How can we stimulate Bitcoin Talk?

[OgNasty]

More community projects!

[vlad230]

I think BCT is moving away from the purpose it was created for. 

I see the focus has moved to discussing merit, forum features that won't ever get implemented, etc. rather than talking about bitcoin or the next big thing: altcoins.
I see the altcoins section as the new "wild west" where almost anything is possible but sadly a lot of people don't see them like this and they are missing out.

I think a good way to jump start BCT is to focus on bitcoin/altcoin related sections. Maybe try to weed out the spam which is killing the forum and focus less on other trivial issues.. 

[friends1980]

I think BCT is moving away from the purpose it was created for. 

I see the focus has moved to discussing merit, forum features that won't ever get implemented, etc. rather than talking about bitcoin or the next big thing: altcoins.
I see the altcoins section as the new "wild west" where almost anything is possible but sadly a lot of people don't see them like this and they are missing out.

I think a good way to jump start BCT is to focus on bitcoin/altcoin related sections. Maybe try to weed out the spam which is killing the forum and focus less on other trivial issues.. 

I agree. There's plenty of interesting topics but you have to hire a detective to find them in this forest of speculation threads, merit begging and robot spamming.

I've gotten used to it. I love this forum, I am here almost every day and after a hard day of work, it relaxes me to bash a bit of spammers first and then read a bit about my favorite coins.

[vlad230]

...
I've gotten used to it. I love this forum, I am here almost every day and after a hard day of work, it relaxes me to bash a bit of spammers first and then read a bit about my favorite coins.

Yeah, it's the same for me too. This place is great to be in the loop with what's going on with the coins you follow or want to buy/sell.

I remember a lot of people talking about investment opportunities and coins that are expected to go to the moon and why, but nowadays it seems like people are more concerned about making money though signature campaigns (and everything related to that like MeritTalk) and getting that $10/week rather than seeing the big picture, where the real money is at.

I'm not saying signature campaigns are bad but I think it should be regarded as indirect earnings in the sense that "If I'm still going to post, I may also get some free $$ in return." and not something you're posting for. I personally see it like this.

It's sad that this is where the forum is at right now.

[Direwolve735]

In addition to allowing to carry signatures to forum participants who have reached at least member status (as has been suggested already hundreds of times), I propose that newcomers be prohibited from writing posts everywhere except Beginners & Help and Local until they reach the Juniour member rank and the number of merits necessary for this.

Theymos has already said he will never bring back newbie jail which is essentially what you're suggesting, so you might as well forget about that and look at other ways to prevent abuse.

Sorry, I did forget about it.

In addition to this, I propose to establish an official time interval, which must be observed when writing new posts (for example, no more often than once in half an hour) and set a daily comment limit (not more than 7). Thus, we will protect the forum from those who scribble meaningless and endless posts every 5 minutes.

It also stops genuine users from making posts. Those that come here to abuse the system will just swap over to one of their 12-200 alt accounts whilst they wait. Abusers will always find a way to bypass the system whilst it puts off genuine users who can't be bothered jumping through all these hoops just to post or get an answer to a question.

I agree that those who break the rules will always be and it`s impossible to get rid of them. But we, as the bitcointalk community, can try to reduce their number. I understand why setting a time gap between posts will slow down true users and not definitively solve the shitposting and multiple accounts problem. But hardly any restrictions, even the most ingenious idea will help stop spammers once and for all. Similarly, we can`t set restrictions only for spammers, which will not affect genuine users at the same time. After all, even the merit system extends to all - both to bounty hunters, and to those who serve the true purpose of the bitcointalk forum.

I thought that we could complicate life for spammers by setting the minimum and maximum time for filling out the reply form. The essence of this proposal is that the server fixes the time of filling the response form. If the user has filled the form faster than for a certain time (required on average), then he is considered a bot or a spammer. The time set varies by the administrator depending on the complexity of the topic. At the same time, it causes suspicion if the form hasn`t been filled too long. In this case, the user can do copy-pasting from other sources of information or google-translation.

[hilariousetc]

I think BCT is moving away from the purpose it was created for.  

I see the focus has moved to discussing merit, forum features that won't ever get implemented, etc. rather than talking about bitcoin or the next big thing: altcoins.

The forum has moved away from its original purpose, but we are trying to find a compromise to meet somewhere in the middle and make the forum a better place in the process. People should be able to get paid to post, but they shouldn't be able to get paid to spam or copy and paste. The people who complain about merit do so because it effects their ability to get paid to post and that is a good thing, but I think we need to go further with it. You already need merit to be a Member and every other rank after it in increasing proportions. This requirement should also extend to Juniors because that rank is now being exploited because it's the only one you can earn from without any merit. The merit system works in that it stops the vast majority of spammers being able to rank up past Member, but does nothing for Juniors and people are now exploiting that and farming or botting Juniors to do the abuse instead.

I think a good way to jump start BCT is to focus on bitcoin/altcoin related sections. Maybe try to weed out the spam which is killing the forum and focus less on other trivial issues..  

Isn't that exactly what we're doing? Numerous ideas have been suggested to help clean up the forum but we now just need theymos to implement them. Removing signatures from lower ranks, requiring merit to become a Junior and punishing badly run signature campaigns seem to be the most popular and easiest to implement and would have a drastic effect on both the spam and culture here.

I understand why setting a time gap between posts will slow down true users and not definitively solve the shitposting and multiple accounts problem.

I thought that we could complicate life for spammers by setting the minimum and maximum time for filling out the reply form.

We already have the six minute waiting time between posts for newbies, which can be extremely annoying. I dare say it actually turns a lot of users away, but the people who are determined to earn here will grin and bare it. We need to make suggestions that don't effect or annoy people who just want to post here so they don't leave, and the compromise isn't always that easy to be found. Removing signatures from lower ranks or requiring merit for Juniors doesn't effect anyone's ability to post here nor does punishing ICO campaigns and that's why I'm strongly pushing for them.

[Welsh]

I remember a lot of people talking about investment opportunities and coins that are expected to go to the moon and why, but nowadays it seems like people are more concerned about making money though signature campaigns (and everything related to that like MeritTalk) and getting that $10/week rather than seeing the big picture, where the real money is at.

Its because its easy too do. Where as identifying good projects to invest in or trading via Bitcoin is difficult. Signature campaigns are literally paying you to post anything. Literally anything. The standards over in the bounty section in particular are woeful. Its much more than 10 dollars a week though, and a lot of them are likely abusing it with multiple accounts. The bounty managers don't usually care.
The thing is a lot of users here live in not so well off countries, and can actually earn a decent wage off of signature campaigns. I don't blame them for doing it, but you would think they would at least put some effort in considering its literally a wage to them.

[hilariousetc]

I don't blame them for doing it, but you would think they would at least put some effort in considering its literally a wage to them.

Why would they bother doing more work when they don't need to? Imagine going to work where the boss was never there and would pay you at the end of the month regardless of the quality of work that was done just as long as you met the deadlines of when it needed to be in. You wouldn't bother going above and beyond because there's no point putting in the extra work because as long as you meet the minimum requirements you'll get paid regardless. That's exactly what's wrong with the culture here. Why would anyone actually bother contributing to discussions and with anything in depth when a one liner will get them paid the same. Time is money when you're a bounty hunter or farmer so they're not going to bother writing a paragraph when they can break that paragraph into five sentences and post it over their five accounts and get paid x5. With Juniors being able to be farmed or botted merely with 30 posts over a couple of activity periods this just leads them to abuse campaigns in such a way because they need to do that in order to be able to earn a substantial amount. That needs to change. Get rid of signatures for Newbies and Juniors and let them earn ten merit before they can earn by posting (or purchase a Copper Membership).

[Jet Cash]

I understand that this forum is called Bitcoin Talk, and therefore the primary focus should be on Bitcoin. However, Bitcoin has been so successful that it has spawned a massive change in world economies. I would like to see BT take advantage of Bitcoin's success, and expand into these new areas. In my opinion, Bitcoin is moving away from a basic payment system, and is becoming more of a store of wealth, and an asset base for secondary services.  Bitcoin Talk already has the board structure to support this, and I suspect that Theymos saw the potential, and wants to support it.

This expansion has created two problems. The rise of scam alt coins as fraudsters try to cash in on the crypto euphoria. The possibility for no-knowledge school kids to make generic comments to attempt to earn payments from the scammers' campaigns. The difference that Flying Hellfish has made in the Political chat shows that it is possible to move towards a new forum identity. We can help by supporting him, and also expanding the serious discussion and Ivory Tower boards

[Welsh]

Maybe I'm expecting too much from people, but if I were earning a living from something so easy to do then I would want to keep that job, and do my best at it. I 100% agree with putting restrictions on signatures though. Its way too easy to just create another account once they're account has been banned or whatever

[hilariousetc]

Maybe I'm expecting too much from people, but if I were earning a living from something so easy to do then I would want to keep that job, and do my best at it. I 100% agree with putting restrictions on signatures though. Its way too easy to just create another account once they're account has been banned or whatever

Well we are probably the exception. For as long as I've been here I've never taken signature campaigns for granted. People used to complain that I was 'spamming' merely because I was making a lot of posts (many more than I do these days), but I was never banned despite numerous people requesting so, and I always made sure to put a lot of thought and effort into them. I still do now, maybe even more so. I know I don't need to write a paragraph or quote multiple people in the same post or write as much as I do even on Chipmixer. I know I could get away with just writing a short paragraph or even just two sentences or so, but I don't. You've also got to remember we are native British English-speaking people who have at least an above average understanding of bitcoin. It's a sad fact that many of the new people who sign up here these days do so just to earn and have probably only heard of bitcoin via someone telling them that they can earn here merely by posting. Now, imagine if you're an Asian schoolkid who doesn't have much money, can't speak English very well and knows little to nothing about bitcoin and cares just as much about it. That's a recipe for disaster, but they need to get paid and this is their best opportunity to earn online, so they either force out a sentence or two of largely hollow nonsense, or copy and paste someone else's post and that's all they need to do when campaigns will pay them for it. When there's no repercussions both for making low quality posts and those that pay them to do so nothing is going to change and in fact things will just get worse because they realise they can get away with it. Some users posts will in fact just get sloppier and sloppier as time goes on especially when they start creating more accounts to maximise profits. If more users started getting bans for sloppy posts and campaigns started getting them for paying users to make them things would change. If every campaign were run properly like Chipmixer then the forum would clean itself up rather quickly because spammers wouldn't be able to get on a campaign at all, so they would be forced to up their game or languish forever. That's why we need some standards or regulations on how campaigns can operate here. It can't be acceptable to do nothing about all about spammers and until there's punishments for that they will continue to be both lazy and greedy.

The difference that Flying Hellfish has made in the Political chat shows that it is possible to move towards a new forum identity. We can help by supporting him, and also expanding the serious discussion and Ivory Tower boards

Things can change, but not without more manpower being thrown at it. Theymos says money isn't an issue so we can hire more mods to help with this. We could have a team of mods set up just to police ICO campaigns or deal with sig spam. We also need to delegate workload between staff. The need for more admins aside, either new or current staff could be assigned to certain sub boards like Bitcoin Discussion and they can then dedicate their time to cleaning up their own subs up. I've been saying for years that Bitcoin Discussion needs it's own dedicated mod (or even two). They can then trash crap threads on sight and that place will become a lot more usable in the process. These are simple fixes that will benefit the quality of content here remarkably.

[Ferrytale1]

I suggest opening more threads which are a little away from the everyday cryptocurrency discussions.
And also carefully moderating it, so it doesn't slip away as most of the threads in here.

[Direwolve735]

I don't blame them for doing it, but you would think they would at least put some effort in considering its literally a wage to them.

 Get rid of signatures for Newbies and Juniors and let them earn ten merit before they can earn by posting (or purchase a Copper Membership).

I agree that we need to enter restrictions for Newbies and Juniors` participating in signature campaigns. But beyond that, I also propose to prohibit them from becoming bounty campaign managers. Now there are more and more campaigns, especially in the Altcoin section, where managers are users with the Junior or even Newbie rank. I never understood how this could be and eschewed such campaigns, because they could often be a scam. For me it isn`t clear how a person with an activity of 12, who has been on the forum for only a few days, can claim himself as a signature campaign manager. This is a huge responsibility, a job that requires an understanding of the topic, experience and awareness. But such managers don`t care about their reputation, nor about the reputation of the campaign, nor about the quality of the work performed by the participants. Beginners on the forum should first understand the topic and gain respect from other forum participants. Not take up work that they don`t understand, and as a result can`t perform well. Inexperienced and indifferent managers add to the spreadsheet the same inexperienced and indifferent participants who spam and write shitposts.

[hilariousetc]

I agree that we need to enter restrictions for Newbies and Juniors` participating in signature campaigns. But beyond that, I also propose to prohibit them from becoming bounty campaign managers. Now there are more and more campaigns, especially in the Altcoin section, where managers are users with the Junior or even Newbie rank. I never understood how this could be and eschewed such campaigns, because they could often be a scam. For me it isn`t clear how a person with an activity of 12, who has been on the forum for only a few days, can claim himself as a signature campaign manager. This is a huge responsibility, a job that requires an understanding of the topic, experience and awareness. But such managers don`t care about their reputation, nor about the reputation of the campaign, nor about the quality of the work performed by the participants. Beginners on the forum should first understand the topic and gain respect from other forum participants. Not take up work that they don`t understand, and as a result can`t perform well. Inexperienced and indifferent managers add to the spreadsheet the same inexperienced and indifferent participants who spam and write shitposts.

Well there's not much you can do to enforce this. I wouldn't really be against people having to hire someone trusted or experienced to run campaigns, but then that becomes an issue of who gets to be trusted especially if you never allow new people. Existing campaign managers would then have a monopoly over running them. How do you decide who gets to run them or not as well? Rank? People could then just buy an account. Zapo is a new campaign manager and he's a rarity in that he actually does what he's supposed to and doesn't accept shitposters and those without merit. Should he not be able to run campaigns because he hasn't had any previous experience even though he's doing a better job than some of the current 'experienced' managers here? What happens if you're a new company but have a trusted member of staff who is prepared to run them efficiently but they would still be a newbie here? Should we be forcing them to hire someone just because they don't have a high rank or activity? I would rather just let people run campaigns, but if they clearly don't know what they're doing then they should be warned and then face punishments if appropriate. That to me seems the most sensible way to tackle it, but the problem is the issue isn't being tackled at all right now and anyone can run a campaign as bad as they want with absolutely no repercussions at all and that's something that needs to change.

[NavI_027]

The only way to get a decent conversation is to talk about difficult topics

Yup! This is also the way I found to escape the boredom and robot-feeling I experienced everyday inside our forum. I frequently get tired of dealing with the repetitive and nonsense posts from the most visited boards, so as a relief, I'm now becoming more active engaging with discussions like this because I know that it's worthier of my time and effort. Tbough I know that posting here in Meta as well as to the other serious boards were very hard, I never settle for less and always do my very best to be a competitive member or at least not becoming a cancer of this forum.

The difficulty here challenges me a lot. It makes me feel alive .

Indeed, roaming around in Developmental and Technical Discussion really gives me a headache

You are still considered lucky dude, because in my case, I'm a MORON when it comes to those matters lol . But I'm looking forward that someday I will be able to participate on those kind of discussions too right after I become more knowledgeable.

[Jet Cash]

I seem to have killed my other thread with this post. Is it worth starting threads like these? They are just three that werer the first that I thought of, and they were intended to illustrate that there are lods of topics that can be started.

The Bitcoin/crypto world is so vibrant at the moment, that there are numerous topics that could be started. I'll start three now, and I'll post the links here as I do them. I'd be grateful for comments on their suitability as a guide for my posting in the future.

The impact of Schnorr signatures on the beginners board. The idea is to try to get them to perform a bit of research, and to improve their understanding of Bitcoin.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5000900.

Should Bitcoin mining be legal in Venezuela? posted in politics.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5000912.0

Will privacy and merchant adoption fuel the next price rise? posted in discussion as an experiment.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5000942.0

[vlad230]

Isn't that exactly what we're doing? Numerous ideas have been suggested to help clean up the forum but we now just need theymos to implement them. Removing signatures from lower ranks, requiring merit to become a Junior and punishing badly run signature campaigns seem to be the most popular and easiest to implement and would have a drastic effect on both the spam and culture here.

I think drastic measures are needed in order to stop the spam that is infesting this forum.

Like I said in an earlier post on a different thread, you need to tackle the root cause and not the effect. So, campaign managers need to be investigated if they paid spammers or not.

I don't disagree with the idea to have merit in place in order to reach Jr. Member rank but please keep in mind that there are a lot of accounts of any rank already (including Legendary), that are spamming this forum and getting paid for it.

Well there's not much you can do to enforce this. I wouldn't really be against people having to hire someone trusted or experienced to run campaigns, but then that becomes an issue of who gets to be trusted especially if you never allow new people. Existing campaign managers would then have a monopoly over running them. How do you decide who gets to run them or not as well? Rank? People could then just buy an account. Zapo is a new campaign manager and he's a rarity in that he actually does what he's supposed to and doesn't accept shitposters and those without merit. Should he not be able to run campaigns because he hasn't had any previous experience even though he's doing a better job than some of the current 'experienced' managers here? What happens if you're a new company but have a trusted member of staff who is prepared to run them efficiently but they would still be a newbie here? Should we be forcing them to hire someone just because they don't have a high rank or activity? I would rather just let people run campaigns, but if they clearly don't know what they're doing then they should be warned and then face punishments if appropriate. That to me seems the most sensible way to tackle it, but the problem is the issue isn't being tackled at all right now and anyone can run a campaign as bad as they want with absolutely no repercussions at all and that's something that needs to change.

Yes, you are right, there are members like Zapo who is running the IOU campaign like a PRO and it wouldn't be fair to restrict users from being able to be campaign managers but if there is no time from mods to check the activity of campaign managers, I would be OK with a limited list of campaign managers approved by administration. I think the grater good aka "no spam" would be more beneficial to the members here.

Anyways, the bigger problem is not really the people managing the campaigns from the Bitcoin Services section but the bounty campaigns you see in the altcoin boards...
If you take a look at their sig campaign requirements it's plain ridiculous. Not to mention they are paying members in "stakes" and after 3 months the payment might not even happen at all, essentially spamming the forum for free...  

[Joel_Jantsen]

I don't think this will ever happen. When I think about respectable forums, I think about forums with many interested experts. When I think about Bitcointalk, I think about a shitload of spammers who are only here to earn money.

Even the most notorious forum's like HackForum where newbies are cyber-bullied are better in terms of content and quality posts than bitcointalk. One reason could be, most of the power in the forum is given to people who are not technically aware of bitcoin. It's a bitcoin forum, the only people added to the DT, Mod and other staff should be bitcoin experts. I'm not even surprised most of the Merits are distributed in the forum's Meta section which is sad. Technically speaking, the Meta section is the least informative section in the context of bitcoin/blockchain in general. It's so not fair to the bitcoin forum that people find quality in something that isn't related to bitcoins.
 

It's not that informed discussions don't exist, it's just a very small fraction, which makes them hard to find. I'll keep doing what I always do: report the bad stuff, merit the good stuff.

The fraction of people who are technically/logically strong to create or talk on informative sections is very low. Even if they're around, they don't participate in the discussions.

[DooMAD]

No doubt it's partly the issue of shitposters, but I'm also noticing a bit of a lull in newsworthy content to discuss lately.  Just about everything in the media is either "Price", "ETF" or "ICO".  All the least interesting aspects of crypto.  I have little to no interest in talking about any of that, other than perhaps pointing out how inane and boring it is.  I'm hoping this is just temporary and we'll have some better topics to discuss when something new and interesting actually occurs.

[cryptohunter]

Several members have stated in private conversations with me that BT is getting boring. I must admit that I sometimes have trouble stimulating interest, or finding topics where I can contribute. The world is in economic turmoil with various economies on the brink of failure. Alongside this, established and new crypto-currencies and digital banking methods are gaining in popularity and strength. One would expect Bitcoin Talk to be humming at the centre of this revolution. How can we stimulate informed discussions, and help BT to grow away from its current emphasis on the crypto underworld, and gain a place in the respectable financial world?

I've started an initiative to award merits on a different board each day for a week or so, and I'm starting with the political board. Is there a better use for my sMerit awarding time?

The problem is finding threads with posters not posting repetitive nonsense  to earn a few bucks.

No sigs, at all for anyone under hero and any heros and legends found to be posting blatant nonsense get bumped down a level

Junior boards for any one under full member.

You would see the main boards start to flourish.

Hell if that sounds unfair just remove sigs for everyone. You still need the junior boards though because noobs have no issue asking the same questions over and over on new threads and saturating the main boards. Hence finding an interesting thread with some incentive to reply on is almost impossible. This applies to the alt boards far more than than the btc.

Then rather than feeling negative about reporting spam and endless shilling we can feel positive about going to the junior boards now and then to merit those making efforts to contribute or learn for real.