Topic: It's a point in time to think about the future. (Read 625 times)

There have been but most of them don't get a lot of traffic.  I think that in the future we'll see more specialised boards rather than general ones, and that those communities will reflect the primary interests of the various market segments which make up the Bitcoin community.  As that happens, reputations for allowing or disallowing scammy shit will emerge.

There have been multiple bitcoin message boards for a long long time already.

http://www.google.com/?q=bitcoin+forum

A solution which has been suggested before is moving the whole of the Marketplace forum off this board.  As that's the forum in which the majority of scams seem to be born, I'm finding that idea more attractive as time passes.

And yes, I think that multiple message-boards would be a great idea.  People approach Bitcoin from many different directions and the community is now large enough that one message-board doesn't need to be try to be all things to all people.  I think this will happen naturally as people disassociate themselves from the scammy side of Bitcoin which is now endemic in this forum and as service owners move away from using it as a primary means of communicating with their users.

It's reached that point.

The point where the original reasons for this board will be overtaken by unanticipated consequences.  Bitcoin on it's own as an experiment or technical solution is interesting.  However, money has the ability to cause one to lose focus on the ideal and become greedy.  Money also attracts unwanted attention from hackers, fraudsters, authorities, politicians, and lawyers.  On it's current un-corrected path, the inevitable will occur for these forums.  The growth in the number of bitcoin participates will result in risings costs to maintain a functioning board.  Combined with letting anyone post, even posters that you would normally close the door on, will rise above any sensible volunteers time & patience.  Which only leaves the young, energetic, inexperienced or just plain criminal to deal with the boards problems.  Not to mention the temptation of greed that will turn any moderator into a entrepreneur (legit or criminal).  Legitimate users will stop posting, if they are repeatedly drowned out by the shouting voices, and the board will slowly die.

This might be a bit of speculation, but when if and when US court orders regarding requests for disclosure, and private messages start appearing en masse, it will be too late.

As drastic as closing down the boards will be, I anticipate new ones will appear very quickly to meet the needs - probably specific to the topic of interest, technical, trading, etc, and with moderators interested in the dispersion of ideas.  And without the problems associated with assuming everyone has good intentions.  The newbie restriction was an idea, but it only kept some of the traffic down.  There should have been other new ideas implemented to handle scams, ponzis etc.  However, it seems like one feels like spoiling the ideals of the bitcion.org/bitcointalk.org way.  But in the end this only emboldens criminals to act on the naive & innocent. As disagreeable it is to Libertarians, Laissez-faire thinking can lead to a complete loss of usability.  But that would not be the end of bitcoins, just the end of bitcointalk.org.

It's time to consider the alternative option rather than face the slow death, and let the green shoots sprout elsewhere.