I've been looking at the posters in some old threads

[JetAid]

I've been doing some searching, and quite a few threads from 2016 are popping up. Some of the posters have made some great and helpful replies. The sad thing is that they seem to have stopped posting in 2016. I wonder if there is a way to draw them back to Bitcoin Talk. Perhaps we could mention the forum on some other sites. If we could persuade them to return to posting here, it would help to improve the forum in my opinion.

[petyang12]

This is a good idea, the forum users who stopped posting in 2016 might return to bitcointalk and many more will join. I think there are more people who's not in crypto yet. Mentioning bitcointalk forum is like promoting bitcointalk to another sites.

[Coyster]

I really do not see how this idea could be implemented,this forum is the biggest bitcoin community in the world and any user who has deserted the forum for any reason whatsoever doesn't need to be convinced to return..

There could be reasons why a poster hasn't been posting since "2016",it's either the account has been hacked,the user lost interest in the bitcoin or probably the user is dead..
How do we get such users back based on the aforementioned...

This forum is also surrounded by more than enough quality posters who contribute immensely to the development of the forum,thats not to say we do not have shitposters/plagiarists/copy/pasters who infiltrate the forum with low quality..
But the quality posters we sure do have are more than enough,we do not need to convince anyone to return

[OgNasty]

A lot of toxic members joined the community around that period. Many of them started attacking established members to try and make a name for themselves. As a result, many respected users left. If this is a trend we want to change, we as a community cannot continue to look the other way while users call each other names and continue to behave like children.

TL;DR
As soon as members of this forum started getting away with behaving unprofessionally, the professionals left.

[gentlemand]

I can easily imagine plenty of people got pretty burnt out with Bitcoin. Even if you were doing well out of it, you only have so much attention to give it per day. I can imagine many people either left out of boredom, despair or disgust at the state of this forum. Can anyone claim it's a more enticing place than it was in 2016?

Hopefully the more recent crop of posters will mature into equally worthwhile members.

[Onuohakk]

There could be a possibility of them being banned or probably had lost there login details but it still up for a debate. You are right to say that there impact is and might continue to be missed but we are surrounded by great posters as well the circle still goes on.
It's sad I missed the above individuals you mentioned but Personally I have been impacted by some great posters(would not be ethical to mention names) and the forum at large.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Some of the posters have made some great and helpful replies. The sad thing is that they seem to have stopped posting in 2016.

Do you have any specific examples of members you're thinking of?  I don't disagree, but I know there are members like minifrij, rizzlarolla, and a couple others whose names I can't remember who don't post here anymore.

<snip>
As soon as members of this forum started getting away with behaving unprofessionally, the professionals left.

It's amazing how you see the problem so differently.  I think a lot of people stopped posting here once the forum started to become overrun with shitposters from signature campaigns, but that had started before 2016.  Once that happened, it became apparent that most threads weren't real discussions at all, but a collection of boring, generic statements that were usually just in response to a thread's title.

I don't think any power-hungry status-seekers drove any members away (or at least not in any great numbers) in 2016, but I'd be interested to know what examples you're thinking of.  And as you well know, scams haven't ever been moderated here, so I imagine there's always been people acting unprofessionally.

[krishnaverma]

I've been doing some searching, and quite a few threads from 2016 are popping up. Some of the posters have made some great and helpful replies. The sad thing is that they seem to have stopped posting in 2016. I wonder if there is a way to draw them back to Bitcoin Talk. Perhaps we could mention the forum on some other sites. If we could persuade them to return to posting here, it would help to improve the forum in my opinion.

One of the ways is to send them a pm using the forum itself.Forum admin might be able to automate this but I do not think that it will give the desired results.

Focus should be on attracting users that are genuinely interested in crypto currently.

[Marshall14]

While this is a Good idea, and the fact that the forum misses some quality posters from back then,its not really like I was here then,but with what I've heard of how the forum used to be, I think they are definitely missed....
It'll be nice tryna get them back posting on this forum,but we really do not know the reason why they stopped posting,so it's really going to be difficult convincing them to return,probably they've lost interest in this platform

[vit05]

I think some users left because they were interested in other projects. Although altcoins are a very important part of the ecosystem, and the most important projects were born in the forum, sections related to altcoins are impossible to be used nowadays. Others left during the civil wars of the Bitcoin that took place.

And the forum has also not been modernized to attract or keep users who like to debate. There were several other forums about hobbies that were used a lot 2 years ago and are disappearing. Mobile ate the world. And there are far more practical apps to use to discuss things than forums.

So, I believe that fixing some things that are wrong on the forum could be more important than calling people back without changing anything.

[Jet Cash]

sections related to altcoins are impossible to be used nowadays.

Well there is a crunch issue. As Bitcoin moves away from being an aspiring payment system, and becomes a wealth preservation and transfer system, the alt coins will rise as payment systems. Reputable financial services won't want to appear on the current alt boards, and will need to distance themselves from scammers and bounty hunters.

Financial advisers won't want to be associated with the current spamfests here either. For Bitcoin to take a major place in the new global economies, it will need to be able to enter into believable discussions about wealth protection and financial planning.  You can't do that with threads infested with ill informed one line posts by the hunters for rank upgrades. It is also important to persuade members from the emerging economies to discuss the financial systems in their countries.

[Direwolve735]

Perhaps we could mention the forum on some other sites.

Bitcointalk is the most famous cryptocurrency website. Everyone who knows at least something about digital money knows about this platform. I don`t think that the forum needs additional advertising. The only way to entice new and "old" users is to improve the quality of deliberation, discuss relevant and interesting issues in the cryptocurrency sphere.

[HODL2090]

A lot of toxic members joined the community around that period. Many of them started attacking established members to try and make a name for themselves. As a result, many respected users left. If this is a trend we want to change, we as a community cannot continue to look the other way while users call each other names and continue to behave like children.

TL;DR
As soon as members of this forum started getting away with behaving unprofessionally, the professionals left.

Maybe we could have this rule enforced to discourage the use of abusive and demeaning words

3. No trolling.

Majority of the rules on bitcointalk seem to have no penalty whatsoever, except that members are discouraged from violating them.

If we could have a temporary mute option for breaking some minor rules (the ban word seems a bit heavy, even a temporary one)
This could encourage more positive and healthy conversatios on the forum.

[cryptohunter]

dinofelis, smooth, anonymint, bcx

Great posters in many ways.

I can not say before 2013 but these and some others were very nice to observe. All were capable of excellent thought experiments on nearly anything. I liked watching any weak point in a debate getting tested to the max. I liked to  watch them interact and reach a consensus on things where you could see how they had all contributed to the agreed optimal answer/solution/concept.

dinofelis was very tactful and extremely humble considering his very fine mind. His arguments were rock solid.
smooth was also mostly diplomatic but also a destroyer of weak arguments with little mercy -
anonymint -  he was my fav poster for various reasons  he brought the most action from other great posters and I thought his writing style was like getting free english lessons ( you can tell I need them). His arguments on non technical matters (since his other stuff was over my head) were excellent, well thought out and very robust. He also correctly predicted a lot of movements and outcomes for free on board which you could benefit from. He openly analysed new designs and gave those out for free.
bcx - he was mostly before my time but an exciting person to read and could provide some great entertainment. He reminded me of anonymint in some ways. I never found any great interaction between them both which could have been really fun.

when there was interaction between these and other great posters it was so much fun to read and learn as much as you could

Some of the best posters you may not even really like ( there are some other great posters i dont really like)but that does not stop them being a fantastic read and a real education on how to structure and plan your argument or form a very robust opinion on things.

I suspect a lot of excellent minds are more absorbed by technical matters and don't tend to spend time posting much.

Depends what you like to read. I also like just the friendly chitchat in communities by helpful posters and such.

I don't see any of them returning soon. But I hope I am wrong.


@HODL2090

You need to be careful with this. Freedom of expression (not hate) is not something we should suffocate.

Needless mindless abuse with no logical justification and that is continuous when they bring nothing else to the board then yes they should get a warning then if no change a temp/perm ban.

However personally I don't mind 2 people blowing off steam in a well structured argument with a sprinkling of bad language if they feel it is justified. Swearing of course makes you look less professional and less in control but in certain cases nothing sums up a scamming shit bag than exactly that.

You are asking humans not to act in a naturally human way. This will take huge moderation and open up all kinds of thresholds and different penalties. I do not like restrictions on reasonable amounts of swearing depending on provacation.

For instance someone scams you out of 2 btc and vanishes its okay to call them a scamming piece of shit.  Or an escrow that goes bad or ico team that ditches their project after eating up all the dev funds only to start a new one.

Also you will create a board of nitpicking slathering ass lickers appealing to authority for some small recognition of pointing out some scam victim who just called the scammers a swear word. These will be counter productive and a waste of resources.

If you are an innocent party getting swearing and abuse it just makes the other person look like the bad guy. It's all about context and thresholds that are pretty complicated. Hate crimes and cyber stalking are different matters.

The rules I believe are at this time unofficial and undefined intentionally to leave a lot of scope from the mods to decide. They have been doing a good job mostly I think all these years. Those new members pushing hard lines to these rules have obviously missed the entire reason such rules are placed there in such broad terms.

As to new members attacking established ones. I believe when attacks are public it should be a simple matter of seeing if the provided evidence for such attack meets a reasonable threshold. If there was no reason at all or didnt come near to the threshold the attacker is the one that should be then a pariah until such time he has learned his lesson.  This holds for all but the most technical matters where most of the members are unable to discern the evidence nor threshold. That could then be an issue that would be difficult to prevent. I have seen this complaint before and was unable to know for sure who was in the right. Mostly people of such a level of intelligence don't actually swear and abuse that much since they recognise it is not a great strategy to win over support.



 

[eosDigger]

From month to month, people lose passwords from their accounts, and restoring an account is difficult and sometimes impossible.