Is it needed a History & Education board?

[GazetaBitcoin]

This came in my mind lately, realizing there are many topics with historical value, or with educational purposes, which may be lost in time / other boards.

Some of these posts are very valuable and it took a lot of time to realize them.

And their information could be used maybe even more if they would be grouped in a single board, thus being more visible - mostly for newer members, but not just them. Many older members didn't see all these posts; or, if they saw them, they forgot about them or forgot how to find them again, in case they needed them.

To be better understood, I'll present below a list with historic and educational topics which: (1) could fill such a board; (2) are (in part) difficult to be found (even if you knew about their existence); (3) represent useful reading for anyone interested in history and educative material.


01. theymos' eventual courses - Idea: Courses - I don't know if any courses were realized, but in case they will be launched, they could fit a History & Education board
             theymos presenting Satoshi's lesson - Satoshi's lesson

02. Jet Cash's eventual educational projects - Who wants to start a newbie project on the beginners' board with me? - same as above: not sure if any such project was launched, but it could fit in such board

03. xtraelv's historic and educational topics - this user (probably the greatest historian of the forum) has multiple topics which could fit here, such as:
            Historic threads
            - Bitcointalk trolls, dysfunction and all out flame wars. Guide to the scandals
            - Bitcointalk history - index to first 200 topics
            - History on Bitcointalk - Mining equipment scams, shams and failed deliveries
            - Looking for the funniest trust feedback
            - Wall of fame / shame. Shit posts so bad that they are actually funny
            - knightmb on bitcointalk - from 371,067.36 BTC to Mitt Romney extortion
            - History - Bitcoin Savings and Trust and Pirateat40 on Bitcointalk (PONZI)
            - Silk road and Bitcointalk. How it played a role in its rise and fall
            - The Bitcointalk 10 BTC Donators - where are they now ?
            - The Bitcointalk 50 BTC VIP club. Where are they now ?
            - Index to popular bitcointalk threads 2018
            - Bitcointalk history of MtGox and how a Bitcointalk post caught the MtGox hacker
            - Bitcointalk history of hacks and vandalism
            - Who is Satoshi Nakamoto ? Suspects, frauds and conspiracies on bitcointalk
            - The Cypherpunks and Bitcoin. The years before bitcointalk
            - The most iconic bitcointalk threads. History on Bitcointalk.

            Educational threads
            - Units of Evil, copper membership & list of copper members
            - How to avoid getting your exchange account HaCkEd or pHiShEd

04. shorena's compendium - [Overview]The one thread to link them all

05. hd49728's add-ons list - List of Bitcointalk.org Userscripts/ Add-ons
hd49728's compendium - List of Answered Suggestions. Please don't create topics before read them all!

06. 03 nullius' historic and educational topics
            Historic threads
            - The Anarchy of Authoritarian Autarchy: Be Your Own Authority
            - PSA: If gold were illegal... (Gold WAS illegal!)

            Educational threads
            - A hands-on lesson on why you should check PGP fingerprints
            - Bitcoin: The Social Phenomenon
            - Project Anastasia: Bitcoiners Against Identity Theft [re: Craig Wright scam]
            - Modulo Bias
            - Bitcoin’s Public-Key Security Level
            - Bravo Charlie One: Branding Bech32

07. LoyceV's How to lose your Bitcoins with CTRL-C CTRL-V

08. fillippone's resources for teaching Average Joe About Bitcoin - 5 Resources to teach Average Joe about Bitcoin

09. bitmover's historic thread about the Cypherpunk's Manifesto - The Cypherpunk Manifesto - We all should read it

10. Gazeta Bitcoin's historic and educational topics
            Historic threads
            - The dream of Cypherpunks, libertarians and crypto-anarchists - this is my 1000th post - also translated in Romanian
            - The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto - We all should read it
            - Governs try to limit access of public to information and freedom since ages
            - Phil Zimmermann's thoughts about PGP - We all should read them
            - The call for Julian Assange || The WikiLeaks Manifesto - We all should read it

            Educational threads
            - Governs are coming for the traders - also translated in Romanian
            - Cryptocurrency vs digital money issued by the state
            - Why reputation is essential on the free market


The above mentioned are just a few examples. To this list can be added, for example, almost all sticky topics from various boards. Plus many, many others I don't remember anymore or I couldn't find anymore. For these reasons I kindly ask all other members with great educational and historic boards to not feel angry for not mentioning their posts as well; it's just a small list with what I remembered reading lately.

Considering all the above mentioned, what do you think? Is it needed such board?

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[ChuckBuck]

Although what you presented may sound reasonable, I still feel that it is not necessary to add a new board here. We have those topics, but it was there reasonably, it existed, other future topics could also exist that way. Creating a new table cannot guarantee that other topics will be posted correctly there. Instead, a series of junk topics about bullshit history will be added for some crap purpose. Please continue to operate the way this forum went, not necessary with this change  my personal opinion 

[Harkorede]

I think all threads mentioned above falls perfectly into their respective boards or at least one or more existing boards, having them in a different board won't make any difference, but creating a thread listing them / or sticking such thread could make a better impact for easy access.

[cr1776]

One topic that I always thought was an interesting one was this one:
 I am pretty confident we are the new wealthy elite, gentlemen.   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=12156.0


I had been reading on here since fall 2010 (had read about bitcoin from the first slashdot post back in July) but didn't register until the following year when I finally had a question.  Anyway I think Astro Hacker's post that Atlas linked to was something a lot of people read and took to heart.  Likewise, the "Vladimir Club" (e.g. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=98239.0 ) encouraged a lot of people to think about what bitcoin could become.  Hopefully these people are still enjoying the ride.


By the way, the original site linked to above for astrohackers post isn't there, but it is here:
https://themonetaryfuture.blogspot.com/2011/06/bitcoin-is-economic-singularity.html

[Mbitr]

I remember during the first lockdown going through all the first threads from all the boards and it was highly educational and I remember thinking that an historical board would be a superb idea. Admittedly, not everyone is a history fan , but I think this is a great idea. Not everyone on this forum is a bounty hunter , some of us are genuinely interested in the whole history of bitcoin and bitcointalk.
If you’re a newbie to the forum and/or Bitcoin - a push in the direction of the history of both is definitely a positive in a lot of ways .
Gets my vote OP 

[Welsh]

I guess a sticky thread would likely be the best option for this rather than a dedicated section, although I think partly this may have been theymos' intention with implementing the merit statistics. For example: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=toptopicsat could be seen as a historical archive, as most of the threads that I would consider monumental or having a big part of the history are on that page. Although, I get what you mean a dedicated area for posts of historical value would be nice, though as I mentioned briefly a stickied thread which lists all of these threads would probably be the better choice.

You know, something like shorena's thread, but more focused on historical posts rather than a mix, match of various other things could potentially be stickied.

[OcTradism]

I guess a sticky thread would likely be the best option for this rather than a dedicated section, although I think partly this may have been theymos' intention with implementing the merit statistics.

theymos or global moderators might not pin more sticky threads. If theymos thinks that topics about history, education is necessary, he will create a new board like the suggestion from GazetaBitcoin.

A board for History threads is good but about a board for Education, I don't it is necessary. In any board, you can find good threads with educative and informative content. A education board for all will be overwhelming. If it is something to be taken into consideration, I suggest a collection in each board.

List of Education threads in Beginners & Help
List of Education threads in Bitcoin Technical Supports.

It can help newbies but they have to learn and use Search. Those topics if available but can be outdated when authors stop updating.

[RickDeckard]

Great pile of information you got there GazetaBitcoin, congratulations on all that work! I'll be sure to read some of those threads considering the topics that they cover! I'll be sure to give you some merits whenever I can, it must've taken a considerable amount of time to gather up this information.

Regarding your suggestion itself, I'm torn - In one way I can totally see it work, but at the same time I don't think that creating a new board wouldn't be overkill. Don't take me wrong, I'm not saying that we don't have enough information to fill the board or that the content wouldn't be interested at all (on the contrary!), I simply believe that it would be hard to establish a "rule" or a some kind of system that would determine / choose which posts - whenever they are fully detailed or not - would be considered to belong in there. Should we look at it's structure and overall thematic? Should we look at the message that it portrays and how good it does in showing the information? Would a "history" topic just be enough to automatically be on the thread without any kind of "juice" / "work" in it involved? I know that it was easy to determine that those linked threads are good enough to be "highlighted", but I'm just saying that creating a board also encompasses a set of rules whose board will have to follow, and that may be the hard part of it...

Then again, I also said that I support the idea in some way, and I do! How about we let other members of the forum contribute to other useful/insightful threads that they've seen in the past years? What if we started gathering all of them and created a "mother of all threads" where all those pieces of history would be constantly being updated? What if Theymos would just "sticky" that thread up near the Beginnings Helping section just to catch the attention of whoever visits the board?
I see, however, 2 problems with this approach:

• If we loose OP, then we aren't able to edit the thread any longer. While this "responsibility" has to fall under someone, it would be a shame that in some years from now we wouldn't be able to continuously update it;
• The same struggle to "evaluate" a thread that I pointed out before could still be felt in some way. The way I see it is that we, as a community, would each judge the given suggestions and would determine if it is indeed worthy or not. We could try to organize some kind of "voting" mechanism - let it be weekly or monthly - just to have a feeling from the community, but I reckon that I might be overthinking this...

So overall I fully agree that we should "highlight" useful threads like those ones, but at the same time I'm unsure of how we could implement a system that would both be practical and "fair" at the same time. The sad truth is that there are troves of good threads that are for sure lost in our evergrowing thread numbers, and while that is good - because it means that we are "alive and well" - we do end up losing threads that were pivotal for the existence of this forum. I suppose we could always share a cryptpad excel/word file  with all relevant threads but it wouldn't have the same "magic"...

[ChiBitCTy]

I guess a sticky thread would likely be the best option for this rather than a dedicated section, although I think partly this may have been theymos' intention with implementing the merit statistics. For example: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=merit;stats=toptopicsat could be seen as a historical archive, as most of the threads that I would consider monumental or having a big part of the history are on that page. Although, I get what you mean a dedicated area for posts of historical value would be nice, though as I mentioned briefly a stickied thread which lists all of these threads would probably be the better choice.

You know, something like shorena's thread, but more focused on historical posts rather than a mix, match of various other things could potentially be stickied.

There’s some epic threads without much merit that are very deserving. Like this one ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=737.0 ) which should have a ton of merit but it’s old and not “famous” enough but it’s far more important than say the Hodl thread. Or how about Satoshis escrow thread, this is probably the first mention of smart contracts in conjunction with bitcoin id assume. It only has a few merits. If more people saw the escrow thread, perhaps that would have come to fruition by now.

Imo this prob only works if the mods/theymos build & maintain it and don’t allow for new topics. Users historical threads are at their discretion really and that’s a negative. Either way I think this is a good idea OP.

[NotATether]

Sorry for the (shameless  ) indirect site promotion here, but this is exactly what I created notatether.com for - to collect all this info onto a static site instead of in threads that fall off the hypothetical wall (board) like flies.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I remember during the first lockdown going through all the first threads from all the boards and it was highly educational and I remember thinking that an historical board would be a superb idea.

I don't know why this thread got bumped exactly, though I did read the post that did it, but I'm kind of glad it was.

The very early threads on the forum are indeed fascinating to read.  I didn't know of bitcointalk's existence until about 2013-14 and even then didn't read it frequently--plus that was during/after the Mt. Gox debacle, which was well after the beginning of signature campaigns and the rampant shitposts that followed.  Posts made in the 2010-11 era should be browsed through for anyone interested in the history of the forum, because they were much different than the typical posts you see today (plus a lot of them were made by members who've since disappeared).

But any member can read those threads if they want to, so I'm not sure if we need an additional section for bitcointalk history.  Theymos probably wouldn't go for it, either, and the fact that he never responded to this thread when it was started last year is a good indication of that.

There’s some epic threads without much merit that are very deserving. Like this one ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=737.0 ) which should have a ton of merit but it’s old and not “famous” enough but it’s far more important than say the Hodl thread.

Yeah, excellent thread from 2010 and it seems like that was decades ago rather than just over one decade.  Maybe my merit source philosophy is warped, but I wouldn't merit posts that old--especially not if they were made by Legendary members.  I try to help members rank up with the merits I give out, and in threads that old there are a lot of Legendaries and members who aren't active anymore.

[ChiBitCTy]

There’s some epic threads without much merit that are very deserving. Like this one ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=737.0 ) which should have a ton of merit but it’s old and not “famous” enough but it’s far more important than say the Hodl thread.

Yeah, excellent thread from 2010 and it seems like that was decades ago rather than just over one decade.  Maybe my merit source philosophy is warped, but I wouldn't merit posts that old--especially not if they were made by Legendary members.  I try to help members rank up with the merits I give out, and in threads that old there are a lot of Legendaries and members who aren't active anymore.

Well as Welsh stated, he believes part of why Theymos implemented merit was to shine light on important threads and this thread deserves a few to show newbs that it is an important historical convo. As a physical crypto coin nerd this especially hits close to home, so had to do just 1, as I otherwise certainly agree with you. Same for Satoshis escrow thread. If it was more visible maybe someone would have brought his eventual breakthrough idea to life already (though I really wish Szabo would just do it and stop wasting time on twitter arguments)

[GazetaBitcoin]

One topic that I always thought was an interesting one was this one:
 I am pretty confident we are the new wealthy elite, gentlemen.   https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=12156.0

Hehe, this is nice catch I remember I saw this post once, a long time ago, but I forgot about it... How right was the Anonymous user which posted that... Also, speaking of old historic posts, I found one which is funny yet it is a part of history too I think this post from 2011 is the first reference of theymos being called thermos:

Administrators can always change usernames by request. Would be a better solution. I bet theymos would change your username in a heart beat if you asked

I'd change his... Always makes me think of a hot water bottle (thermos)... 

Admittedly, not everyone is a history fan , but I think this is a great idea. Not everyone on this forum is a bounty hunter , some of us are genuinely interested in the whole history of bitcoin and bitcointalk.
If you’re a newbie to the forum and/or Bitcoin - a push in the direction of the history of both is definitely a positive in a lot of ways .
Gets my vote OP 

Thank you, Mbitr, this is also what I had in mind... I am also passionate of history and I was really amazed to read, for example, xtraelv's topics... It took me hours and hours, following also the links inserted in his topics, links which led to other topics... and so on... By reading all these I learned a lot and the time spent for reading was certainly not a waste.

I guess a sticky thread would likely be the best option for this rather than a dedicated section [...]
You know, something like shorena's thread, but more focused on historical posts rather than a mix, match of various other things could potentially be stickied.

Welsh, this is a great idea! I never thought about this, but sounds very wise. How can we proceed for obtaining this sticky topic? Do you have any suggestion? And yes, of course I remember shorena's one thread to link them all It was one of the more educative topic for me at my beginnings on the forum.

theymos or global moderators might not pin more sticky threads. If theymos thinks that topics about history, education is necessary, he will create a new board like the suggestion from GazetaBitcoin.

That would be nice... but I think it's easier for him to make a sticky topic though... maybe in the Beginners & Help board...?

Great pile of information you got there GazetaBitcoin, congratulations on all that work! I'll be sure to read some of those threads considering the topics that they cover!

Thank you, RickDeckard. I encourage you to read all those topics indeed... Also Hal's letter, mentioned by me in this post, almost at the end of it.

Regarding your suggestion itself, I'm torn - In one way I can totally see it work, but at the same time I don't think that creating a new board wouldn't be overkill. Don't take me wrong, I'm not saying that we don't have enough information to fill the board or that the content wouldn't be interested at all (on the contrary!), I simply believe that it would be hard to establish a "rule" or a some kind of system that would determine / choose which posts - whenever they are fully detailed or not - would be considered to belong in there. [...]

Then again, I also said that I support the idea in some way, and I do! How about we let other members of the forum contribute to other useful/insightful threads that they've seen in the past years? What if we started gathering all of them and created a "mother of all threads" where all those pieces of history would be constantly being updated? What if Theymos would just "sticky" that thread up near the Beginnings Helping section just to catch the attention of whoever visits the board?

The problem raised about the board itself is correct... I was thinking maybe users could suggest to new board's moderator(s) various historic posts and the moderators would be in charge to add the topics to the board. Your proposal though, which is also what Welsh recommends, seems more suitable indeed.

I see, however, 2 problems with this approach:

• If we loose OP, then we aren't able to edit the thread any longer. While this "responsibility" has to fall under someone, it would be a shame that in some years from now we wouldn't be able to continuously update it;
• The same struggle to "evaluate" a thread that I pointed out before could still be felt in some way. The way I see it is that we, as a community, would each judge the given suggestions and would determine if it is indeed worthy or not. We could try to organize some kind of "voting" mechanism - let it be weekly or monthly - just to have a feeling from the community, but I reckon that I might be overthinking this...

Regarding first point, this happened to Wall Observer thread as well. In that case, the topic was moved to someone else, after its owner ceased using the forum. So that risk can be mitigated... About the second problem, you explained it very rational and wisely, but I think that we think too much about details at this stage... I don;t know... Perhaps, if a sticky topic would be created, and not a board (as it has very small chances to happen), then the responsibility would be on owner's shoulders. And s/he will analyze which topics to list in his mega-thread, based also on what topics users suggest him and also based on what users suggests to not mention...? Does this sound feasible?

we do end up losing threads that were pivotal for the existence of this forum.

This is what scares me...

I think this is a good idea OP.

Thank you ChiBitCTy!

Sorry for the (shameless  ) indirect site promotion here, but this is exactly what I created notatether.com for - to collect all this info onto a static site instead of in threads that fall off the hypothetical wall (board) like flies.

Not to worry, NotATether. Your work is impressive and I am sure your efforts will help so many.

I don't know why this thread got bumped exactly

That was a surprise for me too I think I (we) have to thank to cr1776 for that, as he noticed it after such a long time.

The very early threads on the forum are indeed fascinating to read. [...]  Posts made in the 2010-11 era should be browsed through for anyone interested in the history of the forum, because they were much different than the typical posts you see today (plus a lot of them were made by members who've since disappeared).

I am glad we share the same passion

But any member can read those threads if they want to, so I'm not sure if we need an additional section for bitcointalk history.  Theymos probably wouldn't go for it, either, and the fact that he never responded to this thread when it was started last year is a good indication of that.

This is true, yet some topics are... how to say... must read. For example, the one related to escrow, mentioned also by ChiBitCTy. Or Hal's goodbye letter... Indeed, theymos did not show interest about my proposal, but maybe Welsh's proposal would be more suitable...?