Domain name update

[nullius]

It's only first page and the discussion already derailed from (domain ownership to Cøbra action/reputation)

And the two subjects are not inextricably entwined when a single individual is trusted to control one of the most important Bitcoin websites, because...?

<add facepalm image here>

You should download Bitcoin Core only from https://bitcoincore.org. Please stop giving bad information on Core related matters. Thanks.

Unfortunately you are giving bad advice here. You shouldn't trust a particular domain name to download Bitcoin Core at all, not bitcoin.org, or bitcoincore.org, or Github. You can download Bitcoin Core from just about anywhere safely, so long as you verify the signatures are valid, something I always urge users to do. Don't trust particular domain names, ever.

I have made the mistake of referring newbies to bitcoin-dot-org, because it is more newbie-friendly (i.e., glitzy Web 2.0 style that breaks in my browser) than good old-fashioned bitcoincore.org.

I myself will STOP DOING THAT.

For years, for my own purposes, I have depended primarily on bitcoincore.org (onion) and the Github site for code, plus bitcoin-dev and this forum for information.  Observe that the Github project links to bitcoincore.org, not bitcoin.org.

Why did you cut from your quotation the part where I said this?

Of course, it does not matter where you get your download, if you verify the integrity of your download using strong cryptography.  But let’s start by referring people to the download site that is actually run by Core.

That was edited in; but that edit was done within a few minutes after I posted, long before your reply.  (I also wanted to add links to two of my favourite websites, Gitian and Reproducible Builds; but I figured that may overwhelm nontechnical people who are just looking for the place to download Bitcoin.)

I question your judgement directing newbies to bitcoincore.org, a plain site with no real information about what Bitcoin actually is.

It offers the best place for people to download Bitcoin Core.

As a practical matter, I have spent 20+ years fighting to get people to actually verify digital signatures, etc.  I have been pushing that particular issue since long before Bitcoin even existed.  I know that people do not actually verify things; therefore, it is important to minimize potential damage by referring people to a better source which, by the way, has better information than bitcoin-dot-org does on verifying downloads.  See the link in my above quote about verifying the integrity of downloads.

There are plenty of good resources for newbies, bitcoincore.org definitely isn't one of them. Personally I find bitcoin.org the best for newbies, since it's well established, translated into a ton of languages, guides users through a linear process to learn about Bitcoin, has a good wallet picker to point users to the right wallet based on their needs, etc.

What guarantees that bitcoin-dot-org will stay the same tomorrow?  Your personal integrity alone?

It's funny to hint I'm malicious or untrustworthy, despite managing these domains for years without any wrongdoing. I remember when these same people were hinting at me eventually turning bitcoin.org into a Bitcoin Cash site, yet it never happened, but it didn't stop them scaremongering and screaming about it like it was inevitable. Now here people are, hinting at some vague notion of me being untrustworthy, despite me safely and without incident handing the domain over to theymos. I think this is a problem with some people on this forum in general, they just assume everyone is malicious and some scammer, unless said user is in their clique.

Please advise:  If you yourself were not Cøbra, then would you trust this person to be the exclusive trusted party in control of the Bitcoin.org domain?  That is pretty much a yes-or-no question.  Be objective here.

Just e.g., from an imgur album, “Uploaded Jul 26 2018”.  Thanks to an anonymous little birdie for the tip.

The truth is, while you are spinning up nonsense and trying to spook people and smearing bitcoin.org's reputation, we are educating tens of thousands of new users each day. Millions of users learn about Bitcoin with us yearly, we send so much traffic to exchanges and wallets it's ridiculous, all of which translates into expanding the Bitcoin community. When you measure the objective good Bitcoin.org has done for Bitcoin over many years, it becomes really hard to trash it. You can find flaws in the best of people, MLK was a plagiarist, Gandhi was a racist in his youth, Mandela literally blew up civilians, but judgements about people and entities are generally done by subtracting some abstract idea of total good by total bad.

I question the judgment of anybody who thinks that that’s a good argument in your favour; but anyway...

Would you want for Bitcoin.org to be under the exclusive, trusted control of a single individual with the history of public statements that you have made, if you were not that individual?

You could do much for Bitcoin (and for your own reputation) by answering that question honestly, and acting accordingly.

With respect to Greg's comments, I don't really know what he's hinting at either. My interactions with Greg have bounced between courteous and hostile over the years. I'm really confused by his response. I would hazard a guess that he generally doesn't trust me, and that he prefers bitcoin.org be owned by someone he's associated more intimately with.

I would hazard a guess that many people would prefer for bitcoin.org to be not be exclusively under your control.

Bitcoin.org Domain Ownership #2548

https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/bitcoin.org/issues/2548#issuecomment-408711051

chek2fire commented Jul 29, 2018

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[gentlemand]

I have no particular feelings other than Cobra's proclamations seem to come from several different people depending on the time of day, or lunar cycles. I'd rather someone that erratic, or easily rented out, is nowhere near controlling an important resource.

[Lauda]

It's funny to hint I'm malicious or untrustworthy, despite managing these domains for years without any wrongdoing. I remember when these same people were hinting at me eventually turning bitcoin.org into a Bitcoin Cash site, yet it never happened, but it didn't stop them scaremongering and screaming about it like it was inevitable. Now here people are, hinting at some vague notion of me being untrustworthy, despite me safely and without incident handing the domain over to theymos. I think this is a problem with some people on this forum in general, they just assume everyone is malicious and some scammer, unless said user is in their clique.

The truth is, while you are spinning up nonsense and trying to spook people and smearing bitcoin.org's reputation, we are educating tens of thousands of new users each day. Millions of users learn about Bitcoin with us yearly, we send so much traffic to exchanges and wallets it's ridiculous, all of which translates into expanding the Bitcoin community. When you measure the objective good Bitcoin.org has done for Bitcoin over many years, it becomes really hard to trash it. You can find flaws in the best of people, MLK was a plagiarist, Gandhi was a racist in his youth, Mandela literally blew up civilians, but judgements about people and entities are generally done by subtracting some abstract idea of total good by total bad.

With respect to Greg's comments, I don't really know what he's hinting at either. My interactions with Greg have bounced between courteous and hostile over the years. I'm really confused by his response. I would hazard a guess that he generally doesn't trust me, and that he prefers bitcoin.org be owned by someone he's associated more intimately with.

How about you give up singular control to shared control by known and honest individuals such as Wladimir, harding and others? Oh right, we have tried this before and you refused. There is absolutely not a single valid good reason (opposite of evil in this context) why you would not want to do this. Purely virtuous you are, surely I am mistaken.
Not a post worth meriting.

I have no particular feelings other than Cobra's proclamations seem to come from several different people depending on the time of day, or lunar cycles. I'd rather someone that erratic, or easily rented out, is nowhere near controlling an important resource.

Correct. For quite some time I have spent giving out the following consultations to both individuals and companies (in order of severity and danger): Do not use or touch: BSV website, the Bcash website, Bitcoin.org.

[Cøbra]

I am now arguing from a business perspective.  Any reasonable prospectus on Bitcoin must disclose that Bitcoin’s biggest vulnerability is fork-attacks, also known as the trust attack.  Any reasonable investor should recognize it as in his own self-interest to fight those attacks.  The forked shitcoins falsely advertised as “Bitcoin” will, in and of themselves, never amount to anything in the long term; they are purely a negative, which harms the market as a whole by intentionally, fraudulently diluting the “Bitcoin” brand and financially diluting Bitcoin’s market capitalization. and reducing overall investor confidence in Bitcoin’s uniqueness.  To invest exclusively in the one and only genuine Bitcoin, and to defend your investment by defending Bitcoin against dilution attacks, is a strategy perfectly matched in both principle and practicality.

Whereas Cøbra is perfectly positioned to stab Bitcoin in the back.  He is a trusted party for a vital public relations channel—one to which such well-intended people as LoyceV (and unfortunately, I myself) have been referring newbies.  If Cøbra were just some guy posting his opinions on the Internet, it would be a different matter.  Whereas the trusted party exclusively controlling a website with major public mindshare is known to be at best equivocal—at best:

Wrong. You don't know what you're talking about. These forked coins are not Bitcoin's biggest vulnerability, I would actually argue that Bitcoin Cash forking hurt the big blocker movement within Bitcoin pretty badly. Bitcoin Cash basically came out of nowhere, and many big blockers eventually kind of *had* to support it, after all the hard forks they tried in Bitcoin failed. Bitcoin Cash basically removed all the extreme big blockers from the Bitcoin community, it even took Roger Ver a little while to jump on board, but once they all did, it actually made Bitcoin safer as there was no longer a group of big blockers shouting a uniform narrative from within the Bitcoin community. Without Bitcoin Cash, we would have still had these extreme big blockers in the community for a lot longer. The forked coins with "Bitcoin" in the name are mostly harmless. As far as I'm aware, basically every place where you actually can purchase Bitcoin is clear to present BTC as Bitcoin, and everything else as "Bitcoin Cash" or "Bitcoin SV", etc. Users don't ever really get confused, they quickly intuitively understand that Bitcoin is what they really want, and everything else is some kind of derivative.

The real risk to Bitcoin was in the hard fork attacks which were supported by most of the major consumer companies and exchanges and were aimed to takeover Bitcoin completely. A lot of the companies that didn't support it explicitly would have also jumped on board once the hard fork actually won. It was essentially a corporate attempt to takeover Bitcoin, with decision making power shifted from open source developers to a handful of big companies. Had they won, Bitcoin would still get developed and worked on, but ultimately it would have been them guiding the development in ways that favor their interests. Over time the community would have also shifted and been brainwashed to accept the new reality.

Bitcoin.org was one of the most extreme and hostile towards these hard fork attacks: like here https://bitcoin.org/en/posts/denounce-segwit2x, and here, https://bitcoin.org/en/posts/hard-fork-policy. I was fervently against attempts like Bitcoin XT, BU, Segwit2x, etc, anyone who was around at the time will remember how aggressive Bitcoin.org and I were. We removed wallets from companies that supported the hard forks. We removed the exchanges. We notified users with big notices at the top of the site, had I wanted to "backstab" Bitcoin this was my chance, especially when some of these companies and people approached me in private to try to "turn me", but I still was vocally hostile and did everything I could to damage them. So did theymos, and he will back me up on this that all my private communications with him showed me to be someone who above all was concerned with Bitcoin being co-opted and fought as hard as I could to resist it. And yet shamefully, people like you with no knowledge of anything are so quick to present me as a risk or threat.

Their attempts to takeover Bitcoin would probably have had a much higher probability of success had I sided with them. If you're going to convincingly take over Bitcoin maliciously, you need 3 things: the miners so you can claim to have the most secure chain and have a stable blockchain (they had 80% of the hash rate), the consumer facing companies and exchanges so you can present your hard fork as Bitcoin to users (they had a lot of the companies backing them), and key public facing resources of trust like Bitcoin.org, that give you legitimacy and an endless number of incoming users from people searching "Bitcoin" through which you can gradually rebuild a new "Bitcoin community". The fact that they didn't have that hurt them a lot. No matter how much you try to trick users, if the first Bitcoin site started by Satoshi himself, and mentioned in the whitepaper is calling your hard fork a fake, it's really hard to build legitimacy.

The real nightmare scenario is not these coins with Bitcoin in the name damaging trust, but a world in which there are disagreements over the name "Bitcoin" itself. Imagine a world in which a user learns about Bitcoin through Bitcoin.org, then goes on Coinbase and buys "Bitcoin", and then hears on Twitter or Reddit that what they bought was not Bitcoin, and then finds out about this software called Bitcoin Core and a community of people claiming *that* to be the real Bitcoin, and then finds an exchange like Bitstamp and buys something else called "Bitcoin" on there which some people say is the real Bitcoin. Then this user interacts on social media with folks, never knowing which is the real Bitcoin since at that point it would be hard to answer. We got very close to that being our world had me and others not done everything we could to damage these hard fork attempts.

And about your screenshots of the Slack chats: I don't really see anything wrong there to be honest with you. It's funny how Adam Back was so hostile to me back then about me seeing some good things in Bitcoin Cash because I always thought a blockchain that sacrifices some decentralization in order to be able to handle more transactions was kind of necessary, and now he's out there pushing Blockstream's Liquid which is literally a sidechain controlled by companies in which your BTC gets morphed and required to be held in trust by federation partners so you can get the benefit of quicker transactions since blocks are more regular.

More or less the reason people don't trust me is because I said some good things about Bitcoin Cash a while ago, that's all it boils down too. They don't actually have a reason beyond that, and their calls for me to transfer the domain to others are intended to push me out because they fear me. They'd rather have someone in control of bitcoin.org who is easier to manipulate and who bends to groupthink and public pressure more easily. They won't ever talk about how much I've done to fight off many attacks, or when people were pressuring me to hand over the domain to the Bitcoin Foundation because it was more "respectable" and legitimate seeming, and I resisted because the foundation seemed shady (back then very few people realized it).

I handed bitcointalk.org over to theymos because; I trust him and his judgement, and I was not really active on the forum anyway. You can question my trust all you like, but I have been in a position for a long time to screw over you guys if I wanted too, but I didn't. Some users will instinctively understand that and ignore the nonsense you're spouting off, others will get sucked in, but either way I don't really care and I'm going to continue to do my best to help Bitcoin succeed.

[Lauda]

I handed bitcointalk.org over to theymos because; I trust him and his judgement, and I was not really active on the forum anyway. You can question my trust all you like, but I have been in a position for a long time to screw over you guys if I wanted too, but I didn't. Some users will instinctively understand that and ignore the nonsense you're spouting off, others will get sucked in, but either way I don't really care and I'm going to continue to do my best to help Bitcoin succeed.

How about you take yourself away from the position rather than boasting how you could but didn't do evil? Quite the accomplishment, only if you are actually evil. Thankfully your reputation is damaged beyond repair (it is nowhere near where it was a couple years back), and can only get worse given your failure to comply to the greater good. Absence of evil is not proof of good.

[midnightmagic]

I think peeps need to step back a step or two and be calm. There were a lot of times that bitcoin.org could've gone wrong but ultimately didn't. I think maybe some folks are assigning too much retrospective probability to Cøbra's potential to be malign. Functionally and operationally, and especially authoritatively nothing's changed, far as I can tell..? Right?

I think Cøbra says things a lot of the time that are ill-considered or appear to look one way or another; there was that odd security warning a few years back for example, but so far at least, either something has been moderating his response, or he's been arriving at an ultimately correct decision to act on his own. In the first case, hopefully whoever that is can continue to offer advice. In the second case, something in there has prevented him from heading towards e.g. bcash all on his own.

I think even Cøbra himself would agree that downloading the client from bitcoin.org is probably not the best idea. And probably distributing information about Bitcoin out to other places is also almost certainly a good idea.

If I were Cøbra sitting on that asset, emboldened by the fact that people have to listen to me or perceived repercussions are impossibly severe (would anyone care if he didn't control bitcoin.org?) — tbh, the constant abuse from people I respected would probably be wearing on me by now.

[Cøbra]

I handed bitcointalk.org over to theymos because; I trust him and his judgement, and I was not really active on the forum anyway. You can question my trust all you like, but I have been in a position for a long time to screw over you guys if I wanted too, but I didn't. Some users will instinctively understand that and ignore the nonsense you're spouting off, others will get sucked in, but either way I don't really care and I'm going to continue to do my best to help Bitcoin succeed.

How about you take yourself away from the position rather than boasting how you could but didn't do evil? Quite the accomplishment, only if you are actually evil. Thankfully your reputation is damaged beyond repair (it is nowhere near where it was a couple years back), and can only get worse given your failure to comply to the greater good.
teeGUMES you are an idiot, but go figure. Maybe merit some Hearnia and Andersonia too while you are at it.

My reputation is fine, most people just don't care about these things. Even if it was damaged beyond repair, being liked by random people on the internet isn't something I strive for. Who cares?

Take a look at the words you're using; "comply", "evil", "greater good", and insulting random users because they gave merit to one of my posts, how insecure, immature and ignorant are you? What are you so scared of? It's you that's the villain; screaming at me to comply, making demands, and aggressively smearing projects that have done more good for Bitcoin than you ever will. Shame on you.

It's people like you that make this forum so unwelcoming. By the way, thanks for your negative trust feedback, funny that you only mustered up the courage to do that after I was no longer owner of bitcointalk.org, perhaps you understood negative trusting the owner of the domain of the very site you're using would be comical.

[Lauda]

My reputation is fine, most people just don't care about these things

Living in a cave or refusing to admit it, either way works. Keep at it. Nobody respectable in this space, familiar with your words and actions, trusts you with $5.

It's people like you that make this forum so unwelcoming. By the way, thanks for your negative trust feedback, funny that you only mustered up the courage to do that after I was no longer owner of bitcointalk.org, perhaps you understood negative trusting the owner of the domain of the very site you're using would be comical.

It is neutral feedback. Lying, as expected of you. I did not do anything out of respect for theymos and his mistakes, one of which was trusting you very early on. This is no longer necessary.

[hacker1001101001]

Sad to see Cøbra downing the control towards an important aspect of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

More than imaginable number of users still see many of his works towards maintaing some important aspects of Bitcoin to be over the mark and think him being more creditable than he is now.

Sad update though.

[Cøbra]

It's people like you that make this forum so unwelcoming. By the way, thanks for your negative trust feedback, funny that you only mustered up the courage to do that after I was no longer owner of bitcointalk.org, perhaps you understood negative trusting the owner of the domain of the very site you're using would be comical.

It is neutral feedback. Lying, as expected of you. I did not do anything out of respect for theymoses mistakes, one of which was trusting you very early on. This is no longer necessary.

Doesn't sound very neutral to me:

Refused to decentralize Bitcoin.org control very likely due to long term malicious goals. I would not trust this user until proven otherwise (Not doing evil is not proof of good).

No, you didn't do anything before because you were scared it would have consequences for you (it wouldn't have), or that it would make you look stupid (it would), so you only acted now, which is cute.

[bonesjonesreturns]

I handed bitcointalk.org over to theymos because; I trust him and his judgement, and I was not really active on the forum anyway. You can question my trust all you like, but I have been in a position for a long time to screw over you guys if I wanted too, but I didn't. Some users will instinctively understand that and ignore the nonsense you're spouting off, others will get sucked in, but either way I don't really care and I'm going to continue to do my best to help Bitcoin succeed.

How about you take yourself away from the position rather than boasting how you could but didn't do evil? Quite the accomplishment, only if you are actually evil. Thankfully your reputation is damaged beyond repair (it is nowhere near where it was a couple years back), and can only get worse given your failure to comply to the greater good. Absence of evil is not proof of good.

1. If theymos who knows him better than you trusts him enough to hand it to him?
2. If he has had opportunities before to sabotage but has not done so?
3. Many years he has been solid in terms of correctly defending btc as bitcoin?

I will not heed the warnings of a proven scammer like you lauda nor the old perv nullius that seems to be their first to support your every whim over the judgement of theymos and the key points listed above. Also cobras post seems level headed and courteous in light of the snipes at him.

The only slight worry is that GM seemed not to be in the loop, because I would have assumed theymos and cobra may have mentioned the idea to him prior. Without hearing his detailed objections it is impossible to analyse and evaluate them.

I expect many will continue to use bitcoin.org

I accept there is risk in having a sole individual controlling bitcoin.org, but this hachette job a scumbag scammer and extortionist like lauda and that old perv nullius that follows lauda around are attempting is grotesque and unfair.

Let's hear theymos reasoning and GM  reasoning on it in detail before we start butchering a guys reputation to get what "we" think is best. Perhaps there are set in place some measures we are not aware of.

I don't see cobra has done anything against bitcoin that deserves this kind of abuse by the likes of lauda.

I liked it best when cobra and theymos shared ownership of both. I think both have served bitcoin well to this point so no need to start attacking either one in this way.

For sure it seems undeniably more risky for a sole controller, but character assassination is not fair at this point. You are likely to get a more desirable result with a reasonable and honest person if you treat them reasonably.

Lauda seems to be pushing cobra out all together that is not the way to approach it.

If the community really really disliked the idea,  Its possible they may reconsider.

End of the day I don't immediately see how this is better for bitcoin but I will hear more details of the concerns from trusted and solid members before becoming super concerned.  It does seem a very big change.

[Lauda]

It's people like you that make this forum so unwelcoming. By the way, thanks for your negative trust feedback, funny that you only mustered up the courage to do that after I was no longer owner of bitcointalk.org, perhaps you understood negative trusting the owner of the domain of the very site you're using would be comical.

It is neutral feedback. Lying, as expected of you. I did not do anything out of respect for theymoses mistakes, one of which was trusting you very early on. This is no longer necessary.

Doesn't sound very neutral to me:

Refused to decentralize Bitcoin.org control very likely due to long term malicious goals. I would not trust this user until proven otherwise (Not doing evil is not proof of good).

Neutral - Other comments.

The correct non-neutral wording would be to remove the 'very likely' which I will surely regret for putting in there down the road. Very rarely do I make a misjudgement of this kind.

No, you didn't do anything before because you were scared it would have consequences for you (it wouldn't have), or that it would make you look stupid (it would), so you only acted now, which is cute.

You could have not done anything and you know it, because I have known it for a long time. Try again. "Random", I wish.

[Vod]

It's people like you that make this forum so unwelcoming. By the way, thanks for your negative trust feedback

It is neutral feedback

Doesn't sound very neutral to me:

Lauda did enter it as neutral, and he is the one who best understands the tone of his feedback.  

This centralized DT system is broken (Techy is proof).  Maybe the new system will use AI and auto generate the feedback type based on the tone.  Until then, we should view trust as it was intended by the person leaving it.   We ALL know the difference to accounts for a negative vs neutral rating.

[bonesjonesreturns]

It's people like you that make this forum so unwelcoming. By the way, thanks for your negative trust feedback

It is neutral feedback

Doesn't sound very neutral to me:

Lauda did enter it as neutral, and he is the one who best understands the tone of his feedback.  

This centralized DT system is broken (Techy is proof).  Maybe the new system will use AI and auto generate the feedback type based on the tone.  Until then, we should view trust as it was intended by the person leaving it.   We ALL know the difference to accounts for a negative vs neutral rating.

It's 100% not a neutral comment.

Lauda is known for lashing out using the trust system as a weapon.
The merit system is totally broken. Trust is being conflated with merit.

Nobody in their right mind would have lauda anywhere near a trust system.

This is a character assassination and is totally the wrong way to approach this matter.
If you want cobra to be reasonable then you are going the wrong way about it.

Best case he and theymos revert things to how they were.

Who suggested it theymos or cobra first?
Either way best to debate this change without a scammer like lauda going full hate on the new sole controller of bitcoin.org.
Lose lose

[Vod]

It's 100% not a neutral comment.

It 101% is - negative comments are in red. 

[bonesjonesreturns]

It's 100% not a neutral comment.

It 101% is - negative comments are in red.  

Anyone reading the actual comment would not agree. Very likely you are a pedo? Is that neutral enough for you?
How would you view that under the guise of a neutral tag?
Not that i believe you are, but I hope you get the point

[Vod]

Anyone reading the actually comment would not agree. Very likely you are a pedo? Is that neutral enough for you?
How would you view that under the guise of a neutral tag?
Not that i believe you are, but I hope you get the point

As long as it's not negative and puts a -1 in my account to new members - people can write whatever they want in feedback - it's not moderated.  

[Lauda]

Anyone reading the actually comment would not agree. Very likely you are a pedo? Is that neutral enough for you?
How would you view that under the guise of a neutral tag?
Not that i believe you are, but I hope you get the point

As long as it's not negative and puts a -1 in my account to new members - people can write whatever they want in feedback - it's not moderated.  

The exact point of neutrals is that you can rant whatever you want in there, anything that is not a valid reason to give somebody a negative. Theymoses rules.

[teeGUMES]

I handed bitcointalk.org over to theymos because; I trust him and his judgement, and I was not really active on the forum anyway. You can question my trust all you like, but I have been in a position for a long time to screw over you guys if I wanted too, but I didn't. Some users will instinctively understand that and ignore the nonsense you're spouting off, others will get sucked in, but either way I don't really care and I'm going to continue to do my best to help Bitcoin succeed.

How about you take yourself away from the position rather than boasting how you could but didn't do evil? Quite the accomplishment, only if you are actually evil. Thankfully your reputation is damaged beyond repair (it is nowhere near where it was a couple years back), and can only get worse given your failure to comply to the greater good.
teeGUMES you are an idiot, but go figure. Maybe merit some Hearnia and Andersonia too while you are at it.

Cute ninja edit Lauda (emphasis mine to show Lauda's edit, quoted by Cøbra but then Foxpup merited it after Lauda's personal attack). Goes to show how your opinion sways when Foxpup, DdmrDdmr and others merit the post aswell. Scaredy cat.

What the coward changed it to once their friends started to merit.

Not a post worth meriting.

Cøbra sums you up perfectly here Lauda so no need for me to repeat anything. This is truly believed by well over half of the forum.

Take a look at the words you're using; "comply", "evil", "greater good", and insulting random users because they gave merit to one of my posts, how insecure, immature and ignorant are you? What are you so scared of? It's you that's the villain; screaming at me to comply, making demands, and aggressively smearing projects that have done more good for Bitcoin than you ever will. Shame on you.

It's people like you that make this forum so unwelcoming. By the way, thanks for your negative trust feedback, funny that you only mustered up the courage to do that after I was no longer owner of bitcointalk.org, perhaps you understood negative trusting the owner of the domain of the very site you're using would be comical.

[nullius]

Is Cøbra seriously pretending not to know the meaning of the term “neutral” in the context of forum feedback?  

I myself have been critical of the avoidance of responsibility for substantively negative neutral feedback based on only rumour and innuendo.  But that is clearly not what is happening here.  Lauda made a well-supported observation, and marked it as “neutral”.  Why is Cøbra deliberately confusing the issue by speaking as if she red-tagged him?

Also, it’s always nice to see whom the troll brigade is defending.  Anyway, as to the substance of the matter...

They won't ever talk about how much I've done to fight off many attacks, or when people were pressuring me to hand over the domain to the Bitcoin Foundation because it was more "respectable" and legitimate seeming, and I resisted because the foundation seemed shady (back then very few people realized it).

If you showed the foresight and wise judgment to distrust the clusterfork misadvertised as the so-called “Bitcoin Foundation”, then you should damn well know why people are worried about the potential that you may turn out to be another Gavin Andresen.

I so note this as the first and, thus far, only person who has red-tagged Gavin’s forum account.  Yes, that is symbolic; but if people won’t step up even that much...  Anyway, I think my point is clear about why people do not trust you to exclusively control bitcoin-dot-org:

References:
https://twitter.com/gavinandresen/status/929377620000681984
https://twitter.com/CobraBitcoin/status/1023566782001541120
https://twitter.com/CobraBitcoin/status/1037102542537334785
https://twitter.com/CobraBitcoin/status/1036652944916140032

Bitcoin.org was one of the most extreme and hostile towards these hard fork attacks: like here https://bitcoin.org/en/posts/denounce-segwit2x, and here, https://bitcoin.org/en/posts/hard-fork-policy. I was fervently against attempts like Bitcoin XT, BU, Segwit2x, etc, anyone who was around at the time will remember how aggressive Bitcoin.org and I were.

I was around at the time; and I do recall that it was specifically the “denounce-segwit2x” page linked above that gave bitcoin.org sufficient ongoing credibility for me to continue recommending it to newbies.

Should you doubt how hard I myself was against S2X particularly, back in 2017:

Traitors always evoke an intense feeling of horror and personal violation in those who trusted them.  Whenever I think of jgarzik, I think of dooglus’ comment which I memorialized in this screenshot when I was a Newbie, when I had been actively posting for less than five days:  “What have you done with the old jgarzik and how much will it cost us to buy him back?”  This was when 2X tried to subvert the Bitcoin P2P network; committer: jgarzik, whose code is not trustworthy.  Read that 28ebbdb commit for details.  Underhanded bastard.

[...]

Another one of my Newbie posts, from when I had been actively posting for seventeen days:

You fork, you die.

Genuine Bitcoin has crushed numerous forks and attempted forks:  “Bitcoin XT”, “Bitcoin Unlimited”, “Bitcoin Classic”, and the “New York Agreement” (misnamed “Segwit2X”; nothing to do with Segwit), to name but a few.  These no longer exist.  For the current outbreak of forks, if you wish to claim some fork coins, then dump them in exchange for real Bitcoin, and enjoy your free bitcoins.  Otherwise, simply ignore.  Anything from “Bitcoin Cash” to “Bitcoin Super Diamond Plus2X Plutonium With Ponies” is only a scam; and these scams will die sooner or later, just as did their antecedents.

There are many pretenders to the Bitcoin title.  However:

There is only one Bitcoin.

(Note:  Quote changed to refer to an imgur upload of the image that I originally obtained from http://segwit.party/nya/tombstone.jpg)

That tombstone could also read:  Here lies Jeff Garzik’s reputation in Bitcoinland.

Whereas Gavin Andresen is worse, much worse.

Their attempts to takeover Bitcoin would probably have had a much higher probability of success had I sided with them. If you're going to convincingly take over Bitcoin maliciously, you need 3 things: the miners so you can claim to have the most secure chain and have a stable blockchain (they had 80% of the hash rate), the consumer facing companies and exchanges so you can present your hard fork as Bitcoin to users (they had a lot of the companies backing them), and key public facing resources of trust like Bitcoin.org, that give you legitimacy and an endless number of incoming users from people searching "Bitcoin" through which you can gradually rebuild a new "Bitcoin community". The fact that they didn't have that hurt them a lot.

Within the four corners of what I just quoted, it is a good analysis.  However, you are drawing a false dichotomy between the threat of XT/BU/2X types of fork-attacks, and the threat of BCH/BSV/“Bitcoin Super Diamond Gold Mauve” types of fork-attacks.

Both are destructive to Bitcoin.  Both are based on lies, greed, and mass-manipulation.  This argument is like positing that it’s better for a cancer to metastasize outside the original tumour:

I would actually argue that Bitcoin Cash forking hurt the big blocker movement within Bitcoin pretty badly. Bitcoin Cash basically came out of nowhere, and many big blockers eventually kind of *had* to support it, after all the hard forks they tried in Bitcoin failed. Bitcoin Cash basically removed all the extreme big blockers from the Bitcoin community, it even took Roger Ver a little while to jump on board, but once they all did, it actually made Bitcoin safer as there was no longer a group of big blockers shouting a uniform narrative from within the Bitcoin community. Without Bitcoin Cash, we would have still had these extreme big blockers in the community for a lot longer.

Say what?

The real nightmare scenario is not these coins with Bitcoin in the name damaging trust, but a world in which there are disagreements over the name "Bitcoin" itself.

Have you not been around for long enough to see all the “Bitcoin Cash is the real Bitcoin” arguments?

ill say it here...BITCOIN CASH IS THE REAL BITCOIN
I got red trust because i speak the truth....This thread shows why many long term users are being tagged red, ...https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2399315.msg24593043#msg24593043 , chk theymos comment.
Bitcoin cash is the real upgrade bitcoin needed, not segwit.btc is no longer what people think it was...https://www.segwetters.org/

Signature quoted to illustrate a point:  What’s with the martyrdom complex?

ASICBOOSTCOIN has the odour of a cult/sect.  Not even one of the fun ones:  I mean the boring kind of garden-variety cult whose messiah shears disciples of all their money, whereafter everybody commits mass suicide.  As such, it seems eerily appropriate that this scamcoin is fronted by a self-touted “Bitcoin Jesus”, Roger Ver.

That is one of my “Newbie” posts, from the same thread as:

Bitcoin Cash was spawned from the Bitcoin blockchain, and as such, maybe it should be allowed to use the word "Bitcoin" with a qualifying suffix.

No. Bitcoin Cash is nothing other than a blatant scam.

I quote that specifically because n.b. that Jet Cash is neither a n00b nor a shill.  That makes it particularly alarming that he would fall for this type of scam argument.

No matter how much you try to trick users, if the first Bitcoin site started by Satoshi himself, and mentioned in the whitepaper is calling your hard fork a fake, it's really hard to build legitimacy.

Although bitcoin.org is a very influential site (and we would not be otherwise having this discussion), the set of all people who know that bitcoin-dot-org is “the first Bitcoin site started by Satoshi himself” is numerically minuscule relative to the set of all people who see bitcoin-dot-com as legitimate because it is the Dot-Com.

Ultimately, what has actively stopped BCH from winning the public-relations mindshare war is that an unorganized, decentralized cadre of Bitcoiners who have pushed back unequivocally.  This set very visibly includes Greg Maxwell, and also his former colleagues at Blockstream—Dr. Back, et al.  It very visibly includes laanwj and harding, whom Lauda mentioned.  It very visibly does not include you, the exclusive controller of bitcoin-dot-org.

And about your screenshots of the Slack chats: I don't really see anything wrong there to be honest with you. It's funny how Adam Back was so hostile to me back then about me seeing some good things in Bitcoin Cash because I always thought a blockchain that sacrifices some decentralization in order to be able to handle more transactions was kind of necessary, and now he's out there pushing Blockstream's Liquid which is literally a sidechain controlled by companies in which your BTC gets morphed and required to be held in trust by federation partners so you can get the benefit of quicker transactions since blocks are more regular.

The day that Blockstream starts pushing Liquid as something other than a private commercial venture that is complementary to Bitcoin, primarily for the handling of non-Bitcoin assets, is the day that I unequivocally condemn Blockstream and everybody involved in it.  Whereas there are no indications of any such thing; and as it stands, Blockstream has a stainless track record for promoting privacy, decentralization, solid Bitcoin R&D, and Lightning.  (Also as a coder, I appreciate the cleanliness of their open-source code.)  Thus your statement is basically FUD on Dr. Back, Dr. Wuille, and their current and former colleagues at Blockstream.

To be execruciatingly clear, I don’t trust Blockstream!  To anyone with technical expertise, their self-evident agenda is, “Don’t trust us:  Keep Bitcoin trustless.”  I like that:  Keep down the blocksize so that ordinary people can keep running nodes (I say this with real-world experience needing to run Bitcoin on inexpensive hardware), and promote Lightning as the future of scaling and privacy.  For as long as that remains the agenda demonstrated by their actions and their code (not merely their words), I will continue to defend Blockstream’s reputation in public discussions.

(I have been intending to write a forum essay about this.  Disclosure:  I have no affiliation with Dr. Back, other than that I always liked his cypherpunks stuff, and I first discovered Hashcash in the 90s.)

Whereas, with a different emphasis:

And about your screenshots of the Slack chats: I don't really see anything wrong there to be honest with you. It's funny how Adam Back was so hostile to me back then about me seeing some good things in Bitcoin Cash because I always thought a blockchain that sacrifices some decentralization in order to be able to handle more transactions was kind of necessary

Thanks for clarifying.  The highlighted portion is exactly why people don’t trust you to be the exclusive controller of bitcoin-dot-org.

More or less the reason people don't trust me is because I said some good things about Bitcoin Cash a while ago, that's all it boils down too. They don't actually have a reason beyond that,

We don’t actually need a reason beyond that.

and their calls for me to transfer the domain to others are intended to push me out because they fear me.

Fear has nothing to do with it, I assure you.

They'd rather have someone in control of bitcoin.org who is easier to manipulate and who bends to groupthink and public pressure more easily.

laanwj et al. bend to groupthink and public pressure?  LOL.  Try pushing them around, and see how far you get.

Edit 2020-04-22:  Fixed a very embarrassing typo.  Alas, I erred!  :-(