We've been losing good members for months now. The post about a
dismal level of discourse is telling. If things do not change in these forums we will continue to lose smart contributors like Jason. For those of you who do not know what Jason did for the community let me tell you. He, along with Gusti and a small group of other engineers, tried to develop a public mining asic chip. While they didn't complete their task the effort was
nothing short of amazing.
When I arrived on the scene almost exactly two years ago it was a small and fun community of computer geeks. Like half of you we came to mine bitcoin. We were mining on deepbit and slush's pool and using the brand new cgminer, it was awesome. People were helpful and kind and it was a community. But things have changed.
Part of the problem comes from the traffic. The admins claim they just do not have the time to manage all the noise. With more than 100,000 registered members and sockpuppets their task must be daunting. But that's why people gave them money, right? It recently came to light that Theymos is now paying the moderators and that he is distributing the $600,000 worth of bitcoin the forums have collected from donations in addition to the $130,000 per year the forums generate by running BFL ads.
Now I'm not here to tell Theymos what to do with HIS money but I'm tired of the lack of support from he and the team and the fact that they hold more than 1/2 million dollars and are doing little to improve the forums is embarassing so I'm calling them out and starting a new forum.
So I am calling for a group of volunteers to help design the next version of this forum, bitcointalk 2.0.
If you want to volunteer or you have an idea to improve the forums in the next iteration please post it here. Any and all are welcome to post. If you do not want to reveal your main avatar feel free to create a new account just to post in this thread. With no rules here, no privacy policy, no terms of service, sock puppets are encouraged and that is, imho, half the problem.
What would you do different if you were in charge of this forum?(Edit: June 30) Here's the list we've come up with so far:
Brand:
-Cryptocoin or Bitcoin only???
-Catchy - easy to remember name
Possible Platforms: (vote here -
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/what-is-the-best-forum-software-available-today-246936)
-Discourse
-Xenforo
-MyBB
-SMF
Mandatory Requirements:
Good Design
- Anonymous or Transparent?
> what form of company is the forum?
> what country should the forum be hosted in?
- The site should be modern
- Better mobile platform support
> Tapatalk?
- Better social media support
> Integrate with
o - Bitmessage
o - Facebook
o - other?
- Offers two factor authentication
o - Google authenticator
Rules:
- Defined Up Front
> Terms of Service
> Privacy Policy
> Moderation Policy
o - deleting spam posts
o - only one account per user (sock puppet ban)
o - bans on users that are obvious scammers
o - qualifications for perma-ban (what constitutes a ban?)
> Moderators
o - volunteed vs paid
o - how selected
o - how removed
What should be added or removed to/from this list?
Invitation only?