Topic: Enough with the negativity give the forum some credit it deserves (Read 579 times)

Negativity can never help any forum. Negativity never fosters unity. Note: a user not liking or not in support of a forum rule or additions or has a problem with a fellow user can raise there point in a coordinated manner that will not create a rumble after effect.

Some factors affected bitcointalk.org's traffic:
(1) Bitcoin stagnation
(2) Merit system (launched in January of 2018).
(3) Banned and nuked accounts increased
(4) Some prominent altcoins built their own forums.

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(1) Bitcoin stagnation results in less attraction on new investors, and old investors even don't care to visit forum, or less regularly visit the forum. In addition, such stagnation of bitcoin leads to less profits, or negative income from mining, so miners less regularly visited the forum.
(2) Merit system: help to wipe out spammers and bounty hunters, so they left the forum.
(3) Due to forum members contributions (topics, reports), more accounts get banned, or nuked.

This is not a Job forum, its a crypto discussion forum, so if the campaigns are not paying much BTC that's not something to be concerned. I think there are enough BTC campaigns  at the moment and all the ICO bounties are run through this forum which is also a healthy sign.
Yes, the number of Spammers are reduced and so the traffic to the forum may be on a low numbers but do Alexa ranking is based only on the basis of traffic and no. of hits on the site ?

Negativity didn't, instead spamming did. I believe what the OP meant by negativity here is the constant attacking coming from the sockpuppets flooding meta of recent. These guys aren't looking at the bright side of the systems (merit & dt) just because they're affected they think the system is rigged. When they don't get merited they blame merit sources instead checking themselves and improve on their posting quality or when they get red tagged, if they're so innocent as they claim instead of appealing their case reasonably like a normal, intelligent human being will they attack the forum which result to nothing.

Humans, generally speaking, seem to be becoming more entitled as time goes on.  People are less inclined to accept things as they are and focus more on how things ought to be, but then it's also seldom people can agree with each other on how it ought to be.  At this stage, it makes absolutely no difference if changes are made to merit/trust/whatever else people are complaining about, because someone is always going to hate it and it's likely we're just going to have to put up with complaining forever.  We just have to find the path that pisses off the fewest people and then persevere with it.

Looks like as soon as the ICO craze died off , and there were less profitable bounty programs (or not profitable at all) then people stopped complaining about ranking up so much.

I've never done a bounty program but from trawling through old threads there were some people claiming to make hundreds in the space of a few weeks from spam posting copy-paste sentences.

Now that ICOs are and their corresponding bounty programs less common, I suspect we'll slowly see a more 'normal' forum, where people just post because they want to post, and negativity will follow all those failed ICO projects out the door.

I could be wrong but the "negativity" may have paved the way to the new ranking system (which turned out to be a good thing to many legit forum users).

No one has anything against any one complaining about some things if you can refer back to my post again.
I made note that complains or suggestions can be welcomed but let it be in an organised manner.
Someone coming out to lay accusations straight up against the system or another member some times even using vulgar languages I don't think that is proper.
And even if there should be complaint like the title of my post implies there should also be appreciation(credit)

Lightning is not like a bank at all. Mostly it works like a 2-of-2 multisig, where nobody can just steal your BTC, and the Bitcoin network itself guarantees security. The opportunity for theft only comes into existence in some edge cases which the LN software is supposed to prevent.

I am a bit skeptical of LN, especially in the short-term: it's currently very clunky and complex, and it seems likely to always have some notable inherent limits. I'm concerned that in order to easily smooth over these issues, a lot of people might end up using hosted LN wallets/payment-handlers, which are banks. But if people use LN directly, then it's not like a bank whatsoever.

There are various ways that Bitcoin could be made into an effective payments system aside from LN. I'm a fan of blinded bearer certificates and federated sidechains, which would be semi-centralized, but you could also do something like having a high-volume miner-security-only sidechain that expires and is replaced every couple of years. Store-of-value is the most important thing, but it's definitely also possible for Bitcoin to support high-volume payments.

I'm not pessimistic. I think Bitcoin has a golden future, and there can never be a cryptocurrency like it in the future. I believe it is becoming a store of wealth, and a security to be used in other projects. It is being adopted by the bankers, and this will consolidate this use. It can never be the dominant payment system though, mainly because it has no fiat element, and governments will resist it because of that.

Yikes, that was a pretty bleak assessment.  I can understand why traffic to the forum was reduced because bitcoin was stagnant for many months, but I bet that if it really starts to take off again that will change. 

Bitcointalk is hardly on its death bed, and from looking at all the new threads being made and all the replies to already existing ones, it doesn't even appear to be in decline.  I do agree that there are far fewer campaigns running these days compared to 2015-2017 or so, but that could change.  I'm pretty optimistic about the forum, though I try to not view it through rose-colored glasses. 

Things wax and wane all the time, and bitcointalk (and the advertising on it) might just be going through a temporary lull.  I wouldn't count on it continuing to decline, even with all the garbage posters and everything else that makes it a cesspool of negativity.  It's still a fun forum with a lot of freedom, and there is a lot of discussion going on.  I've seen other forums where there are only a couple of new threads a day.

Why so pessimistic?

Bitcoin is still the best cryptocurrency out there for payments. It can be a popular mean of payment on he internet. Imagine if you could pay Uber and lAirbnb with bitcoin, avoid changing your currency to foreign country Fiat.

Those alrs you are referring are probably more centralized than bitcoin, Like ethereum, or fully centralized like ripple.

Bitcoin decentralization is what makes it interesting, as nobody can really control and manipulate it . And this is  the reason why it is interesting for payments and store of value

Someone always has something to say about some things. It may be good, it may be bad. It may be a compliment, and it may be a complaint. But, for me, just because someone is complaining doesn't mean he/she doesn't like it at all. They have their reasons for sure on why they complain about how things go around here. They may only be looking for more improvements, or a better alternative to achieve their goals. After all, we are free to express our opinions here, right? As long as our intention is for the betterment of this forum and all its users. I am not teaming up with those complainants. Don't get me wrong. I am just giving them the benefit of the doubt because they will not present themselves, front and center, as complainants and then defend themselves, right? I just try to look on the other side of the equation to keep things balance.

But I also have a message for those who often complain about things in this community: Let us understand first why things are being made here. Ask yourself if it is made for you and others to suffer or as a stepping stone for a more improved community. Know better. Dig deeper. Then decide if there is really something to complain about.

Peace! 

Bitcoin is changing, and I don't believe it will be a popular means of payment in the future. I consider Lightning to be a centralised  payment service, rather like a bank, and that may well become such a payment service, but it relies on the deposit of Bitcoin as an asset. Gold coins are still being used as legal tender ( The Sovereign and the Britannia are two examples from the UK ), and I gather that the US is in the process of declaring certain gold coins as legal tender. This shows that the bankers are preparing to abandon the current fiat system in my opinion, and I believe that Bitcoin will take it's place alongside gold and silver, and possibly copper.

So how will this affect Bitcoin Talk over the next few years. There are a few alts that have a better use case as volume payment methods, and BT could improve support and discussion for those. High value hard currency such as gold and Bitcoin will move into the realm of the wealthy and the institutions. I don't believe that there are many representatives from this world that are active members of the forum at the moment.

It is human nature to complain and same is happening in the forum. Very few people acknowledges the changes/opportunity that forum has given to them but most of them are complaining because they are not able to farm accounts or getting tagged for starting the scam ICO's or tagged for spreading the false and baseless information.

I acknowledge that  forum has given me lot of knowledge and confidence.

Very well said, i think there would be many members here in this forum would be inspired on what you have said, even they haven't ranked up yet, they would still continue and pursue what they intend in this forum. I hope good things would maintain here in this forum, let's forget the negativity and focus more for the betterness of the forum.

Apart from the issue with ranking, there isn't as many companies which do forum campaigns as it used to be anymore. Most of them are are either paying too low or the requirements are too high. Even though ICO's are pretty much dead, there are still too many ICO campaigners spamming the forum and their forum rank are usually newbie or member.

The BTC adoption isn't growing fast enough. After all those years there are barely a few companies which use this forum for advertising.

Even the popularity of the forum is going down.
https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/bitcointalk.org

Look at this one, down down and down.


Even when bitcoin goes up in price, the popularity of the forum still goes down. This is alarming. Crypto companies aren't seeing this forum as a legit place for their advertisements anymore and the ones which does are here to spam their scam projects.

The merit system on the other hand was a necessity. The spam was getting out of hand. It didn't stop it completely but still slowed it down.

No matter what your intentions is for being here,  either merit, earning, learning or educating is imperative to put the welfare of the forum at heart.
  No one would come at you if you do things the right way
And also note the forum is not yet at its perfection and there are room for improvement and if Any member has something against a particular format on the forum the only right thing to do is bring up your suggestions in a more matured way. Giving room for healthy discussion

I remember when I was just getting started on this forum, last year when most of the users complains about the merit system, but me I was not worried at all instead I think about on how I will Rank Up on my own by contributing some Important matters on this forum, somehow I managed to rank up and become a Member. what I learned here is if you keep blaming on a community rule that was implemented because of the spammers. you only loosing the chance to make an improvement to yourself instead give the forum its credit and  contribute on it without expecting a thing from anybody because this forum help us a lot about Crypto Currencies when we were just getting started. Think about the good thing this forum has gave you before you criticize, Think about when you were ignorant about the bitcoins and has learn more about it here. If you messed up You deserve to receive the consequences and don't blame the forum for it. because its all your fault and lastly let's thank the people who managed to preserved it until now. Thanks

It's been lucrative for years now, but it's become much harder for members to max out their earnings through sig campaigns, since payment increases with rank, and it's now much harder for people to get to even the Sr. Member rank.  They're not the ones doing most of the very loud and annoying complaining, however. 

The biggest bitchers are the ones who want to get onto DT so bad that all of their ramblings taken together could make a book the size of War and Peace.  All of that is based on jealousy, power lust, and good ol' meanspirited hatred of what they perceive as authority.  And meanwhile they do nothing that actually helps the forum.

But OP, I don't think any of the complainers don't like the forum.  If that was the case, they'd just leave.  I think they do appreciate that it's a fantastic place and are probably grateful it exists, but they're unhappy that they're not included on DT and/or aren't earning enough merits.  There's always been grumblings about that stuff, but lately it's become so pervasive that it distracts people from reading decent threads that aren't about DT corruption, complaints against individual members, the merit system, and whatever else.  But don't worry.  These idiots will burn themselves out eventually or get banned for trolling or some other offense.