not do the same now, why can't we create a subforum for giveaways to tiddy up things? Wouldn't that be easier than upsetting users or driving them to other forums? If you're afraid it will just cause the new subforum to be spammed then why was an altcoin subforum created in the first place? Besides to remedy the spam of course? The only other thing I can think of is because it increased traffic. Wouldn't this be the exact same reasons to create a subforum just for giveaways? I personally could live with or without giveaways but I feel like this is a little extreme. At the very least why not let the community vote and decide?

[BadBear]

At the very least why not let the community vote and decide?

Vote? Reminds me of a quote I read on a gun forum I frequent.

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch."

[KeyserSozeMC]

At the very least why not let the community vote and decide?

Vote? Reminds me of a quote I read on a gun forum I frequent.

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch."

wtf

all I've seen from you are attempts to troll and show that you're above everyone.

People make this forum, not wannabe trolls with mod status

[Chris001]

Please don't ban me for saying this but...

Bitcointalk.org just jumped the shark IMO

anytime you turn things away because they are "not good enough" you will lose in the end.

For clarity, I love bitcointalk.org, and it should be proud to have helped spawn "altcoins". (no matter how bad some are)

To say, "this is BITCOIN" and youre lucky we didn't ban Altcoins isn't very wise at all. Think big picture.

Altcoins don't hurt Bitcoin, until you pit it against them.

Just remember, you heard it here first

And don't say this is about spam, just don't. You were honest the first time

[BadBear]

At the very least why not let the community vote and decide?

Vote? Reminds me of a quote I read on a gun forum I frequent.

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch."

wtf

all I've seen from you are attempts to troll and show that you're above everyone.

People make this forum, not wannabe trolls with mod status

Just trying to make the point that voting is a terrible way of deciding things. If you just wanna call me a troll then knock yourself out, been called worse , but at least make another thread for it.  

[Chris001]

At the very least why not let the community vote and decide?

Vote? Reminds me of a quote I read on a gun forum I frequent.

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch."

Jeez, where are you from? I don't always think votes are the best in some situations, but damn thats a horrible quote

[luckyguy2807]

OOh, Sorry I didn't know that Giveaways are not available anymore.
Is there a specific section of this forum where we are allowed to make giveaways?

[Amph]

Are giveaways as part of an announcement-thread still allowed?

No, it promotes spam, it's detrimental to actual discussion, and brings nothing at all of value to the forum. It's never been allowed on the forum in general, they are restricted to games and rounds. Alt currencies was different because there was no games and rounds/giveaway forum. I've thought about this as well but didn't care enough to do anything about it, but since theymos did, I support it fully. Y'all need to stop spamming the forum before the whole alt currencies section gets deleted, it's getting to be more trouble than it's worth. I liked the alt currencies section once upon a time, but it's completely and utterly worthless at the moment because of all the spam.

TLDR If your announcement thread has a giveaway in it, it will be locked.

what about premine coin? it's all about giveaway lol

[Chris001]

Let's see here.

Giveaways are the first thing someone new to cryptos go to. They like to see an actual coin go into their wallet. It's a new concept to them and they want to test it.

Then they get some free coins, and then they want to buy a coin they choose.

Now, no matter what coin they choose, guess which coin they have to buy???


DING DING

BITCOIN!!!


I see that happydays episode now. wow. and not a DOGE wow

But a real WOW!!