Altcoin paywall

[Heisenberg_Hunter]

Not a bad idea, but as Khaos77 pointed out why would the specific altcoin community need a dedicated subforum if they have already proved their trust? Why would they pay for a dedicated sub forum if they have enough discussion places other than this forum? Ethereum has stack exchange to discuss most of their issues and doubts, Dash has their own forum 'dashtalk', monero has forum.getmonero and many similar coins have their own forums and discussion places apart form telegram.

The coins which might be interested in such activities or creation of a own sub-forum in bitcointalk would be the new alts which has been created with the intention to scam newbie investors. With the prolonged 2018 bear market and the 2019 bull market, most of the coins which were proven to be much better and somewhat trustworthy ran away by selling coins in exchange. So, what would have happened if they were proven trustworthy by moderators in the initial stages and certainly ran away in the later half of 2019 with the recent surges in the bitcoin prices.

Also for most of the time theymos has said that he has ruled out the idea for receiving payments to announce a project or to receive payments from people for wearing a signature. Apart form that, I am really amazed how mprep controlled the whole spam world (Altcoin Discussion and its sub-boards) before Welsh became a moderator. 

[asche]

You do realized that most alts topics had to become self moderated because of the asshats that constantly insulted and derailed the topic on btctalk.
Having some moron berate an altcoin that many in a community have worked hard on and spend considerable portion of their own fiat trying to maintain, is unwelcome to say the least.

So the actual issue to be addressed is the quality of the moderation on the forum. Anything else is just hiding a problem.

Or just stop the altcoin section all together.

[Pmalek]

This is an interesting concept so if I'm understanding correctly they would be paying into an escrow as a security deposit and lets say something did go wrong would that then be distributed out to those that have been affected by the coin?

Yes, that is the logic behind it.

The logistics of that sound like a nightmare but in theory a good idea. Having a large substantial amount in a security deposit which will then be used to reimburse those could be a good idea. I think this would only be relevant if the project scammed and not because it failed though as even good projects fail to realize their potential.

Yes, if a project failed to accomplish their goals and raise the needed funds they would receive their security deposit back as long as they have refunded all their investors. If the investments don't get returned the deposit would be kept in the escrow and used to at least partially reimburse the affected parties.

Sounds like a nightmare to implement, you are right, but I still think it is not a bad idea.

[Khaos77]

You do realized that most alts topics had to become self moderated because of the asshats that constantly insulted and derailed the topic on btctalk.
Having some moron berate an altcoin that many in a community have worked hard on and spend considerable portion of their own fiat trying to maintain, is unwelcome to say the least.

So the actual issue to be addressed is the quality of the moderation on the forum. Anything else is just hiding a problem.

Or just stop the altcoin section all together.

Removing the altcoin section altogether makes more sense than trying to make people pay for it, when no one will.

But this also removes a large portion of the btctalk membership which is only here for the altcoin sections.
Less active membership , lower views count on ads , less money made by the btctalk forum in general,
so unless the forum wants to cut their ad revenue , not a profitable idea.
But one that many Bitcoin Maximalist are in favor of.
 
FYI:
There is always the possibility that one of the alts design , does surpass btc at a future date.
Not all of us feel btc is a deity to worship that can never fail.

FYI2:
Some people have little use for altcoins, but ignoring the fact they give a useful purpose to siphoning off a large percentage of bitcoin supply in the trading pairs, add up all of the satoshi verses all of the altcoins, now if all of those alts disappear, you have an immediate available supply increase that with no other utility, could cause a decrease in btc overall price. Increasing BTC supply faster than demand always caused a price drop.  

[actmyname]

Removing the altcoin section altogether makes more sense than trying to make people pay for it, when no one will.

But this also removes a large portion of the btctalk membership which is only here for the altcoin sections.
Less active membership , lower views count on ads , less money made by the btctalk forum in general,
so unless the forum wants to cut their ad revenue , not a profitable idea.
But one that many Bitcoin Maximalist are in favor of.

Maximizing ad revenue is not what Bitcointalk was made for.
It's not exactly a profit-driven site, otherwise it would look a lot worse than it currently is... which is still not that great if we're being honest.Maybe it's analogous to the ponzi situation, where a board was created in order to redirect spam that would contaminate useful sections (which are at this point not-so-useful either)

[Khaos77]

Removing the altcoin section altogether makes more sense than trying to make people pay for it, when no one will.

But this also removes a large portion of the btctalk membership which is only here for the altcoin sections.
Less active membership , lower views count on ads , less money made by the btctalk forum in general,
so unless the forum wants to cut their ad revenue , not a profitable idea.
But one that many Bitcoin Maximalist are in favor of.

Maximizing ad revenue is not what Bitcointalk was made for.
It's not exactly a profit-driven site, otherwise it would look a lot worse than it currently is... which is still not that great if we're being honest.Maybe it's analogous to the ponzi situation, where a board was created in order to redirect spam that would contaminate useful sections (which are at this point not-so-useful either)

If it was not a Profit driven site, then their would be No ADs.  
Also those copper memberships would be free.

[Csmiami]

If it was not a Profit driven site, then their would be No ADs.  

Quoted from another forum I'm a member of

Hi, as with many things the saying: "Fast, Good or Cheap. Pick two." applies to hosting.

Ad revenue is not for profit, but rather a need

[actmyname]

If it was not a Profit driven site, then their would be No ADs.  

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Price flattening

At the end of the auction, after the winning bids are all determined, I will do a "price flattening" operation. This has no effect on which bids actually win. For each bid, in order of lowest to greatest price/slot, I will reduce each bid's price/slot to the highest value which is equal to or only the minimum increment greater than the next-lower bid. This allows you to bid higher prices without worrying so much, but you still mustn't bid more than you're willing to pay. Example:

Code:

This:
Slots  BTC/Slot  Person
    6      0.20       A
    1      0.16       B
    1      0.08       C
    1      0.08       D

Becomes:
Slots  BTC/Slot  Person
    6      0.10       A [step 4: reduced to 0.09+0.01=0.10]
    1      0.09       B [step 3: reduced to 0.08+0.02=0.09]
    1      0.08       C [step 2: same as the next-lowest, unchanged]
    1      0.08       D [step 1: the lowest bid is always unchanged]

Plus, the ads are fairly restrictive and rare.

For a higher profit, theymos could have made it a lot more flexible for advertisers. Or disabled the "Hide ads" button?

[hilariousetc]

So my proposal is to introduce premium altcoin sub forums. Just like the "Altcoin Discussion" is a dedicated sub forum we could introduce this for altcoins. For an example "ETH" could be a sub forum however the criteria for being allowed these sections should be that they've been vetted by dedicated members of the public and been verified as a worthwhile/interesting project as well as being a paid listing (per month). To be clear this doesn't mean "approved"  We should only allow a maximum of 5 sub forums at a time and have these on a monthly rent basis. I have no idea how much this should cost however I believe it should be within the thousands per month to allow that money to be paid to moderators/dedicated people to review the project and moderate that sub forum.

 Benefits to the forum:
- Vetted projects to assure quality
- Dedicated moderators = Less spam
- More exposure to quality altcoins
- Save time browsing the millions of projects launched every day

Benefits to the developers/owners:
- More exposure
- Dedicated moderators
- Have their project reviewed and be able to showcase that to others that they're project is of high standard

This is somewhat similar to what I've suggested in the past. I wouldn't be against charging all coins to list here as I think alt coins should contribute something to the forum financially as the vast majority of staff time is probably wasted on cleaning up after them, but if theymos felt this was too restrictive then maybe we could still allow alts to have a thread here but also they could pay a fee to get their own sub board/dedicated url. The fee could be a one off or a yearly fee (or both). Maybe the coins could also assign their own mods to the boards which would free up staff time. I think this is something a lot of coins would go for and it would certainly be cheaper than hosting their own boards.

these garbage projects are willing to invest a small amount of money in the grand scheme of things because they will make hundreds of thousands in return.

If that's actually true, it's incredible to me--are we still in the world of creating a garbage project, drawing in suckers, and cashing in for that much money?  Sounds easier than a gold rush, IMO. 

Some of these shitcoins have made millions and they promoted them by sig and bounty spam. We literally give them free advertising and they destroy the board in the process. It's win-win for them because they pay people in tokens they've created and once their campaign is done they either sale off into the sunset or create another shitcoin for some bullshit half-assed idea and rinse and repeat.

We should only allow a maximum of 5 sub forums at a time and have these on a monthly rent basis. I have no idea how much this should cost however I believe it should be within the thousands per month

I commend you enthusiasm to clean up the altcoin section, which it desperately needs, but I don't think this is the way to do it.

Sure, a paywall of several thousand dollars a month would weed out many (but not all) of the shitcoins. The issue is for the real coins, who is going to pay that fee? Take a coin like Monero for example, which like bitcoin, has many people developing different aspects of it, no centralized authority and certainly no centralized pool of coins or money to draw from. Who is going to pay the fee for their own board? The developers? Crowdfunding donations?

Those sorts can stick with having a thread, or if someone wanted to get their own sub they can cough up for it or try crowd fund it.

Dude,

No one is going to pay for an altcoin sub-forum on btctalk,

1.  BTC Maximalist call every coin not bitcoin a shitcoin,
    why would anyone pay for that slander

2.  Many Altcoins have Slack or Telegram or other forums,
    so they just relocate all communications to their other forums and dump btctalk.

I disagree. I think if we had the option a lot of coins would pay for a dedicated board as there are several benefits to it. As I've said before, if the only way to list them here was to pay a fee and they got their own board it would also eradicate the paid spam bumping as it would be useless to do.

Removing the altcoin section altogether makes more sense than trying to make people pay for it, when no one will.

But this also removes a large portion of the btctalk membership which is only here for the altcoin sections.
Less active membership , lower views count on ads , less money made by the btctalk forum in general,
so unless the forum wants to cut their ad revenue , not a profitable idea.
But one that many Bitcoin Maximalist are in favor of.

Maximizing ad revenue is not what Bitcointalk was made for.
It's not exactly a profit-driven site, otherwise it would look a lot worse than it currently is

Would it? If we got rid of signature campaigns and the only way you could adverse here was via ad slots imaging how much spam would disappear over night. I don't think we need to litter the forum with ad slots but that's essentially what we have right now anyway, only it's done in a destructive way.

[actmyname]

Removing the altcoin section altogether makes more sense than trying to make people pay for it, when no one will.

But this also removes a large portion of the btctalk membership which is only here for the altcoin sections.
Less active membership , lower views count on ads , less money made by the btctalk forum in general,
so unless the forum wants to cut their ad revenue , not a profitable idea.
But one that many Bitcoin Maximalist are in favor of.

Maximizing ad revenue is not what Bitcointalk was made for.
It's not exactly a profit-driven site, otherwise it would look a lot worse than it currently is

Would it? If we got rid of signature campaigns and the only way you could adverse here was via ad slots imaging how much spam would disappear over night. I don't think we need to litter the forum with ad slots but that's essentially what we have right now anyway, only it's done in a destructive way.

I was referring to the kind of website with banner ads all-over. Say goodbye to the border of your page.

Think "faucet site" kind of ads... save for pop-ups, because those are horrible.

And besides, I did allude to the current state of the forum in regards to spam.Removing signatures will at-least keep spam confined to the Altcoin section with the various social media report bumps.

[hilariousetc]

I was referring to the kind of website with banner ads all-over. Say goodbye to the border of your page.

Think "faucet site" kind of ads... save for pop-ups, because those are horrible.

I wouldn't want that and that would never happen anyway but the sig spam is arguably just as bad and all that money just goes into the pockets of those paying the people to make it in the first place who don't care what mess they cause as long as it gets them free promo. What I've suggested before was a banner ad at the top something like this:



That way advertisers can target their market ie a gambling site would advertise in the gambling board and so on. You could also have more paid memberships like Copper/Silver/Gold/Platinum etc but theymos doesn't seem to be interested in either more ads or any more memberships so it's unlikely to happen. In fact, I'd say there's more chance of sig campaigns being banned outright than more ad slots. Theymos has even considered getting rid of them, which I don't think we should do. More paid Memberships wouldn't hurt either and at least it would essentially kill the account farming/hacking market in the process.
 

[actmyname]

More paid Memberships wouldn't hurt either and at least it would essentially kill the account farming/hacking market in the process.

I'm surprised it isn't already dead. How do users expect to purchase accounts when the emails can be reset within 14 days?

The hassle, I assume, should outweigh the benefits. Maybe just ignorance?As long as something can be gained with less input than the anticipated outcome (i.e. low-GDP countries house residents that have a lower average value of time) you'll have account farmers trying to accumulate high-ranking accounts.

Paid memberships might lower the amount of farmers somewhat but I don't think it'll be highly significant.

[malevolent]

Would it? If we got rid of signature campaigns and the only way you could adverse here was via ad slots imaging how much spam would disappear over night. I don't think we need to litter the forum with ad slots but that's essentially what we have right now anyway, only it's done in a destructive way.

I'd love to see before and after statistics of forum activity a month after disabling signatures Would give a nice picture how much activity is 'organic' and how much is mostly signature-driven.

[AverageGlabella]

Not a bad idea, but as Khaos77 pointed out why would the specific altcoin community need a dedicated subforum if they have already proved their trust? Why would they pay for a dedicated sub forum if they have enough discussion places other than this forum?

This is considered the home of cryptocurrency when it comes to discussion. Sure we have reddit and they have their little telegram groups but any serious project would be getting their hands everywhere. Lets not forget that the majority of this forum doesn't use Telegram and the other places Khaos77 listed. I have never used any other site to discuss cryptocurrency other than this forum. This forum has millions of users and a lot of people are paying huge amounts to advertise here on the forum. By purchasing a slot to get more exposure they are going to get just that. Its an investment as well as a benefit to the community who don't want to sift through all the shit in the altcoin sub forum.

Ethereum has stack exchange to discuss most of their issues and doubts, Dash has their own forum 'dashtalk', monero has forum.getmonero and many similar coins have their own forums and discussion places apart form telegram.

Where do you think people first heard of these? Not to forget that anyone with an interest in wider cryptocurrency and not just one coin will likely be on this forum building up a reputation and participating in conversations.

[Baronets]

At the moment, the only coin I accept in payment is Bitcoin. I'd like to expand this, but I haven't done the required homework yet. For example, I suspect that I should be accepting Litecoin. I'm not sure where to open good discussions about alts here on Bitcoin talk. I've also picked up some Basic Attention Token, Steem, and Bit Blocks, and I would like to hear opinions about the future of these coins. Perhaps it would be useful to have child boards for the more established coins, and they could be moderated to remove low value negative posts.

Etherium, Ripple and other blockchain structures seem to be evolving and expanding, and we need to be discussing those in some detail. The new FaceBux is also indicative of future trends, and if Bitcoin Talk is going to stay as a significant platform in the new crypto world, it will need to build communities of enthusiasts for these new ventures.

[jademaxsuy]

At the moment, the only coin I accept in payment is Bitcoin. I'd like to expand this, but I haven't done the required homework yet. For example, I suspect that I should be accepting Litecoin. I'm not sure where to open good discussions about alts here on Bitcoin talk. I've also picked up some Basic Attention Token, Steem, and Bit Blocks, and I would like to hear opinions about the future of these coins. Perhaps it would be useful to have child boards for the more established coins, and they could be moderated to remove low value negative posts.

Etherium, Ripple and other blockchain structures seem to be evolving and expanding, and we need to be discussing those in some detail. The new FaceBux is also indicative of future trends, and if Bitcoin Talk is going to stay as a significant platform in the new crypto world, it will need to build communities of enthusiasts for these new ventures.

Well, there are already good users discussing about the future of this coins as we consider those alts as strong altcoins as what you have stated like the litecoin for example. And if child board will be created for this then surely spammers will not have any restriction then it will probably destroy the board. However, it could be prevented like the removal of signatures so it will be less attractive for the spammers to post irrelevant replies in every threads to be brought up for discussions.

I am supporting this notion as I am also holding good altcoins like BCH, XRP and ETH to which I think will have also a better future in cryptocurrency.

[Welsh]

I'm not sure where to open good discussions about alts here on Bitcoin talk. I've also picked up some Basic Attention Token, Steem, and Bit Blocks, and I would like to hear opinions about the future of these coins. Perhaps it would be useful to have child boards for the more established coins, and they could be moderated to remove low value negative posts.

Remember that altcoin discussion is fine in the Serious discussion section, and would likely provide less activity than the altcoin section, but likely better quality. There are a few hundred threads in the altcoin discussion about these topics already that could be found with the search function if you're interested in sifting through them.

[hilariousetc]

Would it? If we got rid of signature campaigns and the only way you could adverse here was via ad slots imaging how much spam would disappear over night. I don't think we need to litter the forum with ad slots but that's essentially what we have right now anyway, only it's done in a destructive way.

I'd love to see before and after statistics of forum activity a month after disabling signatures Would give a nice picture how much activity is 'organic' and how much is mostly signature-driven.

It certainly would be interesting to see what happens. I wouldn't be at all surprised if we lost at least 50% of traffic within a week or so and it continuing to gradually decline as people come round to the fact that they can't earn via posting here anymore. A lot of people would quickly lose interest and even fairly active/well known members would probably start to spend less and less time here. I think there will still be a lot of traffic for other alt coin bounties though as this forum is still probably the best way to promote themselves but without signature ads the effectiveness of this would be greatly reduced so maybe even they would look for alternatives. This wouldn't be ideal if crapcoins suddenly took over discussion.

Not a bad idea, but as Khaos77 pointed out why would the specific altcoin community need a dedicated subforum if they have already proved their trust? Why would they pay for a dedicated sub forum if they have enough discussion places other than this forum?

This is considered the home of cryptocurrency when it comes to discussion. Sure we have reddit and they have their little telegram groups but any serious project would be getting their hands everywhere. Lets not forget that the majority of this forum doesn't use Telegram and the other places Khaos77 listed. I have never used any other site to discuss cryptocurrency other than this forum. This forum has millions of users and a lot of people are paying huge amounts to advertise here on the forum. By purchasing a slot to get more exposure they are going to get just that. Its an investment as well as a benefit to the community who don't want to sift through all the shit in the altcoin sub forum.

This is comparing apples to oranges. It's like saying why would anyone use Facebook when they've got Telegram and whatsapp. Private messaging services have their place but so do forums or other forms of web presence and private messaging apps really aren't great for public debate.