Bitcointalk's Alexa Rating during this bitcoin bull run and some funny stats..

[RapTarX]

@nutildah you are quite a famous man...

I guess it’s the BSV gangs who is looking for who is nutildah as nutildah had created scam accusation thread against BSV which have been a discussion in the reddit too, shared here- https://amp.reddit.com/r/bitcoincashSV/comments/fzs4bm/nutildah_the_troll_that_made_the_scam_thread/

[LTU_btc]

Reminds me of how worthless TV ratings are. In the UK at least there's a Broadcasters Board and they recruit a mere 12,000 people to report back to them about what they're watching and how they rate the program. Given that there's 66+ million people in the UK I'm not sure how they're meant to represent the entire population, and especially not accurately.

I think they are doing same thing with TV ratings in most countries. It's not accurate at all, but probably there is some reasons why they are using such ineffective method.

There used to be a bitcoin-based Ad Network by the name of Mellow Ads (don't know if it still exists or not). The network had requirement that website needs to have Alexa rank lower than 200K to be listed as publisher.

So don't know about others but the motive behind downloading the extension for me was to improve Alexa rank of my websites. I used to download the extension during the development phase (400-500 pageviews daily) and it usually took 13-14 days to improve the rank and make it less 200K. It was that easy to manipulate Alexa rank back then. Since then never bothered to remove the extension and it's still active in my browser.

Mellowads is still alive and they still have this requirement. There is some more Bitcoin based ad networks which have Alexa rank based approval requirements, but it's not such high as on Mellowads.
Besides reasons that you mentioned, I don't know why anyone would install Alexa extension.

[hilariousetc]

Reminds me of how worthless TV ratings are. In the UK at least there's a Broadcasters Board and they recruit a mere 12,000 people to report back to them about what they're watching and how they rate the program. Given that there's 66+ million people in the UK I'm not sure how they're meant to represent the entire population, and especially not accurately.

I think they are doing same thing with TV ratings in most countries. It's not accurate at all, but probably there is some reasons why they are using such ineffective method.

Well there's probably no better way to do it unless you can somehow see/track what people watch directly on their TV automatically, which I don't think there is other than digital streams, but that would seem pretty Orwellian anyway if they were tracking everything you watched on TV. People would probably have to agree to it. I wonder how many shows have been cancelled for 'low viewership' just because the people who report back to the powers that be are a bunch of idiots or like crappy run-of-the mill shows.

There used to be a bitcoin-based Ad Network by the name of Mellow Ads (don't know if it still exists or not). The network had requirement that website needs to have Alexa rank lower than 200K to be listed as publisher.

So don't know about others but the motive behind downloading the extension for me was to improve Alexa rank of my websites. I used to download the extension during the development phase (400-500 pageviews daily) and it usually took 13-14 days to improve the rank and make it less 200K. It was that easy to manipulate Alexa rank back then. Since then never bothered to remove the extension and it's still active in my browser.

Mellowads is still alive and they still have this requirement. There is some more Bitcoin based ad networks which have Alexa rank based approval requirements, but it's not such high as on Mellowads.
Besides reasons that you mentioned, I don't know why anyone would install Alexa extension.

Most people won't want to install extensions unless there's some benefit to it. How many people have even heard of alexa rankings being extension-based. I certainly haven't. People generally only want to give away this sort of into when they're either getting paid for it or they get something for free in exchange. Otherwise why bother?

[malevolent]

Alexa is completely unreliable. I say that as someone that has had an Alexa top 1000 site and had access to the server side stats.

Lol anyone finding bct via a nutildah link is likely in for an interesting read.
Willing scam facilitator for pay who attempts to delete his own history out of shame DT member, sig spammer and trust abuser.

Nice intro to the site.

All of these are largely irrelevant to a newbie who registered to ask a question or participate in discussions.

Anyway, whilst the merit system is in place I wouldn't expect any 2017 or even 13 volume increases.
Once word is out that a system is corrupt and broken and cuts off opportunities for new members it's hard to fix.
Sadly you will see other places outgrow the original bitcoin community.

There are better places to go to for people with short attention spans preferring flashy websites. It's also worth admitting that the market offers now more channels to communicate with like-minded people than discussion forums, and some people are just going to innately prefer them, there's nothing wrong in that.

Bitcointalk is an archaic forum running on old software.
Bitcointalk does not delete scams.
Instead, its moderators refrain from making that choice for you, letting you be the arbiter.
Additionally, it even allows ponzi operators to create their threads in their own specialized place!

How lovely! I'm sure that 99% of Bitcoin users would aptly say, "no need to change anything"

Ah, and if you're a Newbie trying to learn about Bitcoin? Ask a question. Wait 6 minutes to ask another question. Wait between two to four weeks to bypass that limit, or pay to get into this forum of which you have no use.

Anything to do with policing scams would involve occasionally treating non-scammers as scammers (for example by raising the barrier of entry to start threads in some boards), and giving other users a false sense of security as smarter scammers inevitably scam them. Not to mention the extra resources needed for all of that, there's a reason the Trust system was introduced in 2013 and the SCAMMER tags were depreciated.

It's also not unusual for new users to have to wait a bit before posting again to combat spam.

Agree on the software being archaic, though.

[snip]

The forum's primary purpose of existing isn't making people rich from bounties and signature or avatar campaigns.

Alexa ratings are pretty useless. The ratings are calculated based on the pages surfed by the users who have Alexa extension downloaded in their browser. Now tell me how many of you have Alexa extension downloaded?

Considering Indian section is pretty inactive and there aren't many Indians on forum, India coming at second spot is certainly due to me. I have Alexa installed since 2018. I guess nutildah has Alexa installed too and he uses search engine to login to his profile.  Well, if not then it's pretty impresive.

Dang. I didn't realise that. That is pretty much worthless. What motivation does someone have to install the extension? I could understand if they get paid for it somehow, but I doubt it. Seems that data can come from the websites themselves as well if they've included the Alexa script, but still how many of them do? Reminds me of how worthless TV ratings are. In the UK at least there's a Broadcasters Board and they recruit a mere 12,000 people to report back to them about what they're watching and how they rate the program. Given that there's 66+ million people in the UK I'm not sure how they're meant to represent the entire population, and especially not accurately. That's one good thing about streaming services as they know exactly how many people are watching.

Toolbars aren't used anymore since their popularity peaked probably over a decade ago, it's from Alexa's scripts on websites but mostly from extensions (25k different extensions according to Alexa).

12k/66m can be enough, all depends if the sample of the population is representative which is the difficult part but shouldn't be a problem when given enough thought how to do it.

[actmyname]

Anything to do with policing scams would involve occasionally treating non-scammers as scammers (for example by raising the barrier of entry to start threads in some boards), and giving other users a false sense of security as smarter scammers inevitably scam them. Not to mention the extra resources needed for all of that, there's a reason the Trust system was introduced in 2013 and the SCAMMER tags were depreciated.

It's also not unusual for new users to have to wait a bit before posting again to combat spam.

All of that is fine and good if theymos wants to run the forum in that way.

I am echoing some sentiments from members that I have seen over the years: plenty of people have turned away from Bitcointalk for the very reasons that I mentioned - lack of scam protection apart from this really convoluted trust system that you need to learn - the barriers to entry for Newbies aren't solely limited to posting obligations. The users that are incentivized to join Bitcointalk in this case would be those that value the freedoms provided by the forum, including freedom to create thousands of scam coin announcements, airdrops at no/low-cost, publish ponzi threads, write bland and uninteresting content, or do a combination of the above while trolling users and bloating the forum with spam of their scam.

Outside of the topic of scamming, new users effectively have no on-boarding process and are left (mostly) to their devices. Never mind figuring out merit and trust, good luck even finding out it exists if you're the average user that sees the first board "Bitcoin Discussion", reads a few shitty threads, and thinks that the forum is a waste of time.

Would it help if the Beginners & Help section was the first thing they saw? Maybe perhaps this thread, too? Especially when, relative to the stats, the view count of the four year-old thread gets outpaced with less than a quarter of that time. I'm not sure if the "Users Online" portion is accurate. Seems to always be sub-1000, according to the history here too.The forum just seems to be exceptionally unfriendly to new faces.

[malevolent]

I am echoing some sentiments from members that I have seen over the years: plenty of people have turned away from Bitcointalk for the very reasons that I mentioned - lack of scam protection apart from this really convoluted trust system that you need to learn - the barriers to entry for Newbies aren't solely limited to posting obligations.

Outside of the topic of scamming, new users effectively have no on-boarding process and are left (mostly) to their devices. Never mind figuring out merit and trust, good luck even finding out it exists if you're the average user that sees the first board "Bitcoin Discussion", reads a few shitty threads, and thinks that the forum is a waste of time.

Would it help if the Beginners & Help section was the first thing they saw? Maybe perhaps this thread, too? Especially when, relative to the stats, the view count of the four year-old thread gets outpaced with less than a quarter of that time. I'm not sure if the "Users Online" portion is accurate. Seems to always be sub-1000, according to the history here too.The forum just seems to be exceptionally unfriendly to new faces.

I think there was a welcome message of sorts for newbies about the Trust system. And there was supposed to be a general one about the forum, too. But I've created a new account and I don't see anything so it seems it may have never been put into place.

The users that are incentivized to join Bitcointalk in this case would be those that value the freedoms provided by the forum, including freedom to create thousands of scam coin announcements, airdrops at no/low-cost, publish ponzi threads, write bland and uninteresting content

Thankfully the worst of them are confined to boards outsiders have no need of visiting.

or do a combination of the above while trolling users and bloating the forum with spam of their scam.

Only theymos, Cyrus and Global mods can ban non-newbies and trolls almost always needed to be really disruptive before they got banned. If reporting doesn't help start a topic about the specific troll. The more people complain about something the more likely it is that something is going to be done.

[Laudanum]

I mean as we've established Alexa is largely misleading and not really a reliable indication on volume or source of that volume.
The clear point is this.
You want large volume then there has to be access to financial opportunity to all members. Not just a tiny minority who clearly want to garden wall those opportunities.
I mean you have to face facts.

1. The vast vast vast majority came here to make money not to learn about the finer workings of bitcoin.
2. People here are all about making money. Hence why every one here is spamming the highest paying banners they can.

So sure you want to make it all about genuine enthusiasts that want to learn about bitcoin. You will retain a tiny fraction of the volume it once had.
All you are really left with are

1. Merit sources aka DT and paid mods all advertising chipmixer and other highly paid sigs for max milking. Ot being paid directly also.
2. Early adopters that like to pop in here and there.
3. Real enthusiasts that just love talking about bitcoin unicorns
4. Alt communities that have dwindled to those holding large bags and have no other option.
5. New visitors that a tiny % of will become regulars.
6. Alt teams that have nowhere else to launch easily
7. The odd low level scammers looking for prey.

I would guess at a max that is maybe 5% of the volume you would have if you manage correctly masses of people that will spend all their energy here for a few dollars of shit coin bounties per day. That really is the choice. Volume or an improved general quality with no volume.

Its fine to say that bct doesnt exist to enrich shitposters,  bounty hunters etc. But there is very little point to bct now anyway unless it is to grow a large community hub for alts. I mean bct could vanish tomorrow and would bitcoin notice?  They are teaching bitcoin in schools now, you can learn about bitcoin in many various places. Bitcoin has now hit critical mass required, its known by virtually everyone. It is being cleaned up by whales and huge corps. Bitcoin has vastly outgrown bct.

If I could say bitcointalk has one useful purpose it would actually be a central hub for alt projects. They would and have suffered a lot more especially if bct closed. The bitcoin board wasnt really that busy even on prior bull runs compared to the up tick on the alts section.

The energy and determination of the bounty hunters should have been harnessed, graded and rewarded via a transparent objective and fair system. A real meritocracy.
Instead it was entirely destroyed by a terrible design.
All those bounty hunters spamming social media with links back to bct icos and telling their buddies to jump on bct and do the same as them cos they were making 50 bucks a day could have been retained and put to good use. Even their posts will bring in seo traffic to some degree. Those people were useful for icos. Those people tended to gamble it on other alts. It wasnt maybe pretty but since most on meta never have anything to do with the alt section then why worry?
I mean look at ivory tower? I'm guessing sigs aren't allowed or paid in there lol

I would have had junior alternative boards for each section  Where people could earn their way to the senior boards.
I mean if you only care about bitcoin and worry if that section is kept to a certain standard why care so much about the bounty hunters going wild on the alt boards? If you were concerned about people coming in via the junior boards or even the alt boards in general just have a big banner at the top ( like the one branding people with no financially dangerous behaviors as scammers we have now) saying some members believe this part of the forum is shit hole spam pit click here to come and talk about bitcoin. or click here to visit the senior boards.

If you are smart in life you can use energy that is currently neutral or even reasonably negative and make it work for you.

These unicorns  coming to learn about bitcoin that dont care about self enrichment at all will just let the forum rumble on with very low volume.  

However it's not only over policing and unfair broken control systems such as merit that have killed volume.

1. Dilution death alts all rushing to zero
2. Ico fad is stagnant. I mean new projects cant be bothered if there is no traffic.  
3. People have all heard about bitcoin now so even when you hit an all time high and MSM  goes on about it it doesn't alert people to bitcoin for the first time anymore.
4. People burned hardest by the large legit scams aka huge projects with real dev teams that ended up raising huge amounts....just never produced anything or dev money ran out or dev team fell out or new improved project took over,  endless excuses and bullshit and relaunches of new icos based on tech they funded from the last ico. They probably wont return.
5. Those that became the idle rich. They dont need bct anymore just lurk now and then


People arguing for bitcointalk to become all about genuine enthusiasts to learn about bitcoin with no care for making money must accept that will be a very tiny forum.
Take away sig banners and other rev streams for DT and everyone else and watch it shrink a lot more.

Bct has no purpose now as such. People have uses for bct. Take away its financial use it's done.
DT and merit sources and mods want money.... guess what other people want lol
You think DT will be here or mods be here with no money? Lol please they wont be here answering any newbies bitcoin questions or hunting scammers or trust abusing whistleblowers.

Theymos is crazy if he think any of meta board would be here if he banned sigs.
Compared to them all maxing out their post quotas now that bitcoin is at 40k

You may have one or 2 posting now and then if you're lucky.
You cut off everyones paid2post or reduce it massively or make it unfair and awkward or you force people to kiss ass to a tiny subset of greedy scroungers...
Yes the forum volume dwindles.

You want volume on the forum now look to alts not bitcoin and also start giving everyone a taste not letting a few greedy pigs keep their noses in the trough full time. Whilst scouring others for wanting some crumbs.

Anyway like you say who knows what theymos purpose for the forum is?
Maybe he isn't bothered that much.
Bct achieved its goal. It build a community around bitcoin. The community has pushed bitcoin mainstream or past the point where only coordinated gov action can stop it now. Job done.

Guess it doesn't matter about bct anymore. Bitcoin was the paradigm shift not bct.
Theymos and others guided it very well to the critical point. That's all that mattered.
The rocket booster has successfully launched the ship.

As a core alt hub it does still have a lot of potential. Not as it is designed now perhaps but with some changes.
I like reading it for the history. What is left now in terms of volume or worse in terms of interesting and outstanding characters is not even a shell.

Maybe we dont even need to worry about the volume of the forum. It succeeded at what it was created for. People can still come and learn and contribute. I guess over all there stil isn't anywhere better. I've been a member and prolific poster on some other large forums but this one from 2012 -2017 was by far the best. It's just a shame that they didnt flip the switch for junior sections on all boards on as soon as the mass influx of children and desperate spammers appeared willing to go to extreme lengths to grab all they could.

It's easy to talk solutions I guess. Another thing implementing them successfully.
Strange, this was going to be a short post.