[POLL] Should Bitcointalk moderate what coins can be posted in the ANN section ?

[poornamelessme]

you were free to address what i said but you chose to make this personal in the reply i just quoted.
If you disagree then say so.. i'm not stopping you.
i caught you being a hypocrite and pointed it out.. You can post garbage but it's against the law to stop the garbage ?
tell me how that isn't a situation where you demand no rules until i want to stop your coin then you want rules..
then you ignore responding to any assertion i made and change the subject and go after me..

stick to the topic please.

The only thing personal I said was that you agreed with those who wanted to fork and wreck coins. I didn't say a word about you personally, troll or insult you.

And I am not a dev. I haven't even been here very long ... I'd be considered a newbie by you, someone who needs protection from evil scam coins.

And if someone posts what you perceive as a scam coin, you can stop them. Post about it, post in their threads, educate people. Also keep in mind that your perception of what a scam coin is, may be simply wrong too.

[Spoetnik]

ok well sorry then.
can we just carry on with the topic and not about me please.
i usually picture like an American presidential debate on forum topics..
that is my perspective.. i chose to post my view or an angle etc and then i hope other will do the same.
i am dead serious when i say if someone comes along and posts a piece of info that is compelling enough i will as always flip flop on my opinion on the spot.
i highly value everyones input and what makes me any degree of smart is the fact that i am willing to relearn anything and try and listen objectively to people.
so.. by all means convince me ..change my mind on this issue guys.

edit:
In case some of you don't know i was last year butting heads with BitcoinEXpress way back when he had made some statements about forking some coins..
I thought back then he was out of line. Over some time i came to the conclusion he did and agree with him and ever since.
So yeah guys i sure as hell see what your saying .. i used to be one of you !
But my almost one year in crypto has drastically changed my view on things.

i also have been an voracious advocate of file sharing in P2P circles and defend the right to share files (aka piracy)
Other names i use online often have a Pirate Party of Canada logo lol
I mention that because i have been butting heads and debating piracy with copyright trolls for a decade or two.
I see a clear difference between some healthy debate and just mud slinging..

[poornamelessme]

ok well sorry then.
can we just carry on with the topic and not about me please.
i usually picture like an American presidential debate on forum topics..
that is my perspective.. i chose to post my view or an angle etc and then i hope other will do the same.
i am dead serious when i say if someone comes along and posts a piece of info that is compelling enough i will as always flip flop on my opinion on the spot.
i highly value everyones input and what makes me any degree of smart is the fact that i am willing to relearn anything and try and listen objectively to people.
so.. by all means convince me ..change my mind on this issue guys.

So long as we remain civil, I'd be happy to have an actual discussion. One thing that I find very odd here is how people use the word scam. Normally, I'd apply the term if a dev offered an ipo, then kept the money and ran off. Or if there was a premine meant for promotion, and the dev pocketed it. Those are scams.

But very often people here shout out 'scamcoin', and apply it to almost anything.

A meme coin with a reasonable 1% premine. Scam! The coin has no unique features.

It's a bad idea, and probably a waste of a coin, but to me it's not a scam.

Nation coins -- which to many here are complete scams. I will agree that the devs certainly could pocket the premines and walk off. But I disagree calling them scams until an actual scam is committed. By deciding to ddos pools/wreck the coin, it's the same as saying -- hey, my neighbor looks shady... he has a lot of nice stuff he shouldn't have... let's burn down his house just to make sure he's not stealing anything!

So to me, the word scam is overused here. Where it does apply, however, and where it is a problem, is with exchanges.

Junk coins,  scamcoins, or whatever you want to call them, are not the reason btc has decreased in value. It was Gox. The more exchanges that go under and steal/lose coins, the less confidence people will have in crytpos on general. What did we lose in the past month or so, three alt exchanges in a row? Along with people's coins, and probably many won't bother investing in cryptos again. That is the real problem.

[Spoetnik]

wow interesting the votes have been evening out.. when i posted it was was more NO than yes.

if you guy missed this can you vote please ? I am curious what the community thinks overall.

[Crestington]

I voted yes because I think there should be tougher rules in regards to the coins to be added. I do disagree with intentially causing damage to coins because you don't like the way it was set up.

Coins I would consider as a low quality coin would be POW only coins which are really just clones trying to pass themselves off as self sustainable coins. Other dangerous coins include extremely random rewards and extremely quick distributions.

If you want a real solution... Proof of Stake with sharing of transaction fees across the network. All transactions, buy or sell are charged a fee which goes to all the other holders of the coin.

[crimealone]

Some obvious scam coin should be banned!!

[shinep]

I voted Yes, because lot of these new shit coins is acting like a deterrent for the newbies.
For the community to grow we need more adoption by new people and as a community we should do what we can
do to protect them from scammers.

[Spoetnik]

well said and thank you, few people show any concern at all for new guys.
i myself first came here and was overwhelmed with so much info to learn and read.
and my first experience was basically i tried to mine Litecoin and realized quick that i was getting nothing.
i then started looking around and seen FTC and i admit i just got here and their talk had me convinced..
so i started mining that because it was easier to get going and making something even if it wasn't much.
later i realized it's not just a clone of LTC but its not really going to go anywhere and the devs are good at hyping people up to make you think otherwise.

new users need to know how much deceptive smoke and mirrors activity goes on.
and how hard coin cloners want them to support their coin(s) ..they will say anything.
like the guy trying to scam me on Localbitcoins other day.. the guy fed me all kinds of bs trying to rip me off and failed of course lol

the longer you are involved in the altcoin the more you will in time how much people are completely full of shit around here..
from coin cloners hoping to sucker people into getting involved in their clone coin(s) to bagholders bullshitting you about their predictions.

[eightspaces]

First of all Bitcointalk should ban Spoetnik for being a pathetic loser.

[drippx]

I'm kinda new. I'd vote no, but I dont mine I just invest and learned how all this works (hype and smokes n screens) in maybe less than a few weeks

[eightspaces]

Spoetnik wants Bitcointalk to turn into a fascist place

Good luck with that Spoetnik

[woetohice]

So if you all say there should be no rules then i have no choice but to assume you agree with molesting little children or raping women or or or..

Seriously?  OK, let's start at the beginning...

One (and many people would say the only) legitimate purpose of government is to protect freedom.  Rape victims do not choose to be raped.  Molested children do not choose to be molested.  Their rights -- their freedom -- is being taken away.  That is why there are laws against those things, and why those laws are a legitimate function of government.

Now, Spoetnik, how much have you been forced to invest in scam coins?  Zero.  No one is forcing you -- no one is forcing anyone -- to invest in these coins.  The investors are exercising their freedom of choice.

You want to take that freedom away.

Normally, the counter argument is that the authoritarians just want to "protect" the people from themselves.  The authoritarians are elitists who see themselves as superior to the masses, so they should be the ones deciding who deserves which freedom.

And in some cases, they actually believe they are serving the public good.

So what's the problem with that, if they actually are the experts in the market, and if they are trying to serve the public good?  Well, look back to the central tenant of capitalism: People act in their own self-interest.

The "review committee," in this case, will make decisions based on what is best for them personally.  This can't be solved by finding "good" people.  It's not a character defect.  It's simply human nature.  "Where you stand depends on where you sit."  Our point of view on any issue is ALWAYS colored by self-interest, even when we truly do not believe this is the case.

Politically, the elegant solution that the framers of the US Constitution came up with is to recognize that self-interest is going to be central to every decision and to pit interests against each other set up a system of checks and balances and oversight to protect the rights of the minority.  

But how are you possibly going to have any oversight in a situation like this forum?  It's not going to happen.  Oversight of the decision-making committee is not part of the proposal, and even if it were, it would be cumbersome, expensive, and very likely completely ineffective.  No one is going to be on the committee if it means they are subject to financial review.  But how else are you going to catch members cheating the system?  So the effects of self-interest are magnified.  For example, the people on this committee will receive lots of bribe offers.  What makes you think that they won't take them?  Blind trust?

Economically, Adam Smith postulated that the "invisible hand" of the market arises from competing self-interest.  "The theory for the Invisible Hand states that if each consumer is allowed to choose freely what to buy and each producer is allowed to choose freely what to sell and how to produce it, the market will settle on a product distribution and prices that are beneficial to all the individual members of a community, and hence to the community as a whole."

So what you are proposing is taking away freedom of the many for the benefit of a chosen few.  Is it any wonder that people aren't eager to go along with your plan?

[RenegadeMind]

No.

Let us decide what coins we want to mine/buy/sell/hear about/blah blah blah.

Free market blah blah blah...

I get that the shitcoins create a lot of noise. It's a real pisser. But I'd rather have noise than a sanitized version that probably would end up throwing out a few babies with the bathwater.

[memecoin]

Why should the majority of this Bitcoin forum care about the proliferation of garbage in this section of the forum? As BCX stated, this section just serves as a garbage collector to keep the latest shitclone propaganda out of the main Bitcoin discussion.  Besides, this isn't the only place on the entirety of the internet that the newest scam can be announced, and if this section does receive harsher moderation, the scam will move elsewhere.  I think iGotSpots stated the answer to this thread eloquently.

No

[KingSchultz]

Yes, let's give a small group of people advanced notice of promising coins.

[poornamelessme]

new users need to know how much deceptive smoke and mirrors activity goes on.
and how hard coin cloners want them to support their coin(s) ..they will say anything.
like the guy trying to scam me on Localbitcoins other day.. the guy fed me all kinds of bs trying to rip me off and failed of course lol

the longer you are involved in the altcoin the more you will in time how much people are completely full of shit around here..
from coin cloners hoping to sucker people into getting involved in their clone coin(s) to bagholders bullshitting you about their predictions.

There is some validity to that argument. A simple thread detailing what new people should look out for, would suffice. Although I do question how useful it may be, seeing as everyone here has a different definition of a shitcoin/scam. Same goes for coin moderation ... what the moderators deem unworthy, others may deem acceptable.

And as for protecting newbies from these evil scams -- how long did it take you to spot worthless coins? Or scams? I started 3 months ago, and it's not like I'm getting ripped off anywhere... most scams are easy to spot. Most junkcoins are easy to spot. I should also add, a person can still make money from what you deem junkcoins, so long as you are smart and know when to get in, and when to get out.

If you see an IPO from a weird coin, with no assurances, it's probably not a great idea to give them any money. If someone puts up an ann for taxicoin, or some revolutionary coin based on a meme, it's probably not a great idea to invest your life savings. It's common sense. Having a select group of people choose which coins people can even read about, isn't the answer.

Again, the big scams are the shady exchanges.  And no amount of forum moderation will improve that. Although I do suggest that if enough exchanges pop up, perhaps a poll/rating on trustworthiness of specific exchanges could be useful to people.

[memecoin]

Gavin sums it up pretty good in this thread pinned to the top of the Alternate cryptocurrencies section.  The same common sense that applied in 2011 applies in 2014.

I haven't seen anybody post about what would be my biggest worry if I were trying out alternative block chains. I realize this may be perceived as "Gavin is FUD'ding anything that isn't bitcoin!"  (FUD == Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt)  But I think some of you might be forgetting some basic computer security fundamentals in the excitement to be early adopters.

When I first heard about bitcoin, my questions were:

1) Can it possibly work (do the ideas for how it works make sense)?
2) Is it a scam?
3) If it is not a scam, could it open my computer up to viruses/trojans if I run it?

I answered those questions by:

1) Reading and understanding Satoshi's whitepaper.  Then thinking about it for a day or two and reading it again.
2) Finding out everything I could about the project.  I read every forum thread here (there were probably under a hundred threads back then) and read Satoshi's initial postings on the crypto mailing list.
3) Downloaded and skimmed the source code to see if it looked vulnerable to buffer overflow or other remotely exploitable attacks.

If I were going to experiment with an alternative block-chain, I'd go through the same process again. But I'm an old conservative fuddy-duddy.

If you want to take a risk on a brand-new alternative block-chain, I'd strongly suggest that you:

1) Run the software in a virtual machine or on a machine that doesn't contain anything valuable.
2) Don't invest more money or time than you can afford to lose.
3) Use a different passphrase at every exchange site.

[Crestington]

Gavin sums it up pretty good in this thread pinned to the top of the Alternate cryptocurrencies section.  The same common sense that applied in 2011 applies in 2014.

I haven't seen anybody post about what would be my biggest worry if I were trying out alternative block chains. I realize this may be perceived as "Gavin is FUD'ding anything that isn't bitcoin!"  (FUD == Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt)  But I think some of you might be forgetting some basic computer security fundamentals in the excitement to be early adopters.

When I first heard about bitcoin, my questions were:

1) Can it possibly work (do the ideas for how it works make sense)?
2) Is it a scam?
3) If it is not a scam, could it open my computer up to viruses/trojans if I run it?

I answered those questions by:

1) Reading and understanding Satoshi's whitepaper.  Then thinking about it for a day or two and reading it again.
2) Finding out everything I could about the project.  I read every forum thread here (there were probably under a hundred threads back then) and read Satoshi's initial postings on the crypto mailing list.
3) Downloaded and skimmed the source code to see if it looked vulnerable to buffer overflow or other remotely exploitable attacks.

If I were going to experiment with an alternative block-chain, I'd go through the same process again. But I'm an old conservative fuddy-duddy.

If you want to take a risk on a brand-new alternative block-chain, I'd strongly suggest that you:

1) Run the software in a virtual machine or on a machine that doesn't contain anything valuable.
2) Don't invest more money or time than you can afford to lose.
3) Use a different passphrase at every exchange site.

+1

I think this is something often overlooked and the majority of people will simply invest in things just because it's going up which in itself is a problem. To add to this you should also find out about the community itself, does it have long term plans and goals? How well does the community get along and are the leaders of the community readily accessible and can answer all your questions? How do they handle negative situations and conflict resolution?

Community in my opinion is the make or break of a currency, without strong leadership nothing can get done. Innovation is also a big key in long term viability as it is no longer about just making a coin and watching it go to the moon, if you can get the community behind you, there is no restrictions on the changes that can be made and with proper planning and testing, you are free of all restrictions that the code represents.

[solarflare]

Thank god people vote against moderation (which often leads to censorship).
Faith restored!

[Coinmin]

What if all the devs will go to another forum ? People will follow them because mining for BTC is too hard and they want to play the pump&dump game in order to make a quick buck.

In my opinion, should be given the opportunity to develop new coins. After the coins will be popular enough, they become self-reliant. For example, DOGE have a great community, and they have to communicate only on reddit now.