Topic: Thank you moderators! (Read 1281 times)

Don't let the Gavinistas get you down.

We stand together!   

Bitcoin Classic is an altcoin as far as I'm concerned. The deleted post was very obviously about this altcoin, not about any of the changes within it which might otherwise be relevant to Bitcoin.

If you disagree with me, fine. But that doesn't change the fact that this sort of software is considered off-topic on /r/Bitcoin. Take it elsewhere.

My deletion of this meta post was consistent with my past actions and policies. Since Bitcoin Classic is an altcoin, it should be obvious that it would be removed, and posts about this mod action would be off-topic and removed, similarly to how a post like "Censored: front page thread about Litecoin" would be removed. I expressed this exact policy to moderators 7 months ago. However, since some feel that this situation is somehow different, I will not delete this particular post again, and we can have a discussion about it.

Also, Bitcoin Core has no influence over /r/Bitcoin policies.

While it is technically/economically possible for a hardfork to succeed even despite controversy, this would mean that some significant chunk of the economy has been disenfranchised: the rules that they originally agreed on have effectively been broken, if they want to continue using Bitcoin as they were before. What happened to the dream of a currency untouchable by human failings and corruption? How will we know that the bitcoins we own today will be valid tomorrow, when the rules of Bitcoin have no real solidity? The 21 million BTC limit is technically just as flexible as the max block size; given this, why should anyone ever consider Bitcoin to be a good store of value if these rules are changeable even despite significant opposition?

Especially if these controversial hardforks succeed despite containing changes that have been rejected by the technical community, or if they happen frequently, I can't see Bitcoin surviving. How would anyone be able to honestly say that Bitcoin has any value at all in these circumstances?

Therefore, I view it as absolutely essential that the Bitcoin community and infrastructure ostracize controversial hardforks. They should not be considered acceptable except maybe in cases of dire need when there is no other way for Bitcoin to survive. It's impossible to technically prevent contentious hardforks from being attempted or even succeeding, but that doesn't mean that we need to view them as acceptable or let them use our websites for promotion.

Also, I feel like it's pretty clear that the 50BTC-forever fork was not Bitcoin by any reasonable definition, since Bitcoin has no more than 21 million BTC, so I disagree with your proposed classification scheme for that reason as well.

Don't let the Gavinistas get you down.

We stand together!   

Don't let the Gavinistas get you down.

We stand together!   

Is there a safe-haven for us sane people?

Right now reddit is full of posts of people "switching to XT so they can vote". They think that if 75% of nodes switch, then the trigger will happen.

When in actual fact it's 75% of the hashpower, 75% of the blocks, and who controls the blocks? the mining pools.

So only mining pool owners are allowed participate in this "vote" that these complete buffoons claim is being "censored".

Literally these dudes are looking at charts of the number of XT nodes waiting for it pass 75%.

I feel like I'm losing my mind here.

Not sure if you've seen the Bitcoin Discussion section of the forum buddy but it's littered with XT cheerleader threads & pro Hearn propoganda. Starting to piss me off having to wade through all of the shit to be honest.

Is there a safe-haven for us sane people?

Right now reddit is full of posts of people "switching to XT so they can vote". They think that if 75% of nodes switch, then the trigger will happen.

When in actual fact it's 75% of the hashpower, 75% of the blocks, and who controls the blocks? the mining pools.

So only mining pool owners are allowed participate in this "vote" that these complete buffoons claim is being "censored".

Literally these dudes are looking at charts of the number of XT nodes waiting for it pass 75%.

I feel like I'm losing my mind here.

Not sure if you've seen the Bitcoin Discussion section of the forum buddy but it's littered with XT cheerleader threads & pro Hearn propoganda. Starting to piss me off having to wade through all of the shit to be honest.

Activating a hardfork based on what miners do is really bad. You could easily have a situation where 75% of miners support XT but none of the big Bitcoin exchanges or businesses do. Then miners would start mining coins that they couldn't spend anywhere useful, and SPV users would find that they can't transact with the businesses they want to deal with. The currency would be split, and in this case XT would be in a far weaker position than Bitcoin. The possibility of this sort of network/currency split is what makes XT not a "legitimate hardfork", but rather the programmed creation of an altcoin. A consensus hardfork can only go forward once it has been determined that it's nearly impossible for the Bitcoin economy to split in any significant way. Not every Bitcoin user on Earth has to agree, but enough that there won't be a noticeable split.

Bitcoin is not ruled by miners. In a hardfork, miners barely matter at all. (Softforks are different.) What's important is what the economy does.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3gdad5/meta_on_hardforking_if_bitcoin_is_so_vulnerable/ctx6rgs

/r/Bitcoin exists to serve Bitcoin. XT will, if/when its hardfork is activated, diverge from Bitcoin and create a separate network/currency. Therefore, it and services that support it should not be allowed on /r/Bitcoin. In the extremely unlikely event that the vast majority of the Bitcoin economy switches to XT and there is a strong perception that XT is the true Bitcoin, then the situation will flip and we should allow only submissions related to XT. In that case, the definition of "Bitcoin" will have changed. It doesn't make sense to support two incompatible networks/currencies -- there's only one Bitcoin, and /r/Bitcoin serves only Bitcoin. (Adoption of XT by /r/Bitcoin isn't guaranteed even if it is adopted by the the vast majority of the economy. I wouldn't allow any "Bitcoin" that inflates the currency more quickly, for example, so I'd have to consider whether this hardfork is in this "absolutely prohibited" category before allowing it. But that's not relevant now.)

If a hardfork has near-unanimous agreement from Bitcoin experts and it's also supported by the vast majority of Bitcoin users and companies, we can predict with high accuracy that this new network/currency will take over the economy and become the new definition of Bitcoin. (Miners don't matter in this, and it's not any sort of vote.) This sort of hardfork can probably be adopted on /r/Bitcoin as soon as I've determined that it's not in the "absolutely prohibited" category mentioned above. For right now, there will always be too much controversy around any hardfork that increases the max block size, but this will probably change as there's more debate and research, and as block space actually becomes more scarce. I could see some kind of increase gaining consensus in as soon as 6 months, though it would have to be much smaller than the increase in XT for everyone to agree on it so soon.

Even though it might be messy at times, free discussion allows us to most effectively reach toward the truth. That's why I strongly support free speech on /r/Bitcoin and bitcointalk.org. But there's a substantial difference between discussion of a proposed Bitcoin hardfork (which is certainly allowed, and has never been censored here, even though I strongly disagree with many things posted) and promoting software that is programmed to diverge into a competing and worse network/currency. The latter is clearly against the established rules of /r/Bitcoin, and while Bitcoin's technology will continue working fine no matter what people do, even the attempt at splitting Bitcoin up like this will harm the Bitcoin ecosystem and economy.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h608a/why_bitcoinxt_is_considered_offtopic/

Since there is a lot of controversy in the decision to treat BitcoinXT as off-topic on this subreddit, let me explain why this decision was made.

With BitcoinXT, we had some time to discuss the topic before today. The conclusion was - it should be treated as an altcoin, since it deviates from the Bitcoin protocol and creates a hard fork that not all core devs agree on. While BitcoinXT specifically might not be too "alt" since it is endorsed by a core developer and it doesn't change things too radically, it doesn't mean that in the future we won't have any other "fork-coins" that don't have the pedigree nor the mild changes. What if BitcoinXT was proposed by someone other than Gavin? What if it changed the distribution algorithm? What if it created new coins or erased old ones? Would this still be Bitcoin, or something else?

That being said, not all mods are proponents of this decision. Some took a hard stance on this subject, and in the end, the decision was made to treat it as any altcoin - same as Ethereum, same as Litecoin, same as everything else.