Topic: Bitcoin Pizza Day - Why old members are no longer active here (Read 945 times)

old bitcoin developers have already spent their old coins and are now advertising their new coins, into the market, this will never stop so dont even wonder.

I think old members concentrated on trading and they do not need the forum so much to hear news and chat with others, because of there appeared a lot of sites about crypto currencies and all social networks have specialized groups.

I don’t know if it’s ALL of the reasons but it is all of the reasons I witnessed. I was very active back then for the only reason that I didn’t mention - cryptocurrency was trendy, edgy, cool and it was fun watching it unfold.

At the expense of seeming like one of those “old guys” romanticizing their youth, I’ll tell you the feeling bitcoin had in the beginning. I went to one of the very first bitcoin conventions held at the Hotel Kabuki off Fillmore (San Francisco’s Japantown district). I lived down the street at the time so it wasn’t hard to get there. I’m a horrible gate crasher (have been ever since I saw Led Zepplin play for free in Oakland in 1977 and began wondering why I ever paid). So, as a gate crasher I just walked in to the convention and shook hands with Tony Gallippi, Jered Kenna, and a host of the other power players of the early days. The excitement and energy in every conference room was electric and contagious. You literally felt like you were watching a historical moment that rivaled any in history. I’ve been to many conventions since and none were as awe inspiring and magical as that one. The next closest one was probably at the San Jose convention center where I met Erik Voorhees for the first time.

The trendy, edgy, cool has left bitcoin at this point and those exciting energy filled people left at the same time. To it’s current users, bitcoin is no longer this world changing creation poised to destroy the financial stranglehold of big banking and government. Corporations, venture capitalists, profiteers, scammers, and all sorts of creatures of the night have taken over bitcoin. That initial energy has given way to business and profit. It’s been as sad to watch as it was to watch egalitarian hippies turn into well paid yuppies. I suppose it’s the natural progression that was always destined to happen.

These are all the possible reasons that could have made oldies leave the forum. I liked the way you mentioned names with reasons. You must have been very active back then.

The percentages doesn't matter much, but what matters is that they are no more here to guide us or inspire new people. Guess that's how the world runs. People find new opportunities and they move on.

If I may add, I think one of the small reasons is the attitude of some users.  Some users are so negative and easily judge someone else's ideas instead of helping the person improve his/her ideas.

When you are posting something that you learn or any insights that you have and desiring for a decent discussion to have on your thread but critiques will spam you of rude remarks - this will discourage the user to post again innovative ideas that will challenge the current status quo.

Not all old members are inactive. Some just doesn't think that the forum will boom and some optimists thought that the forum is a window to many things. Yet as time goes by, forum boomed to the wrong place and reach people who thought of forum as a money making machine and not a way to socialize with others with regards to certain topics. Some old members are onto tradings now and investing, they see forum as it really was, not as the shitposters, spammers, and scammers wanted the forum to be - windows to their wealth.

Sometimes I am also tired to post because who the hell wanted to reply on threads that already have alot of shit nonsense comments, and topics that are already asked.

I think they're both still here aren't they?
When I started, Mexxer-2 wasn't posting so much it was only about 2016 I think when I started noticing their posts/name.
Shorena also was involved quite heavily in the technical discussion board but I think DannyHammilton took over from them along with a few others (hcp, tryninja, thirdspace - and I when I found an empty thread).

Reddit? No way! Reddit is filled with half ass knowledge kids who live in a dream that BCH will be the next yet perfect version of bitcoin that ever existed. I'm not very sure of old members but I know some good posters who I used to look up to when I was a newbie aren't active anymore. A perfect example being Shorena/Mexxer-2.

Others who used to participate in discussions have just stopped posting or have engaged themselves with their services on bitcointalk.

If the old timers are no longer using this forum, there must be a forum where they are still active... hmmm could it be reddit? (or have they been overrun by spammers as well?)
Seems the spammers are everywhere.... folks who post random stuff like they own the internet. spammers really clog the system. honestly!

I DID! Yes, I understand now - it's the old timers advantages  

I would say it's partially because of the spam.  But I believe the real reason is that they are very wealthy and out enjoying their lives doing more important things than spending time on this forum O.O

Many reasons, but one is old as time the internet:

It only takes a minute or two to make that kind of post because I watched all that stuff happening. Old time members have been bailing out here for 5 or more years because of all sorts of reasons. Glad you enjoyed it. LOL

I wonder how did you came up with all these perimeters for a report? How long did it take to construct this post if you don't mind to ask?  

Simply awesome to read. Wish there were these values for the % too.

It’s not just one thing that caused the old timers to leave.

I would like to see a percentage study of why people left here. That would tell us the main reason and perhaps that one thing could be changed. Unfortunately, there is no one left around that does that sort of study anymore.

People that left the forum because of:

Spammers like sig campaign members posting one liners (discussion quality) =?%
Disagreements over forum operations like Goat =?%
Banned over disagreements with forum staff like MnW or MPOE-PR =?%
Respected members turned scammers like DnT or TradeFortress =?%
Respected members that lost credibly like Andresen or Zhou Tong =?%
The Silk Road scandal because of fear over their outspoken drug connection like MysteryMiner =?%
Were arrested and discredited like Shrem, Magical Tux and most of the early mining equipment manufacturers =?%
People who closed up businesses that ran their course like slush, Tycho or Jered Kenna =?%
Believe it’s more respectable to distance themselves from this forum like Tony Gallippi =?%
People that lost faith in bitcoin because their coins were scammed away from them = ?%
People that sold all for a massive profit and left =?%
Intellectuals that are beyond being stimulated by this forum like organofcorti or Meni Rosenfeld =?%
People with personal lives that take them away for years but end up returning like that johnthedong guy =?%

The cryptoworld is growing very fast and a lot of projects are coming up on daily basis,I guess they are tied up in some projects.It is hard to keep up with pace on all fronts

Here are some reasons I can think of:

1) They found better alternatives or earning  opportunities. I am not saying that this forum is not useful but it is natural. I started with a local forum, they also used to reward users for contributing posts in different ways. But with time, I found better opportunities and I rarely visit that forum.

2) Spam can also be the reason. It is hard to find out genuine replies for a thread even after this merit system.

3) They might not be happy with the forum staff or how they mangae things here.

Exact reason only someone friend with that specific user can tell.

I never cared reading them seriously ever LOL

A coin will always have its head and tail. Similar way, there will be always good and bad way of applying a feature. Just take merit system as example. Abusers are abusing publicly or non-publicly but there are good people as well who are using it as a tool to improve the forum experience. IMO, the number of these good people are larger than the abusers which makes the system even more beautiful. We just need to live with the good side of a system/module.

I get that, it's even more annoying with GDPR now that means all the terms and conditions have been rewritten and you have to read through them all (OK, I love a good contract so that wasn't actually so bad, but it just makes stuff you previously agreed to more obvious).

Yes.
Sometimes my laptop crashes when trying to load faceook also (or it doesn't load the list on the right - or sync it often).

Yes this would be good but you'd also have to be able to include a way to tag someone and people might spam it also and one might get a lot of notifications when they are unnecessary.


I'm here mostly to learn. Sure, I get paid by my signature and I might not be here as often (might only come here a few times a week instead) if I didn't but the main reason you should be here is knowledge. Everyone who has Bitcoin should want it to be adopted more because then the value of their Bitcoin increases if there is a greater demand for its purchase.

Why do you think like that? I bet there are people who love spending time in the forum, they do not count the money.

Who has a lot of money, why should he sit on this forum? Who has the high-level knowledge, is engaged in business, and not posting unnecessary messages.

Facebook is now too much with monetizing data that's where it is going wrong IMO.
I am not sure if everyone is facing this problem or not... it takes longer time to load the contents on FB now a days especially when I use it from my computer.

Anyway my point was adding some features like: receive notification when someone mentioning your username, a follow button or something that will enable your to receive notifications when your favorite user create a topic or post a comment etc. Some new features for better user experience.

Yes, I do like the merit feature and I am sure there are a lot of people like me who finds extra energy to do more because their work gets recognized.

Has Gmaxwell actually left, he was logged on fairly recently?

We still have users from quite a long time ago still however, like ThomasV.
And Theymos is obviously still here.


That's true, with every facebook and messenger update I always sit wondering what they could possible have done to make it any different from how it was that would benefit the user (I think a lot of stuff they do now is for maximising profit). I don't think your data had as much value in 2010 (there's also the google incident and how they've changed what was a perfectly good logo). ?

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He waited four days for a pizza, maybe that's why he left!
$43 back then was enough for at least 2 pizzas and no one took him up on it for four days (that being said, I hadn't even heard of bitcoin back then but I was very young so that's my excuse)...

Bad example: I liked Facebook more back then, before they forced a timeline and started deciding for me what I want to see (because they earn from it).
I've seen several forums "innovate", and in all cases I liked the old version better. For me, a forum doesn't have to change it's looks and behaviour once it works well and I know where to find stuff. A forum upgrade would also mean existing scrapers won't work anymore.
I do like the added Merit though, and I'd love to see more upgrades like it.

So after reading all these comments, I think we can easily label spam and the resultant difficulty to do serious discussions as one of the major cause of old timers leaving. It can be compared to mining difficulty also. More miners or hashpower, greater difficulty in finding the block vs. more spam means greater difficulty in coming up with good ideas, serious discussions!!

@shahzadafzal comments are also worth noting. And they could also be some reasons why legends left. But it is indeed surprising that you came up with these points despite being new. Could it be that you are an alt of an oldie!

@Pharmacist point about Mt.Gox burn also sounds like a valid reason for them leaving. Afterall, how many people would want to get near fire after getting their hands burnt.

@audaciousbeing comment about oldies being involved in other crypto projects or other businesses and hence less time to be on forum sounds like a fair deal. After all, these oldies were the best candidates to start new crypto projects as they had detailed knowledge about this stuff. Not like many of us (including me), who don't even understand the technical terms associated, forget the tech behind a cryptocurrency.
Also the idea of seeing repeated discussions over and over might have led them to not participate is a good possibility.

@angel and @Tszunami98 comment about oldies leaving due to them becoming rich is a possibility but very minor. They didn't adopt Bitcoin for money but because of the idea, tech and power behind it. It is highly unlikely that they would abandon the idea part just because they made money with it.

I am also seeing comments about people leaving Bitcointalk because of lack of new features. Again, I feel this is a minor possibility. You can still discuss whatever you want, new features might complement it, but aren't really that necessary.

@vit05 I see you are quite an oldie. But your level is just Full Member. That means you didn't post much like many of the oldies, but you still say that the main reason of them leaving is not spam. That gives a whole new twist to this discussion. You say that they left because they started supporting other projects or because of some questions related to the forum or Bitcoin.

So all in all I see that the major reasons for them leaving is spam, involvement in other projects and maybe burns.

So with this a new question pops up. Why some oldies are still using the platform despite many issues. Theymos is probably the oldest active member here. If you are reading this, I want to know from you. Why do you still use Bitcointalk? Is it because you got the opportunity to become the admin here and the resultant status and weight in the Bitcoin community or because you really think that Bitcointalk is still the best place for Bitcoin discussions? Same questions for all other active oldies.

Please feel free to answer or ignore these questions. But I am indeed very curious. You might ask why. The reason is that for some unknown reason I am feeling a bit sad because of the fact that many (maybe most) oldies left the platform. So, I just want to dig deeper.

None of them left because of spam or signature campaigns. They left for disagreeing with some questions related to the forum or the Bitcoin project and start to support other forks. Sirius got tired, SmokeTooMuch, Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen began to support other projects. Vitalik seems to find a greater refuge using Twitter and Reddit.

gmaxwell still uses the forum.

I'm not disagreeing with the premise. I think a lot of others left because of spam. I just put that in these specific cases, they never said this was the biggest reason.

I usually don't quote such long contents but here I am quoting it for the first time. Don't know why but I liked it and I want the admin notice it. You said it mate! These are some solid dissections. Like the rest, I always thought, it's the spamming but this should be an eye opener for the admin.

Lack of innovation is the one I guess killing the forum. In addition with you example:
Consider Facebook in 2010/11 and now. Back in those days Facebook used to look like a simple php driven website and now it a massive application with enormous features.

Think of 2010 versions of windows, mac, apple, android. You don't want an iPhone 1 to have now, do you?

Old members have a lot of bitcoins and are now spending their gains on women and cocaine!

Why would anyone in their right mind approach spammers? Spammers aren't the only reason why old members left this place:

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This place is more than an online forum for some people. Of course,marinecoin shills like you wouldn't be knowing that.

Most people that are rich will not waste their time on an online forum.  I'm sure there are some outliers but they could be traveling the world doing funner things.

In addition to the spammers which is something everybody have agreed to, I think its also have to do with achieving some level of satisfaction and when that is achieved there is no longer a motivation. One of the motivating factor to come to the forum is ranking up which lots of them have gotten to the peak of it.

Again, a lot of them have become entrepreneurs that have created apps, set up businesses, create coins that what they focus their time on now is nurturing their business to a bigger platform. While others have moved beyond the youthful age to a more mature level that gave less time to be dedicated to the forum.

We still have a lot of old people around though but the ones that have left prepare the ground for what others are meeting today. Most of the topic, that a new entrant would discuss would be something they have seen over and over again.

Is this the one you were talking about or something older than this? Then there came an idea for a guy and most probably he may be the first Campaign Manager from 2011. Here are some of the old signature campaigns and how about this one

This was one of sole reason for old members leaving the forum.

Some reputed members who left the forum:

sirius
SmokeTooMuch
Gavin Andresen
Mike Hearn
gmaxwell
Vitalik Buterin

and a lot more....

Magic! Nah, I've read that thread multiple times before, and like you find myself looking back at the old threads in all kinds of different sections from time to time. It just so happens I remembered the name of that thread pretty well, and knew it was pretty early on in the forum.
I would agree. Even though this forum is plastered in spam right now I still think it's got a pretty good moderation policy, and only interferes when needed. I used to disagree with a few things, but soon came to realize that it's probably the best way to go about it.

It's a pity I don't see him around anymore as some of his posts were an interesting read.

How the HELL did you locate a thread like that so quickly?  I'm impressed.  And this post was extremely interesting to me:

This is basically what I was saying, except I attributed the "diverse cultures" part of it to signature campaigns, and SgtSpike here obviously did not mean that the influx of those cultures was due to campaigns--they didn't exist then, or at least not in the same way they do now.

The good thing I see is that the posts he called out (facepalming and the like) aren't tolerated here.  You can't just post an emoticon or "+1" or whatever, because those will get deleted.  That kind of crap is tolerated to no end on other forums, and usually people who write those replies also quote a huge block of text.

I'm so tempted to give SgtSpike a merit....but I won't.

It really depends though. Often times people like to look back on things, and think how good it was back then. Especially, when it's new content to them. Old posts which have been unread are always the most interesting, especially when relating to the history of the forum, and Bitcoin itself.

In reality there was complaints back in 2011, 2012, and so on about the decline of quality posts on the forum. Thus, you would think that this is because, of the wider adoption of Bitcoin bringing in all kinds of different people, cultures, and ideas. This would of been seen as a good thing a few years ago, but unfortunately with widespread adoption/awareness comes the cons of people not being able/willing to speak good English or learn about Bitcoin, and it's related technologies.

Here's a post back in 2011 which has a small, but interesting discussion about the progression of the forum, and the cons of it: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/decline-in-the-signal-to-noise-ratio-in-the-forum-9147

Like that Johnthedong guy?

This is the very first thing I think of when I consider why old-timers left--and I've thought about this before.  Some of the most interesting threads are from around 2010-2011, and last month I stumbled across what had to be the beginning of signature campaigns.  Somebody came up with the idea of renting out his signature space, and people were all saying it was a novel idea.  I don't know why I didn't bookmark that thread, but I didn't.

The other reason is that some of these people might have gotten really burned with Mt. Gox and gotten out completely.  It's not just legendaries who don't post here anymore.  There are tons of abandoned accounts that are low-ranked, who left well before I got here in March of 2015.  Mt. Gox was huge, and I can see how it could leave an extremely bitter taste in one's mouth if MG ran off with all your money.  That's my theory anyway.

One very interesting thing is how well people wrote in the early days of bitcointalk.  Comparing post quality in 2010 to today is astounding.  As clever a moneymaking mechanism as the signature campaign is, it was definitely a quality-killer for posts here once it sucked in the poor, non-English speaking folks (sorry, but it's true).  Anyway, for people who really like bitcointalk, reading posts from way back when is almost addicting.  It was like a different world.

I'd say a lot of the old members are still around, but probably are busy with their day to day lives.

I do believe that they have left the forum due to personal reasons and we can't speak for themselves as to why they have left. And even if we want to know, we can't, as tracking them down and asking them one by one seems to be impossible not to mention they went cold for a couple of years now. We don't know if they became bitter of the forum because they didn't hold BTC to this present date or if they just quite being active as they became millionaires because of holding Bitcoin, most importantly we can't blame the forum for their inactivity.

This man has a point...when bounty campaign for bitcoin pizza day?

Not quite true.

Well, you can always start a self moderated thread and if the thread in it's appropriate board, it never gets moved by the mods.(I have never experienced at least).The thread falling off the first index is very true and you can't help it.

Signature campaigns are not the cause of spam, but the recklessness of their managers is. There are signature campaigns running successfully without generating any spam out of their participants, Chipmixer for example. So the solution is not always to cut-off the roots, sometimes the branches are to be managed as well.

We agree on the major reason is spam that is number 1 reason why old member feel it's a waste of time being here and it has been discussed gazillion times.

But there are many other small reasons which are causing seniors to leave this forum:

1. Lack of innovation
It's been 8/9 years and bitcointalk.org did not evolve. It's still an old forum, old design, old fashioned, single point of failure (password), no notifications whatsoever, etc. I'm sure many of you may disagree with me but I'm a computer engineer and people get bored of seeing same thing after few years. All software companies have been updating their product on regular basic in span of 2-3 years. If you can't change anything... change the design. Give some new look and new feel to the users.

If we look around  linkedin, stackoverflow and quora how they have evolved in last few years. Responsive design, mobile apps.

What I'm missing most on bitcointalk is notifications. I should get notified when someone replies to my Topic, ok there is email but it's so damn difficult to track. Give me some notification bar or counter to let me know that there is something new going on. I want to know if someone tags/quote me, that's what healthy discussion is supposed to be "engagement".

Yes this was all ok back in 2010, but today no this can't work, bitcointalk has to change from it's old school. BTW where is the new software for the forum?

2. Lack of Management Involvement
Yes harsh but truth again. See the recent example of howeycoins, people were so happy to see Theymos is here. We are missing this so much. Why bitcointalk succeed back in days? Because Satoshi himself was here he was engaged in discussions with people. Yes I understand Theymos, Cycrus you guys are very busy. But buys in what? Please let us know in your busy schedule there is some space for bitcointalk also. Please keep us updated at least what is going on in the background for bitcointalk.

If Thyemos and Cycrus keep old and seniors members involved, I guess many of the old members would still be here and they will come back too.

3. Focus of discussion is diverted
Back in days bitcointalk was about "bitcoin", but today no its f*cking damn about Bounties and ANN that's all.
Let's accept this is also part of evolving, Bitcoin can live with it. Still BTC market Dominance is 38.9% not bad. So what did we do here? Nothing just sit and watch them spam bitcointalk.

There should be strict checks on Bounties and ANN threads, bitcointalk should help to minimize the scam and only legit announcement and Bounties should be allowed to stay. Let the bounties and ANN thread should be created by company's account only. As soon as someone realizes something fishy or scam going on it should be "nuked" immediately (I like this term "nuke" used by hilariousandco so often).

Yes it need time and investment but come on owners this is your baby. How can you allow someone to scam here? Yes we can't control but as soon it becomes clear why not nuke and stop it.

4. bitcointalk is money making platform
No it's not!!! It's platform to discussion your ideas of making money, to get honest opinions on your thoughts and ideas. PoS was coined here on bitcointalk, yes ethereum also started from here. So bitcointalk is not all about just ranking up and started earning free money by shitposting.


Yes you might ask me how I'm I suppose to say this being junior member, yes I'm newbie and I'm sorry if I said something wrong, but this what I feel you can ignore it happily.

Also I'm not paying for bitcointalk so I'm not suppose to question any thing, you own it and you know better how to run it. But being Bitcoin enthusiast I don't want o see bitcointalk die in cold.

From yesterday I promoted to post on Ivory Tower, I made some replies there by the way. Believe me, I felt a peace inside while exploring the section. I even encountered a topic where the OP was concerning about the forum, if they remove signature campaign. The spammers will dramatically drop and the forum will also lose massive amount of visitors.

It's a hard decision to make. I imagine the forum was not this much crowded before when those legends were here.

Still spammers are here and there in the forum and elsewhere. But otherside there are some helping to take the forum with good value. I see after merit system came in by last January. After that to now.
There is gradual downfall of spammers over the forum. We can ask admin to implement the more regulation act against spammers.

Reading just a few replies of some pages in that thread makes you realize how nice and clean the forum was at that time. No spam, no useless posts/posters. Everyone had a valid reason to write something in a thread unlike today where people merely find a solid reason to post something. It is pretty fair to predict the reason for the oldies to leave the forum was the excessive spam in the forum.

When bitcoin pizza day, bounty and signature campaign still not exist yet

I've also created a post about the BTC Pizza day in the Bitcoin Discussion forum but it was instantly buried by shit posters / spammers.

I've found some interesting facts about it, take a look here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/happy-bitcoin-pizza-day-everybody-4143199  

It is true that this place has become infested with spammers and scammers. And frankly speaking, when around 2 years ago I came to Bitcointalk, I came for the sole reason of spamming my referral link, because I saw thousands of views on every topic!! My old account was then banned.
As for your reasoning about old members leaving because of this spam pond, I think it would be only partially true. Because after all, you guys are also here, Themyos is here and obviously you are no less than those early adopters. But still, if this is true, then which is the new hangout they have found. Is there really any place better than Bitcointalk to discuss about Bitcoin and cryptos in general? P.S. I have still not explored any other options beside Bitcointalk, so I have little knowledge about alternative platforms.


Negativity? As in negative trusts or more like preference to the hype side of cryptos rather than their social and technological side.

This is the obvious answer. It's hard to get a decent discussion going here. Either it gets overrun with spammers, or those desperate to gain rank with negligible value posting, or it gets moved to off topic by a mod, and then it falls off the first index page before your mouse can get its clicker out.

Being fair, I think the exodus of talent happened before the spammers moved in.  It was more related to the overall attitude of members here fostering negativity.  It became clear the goal of the average member was not to help or learn from the Bitcoin community any longer.

Many people left because the forum is overrun by spammers.

Let me take a random look at the latest post on the forum:

It's already deleted by the bumpbot who posted it, and replaced by the next one.

Hi All

So yesterday, I was reading about this Bitcoin Pizza day on Cointelegraph and then I saw this link. https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1195

I am aware about this Pizza Day for past 2 years, but only yesterday I came to know that Laszlo had posted this legendary offer on Bitcointalk. I always thought he posted it on either his social media page or some random forum.

Anyways, while reading through comments made on this topic, I noticed a strange thing. Most members who posted at that time are no longer active on Bitcointalk. Many were last seen years ago. Even Laszlo isn't, even though he has somewhat of a celebrity status in Bitcoin community. Many even credit his sacrifice of Bitcoins as the main reason for Bitcoin's current price.
 
And it's not that he has gone anonymous or so, because recently ledger launched limited edition Nano S, themed on Bitcoin Pizza Day and Laszlo gave the permission to do so. https://www.ledger.fr/2018/05/22/bitcoin-pizza-day-ledger-nano-s-limited-edition/
**Does anyone know what happened of the guy (jercos) who actually provided the pizzas for Bitcoin? He/she was equally important in this milestone.

But what I am curious about, especially from the old members here; that why the early adopters of Bitcoin and then active members of Bitcointalk have gone inactive now. Is it because they are bitter about not holding to their Bitcoins and selling it for a few Dollars or because they have found better platforms to discuss Bitcoin. Or maybe that they made quite a fortune and don't care anymore. I read that even Vitalik was an active user here, but again he has also become totally inactive on Bitcointalk. So why this trend?