Topic: Why is this forum considered terrible by our development overlords? (Read 5848 times)

I've only just seen this. It sounds similar in goals to this.

Is there any way of turning my "Mee too!" into something that will bring this much-desired future closer to reality?

ByteCoin

It's not just the ideology which is a deterrent, it's also the "fuck you, got mine" attitude which characterises so many threads dealing with BTC-related issues.  Deleted your wallet?  You're not l33t enough to be trusted with the protocol.  Had your account hacked?  You should have used better passwords.  Unable to access your money?  You should have picked a different exchange.

You're not going to get merchants flocking to add BTC as a payment method while such attitudes are common and highly visible.  Merchants want to know that if they have a problem with using BTC, support will be available at a similar level to which it's currently offered by their existing payment platforms and this forum does nothing to create the impression that it will be.

-DiamondPlus

So. . .what about an intro in the forum teaching people how to use ad-block and or user blocks?  Help train individuals in moderating themselves.

That would be good for the crazy anti-statists in the group, as well as the mainstream investors/business folk that may be coming in

Same here, stumbled upon this discussion first  Bitcoin-development: The forums...


Most people in this thread talks about how making distance between this forum and developers would help to improve public opinion about bitcoin, but i would like to point that there is a risk for development team to loose it's members because of lack of interest. After all, why would highly qualified engineers work for free. I agree that this forum is not something that most developers would enjoin to read and participate, but it's connections to people from outside that brings reason to open source development process.



I agree with theymos, that there should be more serious bitcoin forum. Possible structure is to have smaller, invite only version of this forum and use bitcointalk.org as sandbox to select members who could bring useful opinions.

With everything happening, I thought forum.bitcoin got hijacked. I did a search here on bitcointalk before logging in to make sure, and seems like it was a legit change. First thing I noticed was bitcointalk, I was like wth... M my word won't help but I do prefer "forum" than "talk". My favicons for the forums are blank and white!

It would work if all the cypherpunks had enough tact not to discuss "bringing the revolution" around the merchants.  Unfortunately, many of them don't.

A combined community could be done correctly, but would require proper moderation and a "no politics" policy.  The cypherpunks have to understand that they're welcome to discuss the technology, ways to enhance privacy, etc, but political discussion belongs elsewhere.  That's not going to happen with our existing forum denizens, staff, and software.

Trying to place Cypherpunkers next to the merchant community jgarizik wants to cater to is a bad idea.

Though, it would be nice to have one coherent community, but that doesn't seem to be possible.

Please understand that I'm in no way trying to imply that the forum's current format/version can successfully serve the growing needs of bitcoin community. I simply do not agree with the decision to take all bitcoin-related discussions outside the bitcoin.org domain in order to dissociate bitcoin from conversations that are deemed inappropriate for the general public or physical-world merchants.

I believe that the focus should be on redirecting, not escaping those types of conversations, as their occurrence is an indication that bitcoin does not yet have a solid value proposition. Decentralizing all communication may hinder bitcoin's growth potential.

Bad bad idea, even ignoring all the previous arguments: Single point of failure

Also you contradict yourself! A central go-to-place for bitcoiners is pointless if you say the domain of bitcoin is the entire internet (which is true). Bitcoin has outgrown this forum in every possible way.

Let’s forger about the physical world for a moment, and how it will be awesome to shop/party/gamble in that world with bitcoin. Instead, let’s take a good look around and recognize that internet is this new digital world, with a multitude of valuable things to offer, but without the official currency to assign and track the value that went into producing and distributing/marketing all of those things. Now, this is bitcoin’s real opportunity: to become the internet’s official currency. Let’s not waste it on a wild-goose chase.

From my perspective as a marketing/economics geek, bitcoin doesn’t yet need any particular image to maintain in the physical world; what it needs is to be viewed/accepted as a currency of the digital world that is full of open-source projects, freelancers, cypherpunks, hacktivists, gamblers, trolls, porn, you name it. If bitcoin cannot make it in its own world, what makes you think that it can make it in the physical world where it has to compete with well-rooted fiat currencies? USD became an accepted currency around the world because it had the backing of its home economy. Let's give bitcoin its own economy first, and everything else will follow.

Keeping that in mind, whatever you see happening in this forum today is nothing more but a reflection of what’s happening all over the internet, and what also happens when a new nation/community is being born/formed. Trying to escape all of that is like trying to give up on the future potential of internet. My vote is to make this forum the go-to place for ALL bitcoiners.

Then it doesn't belong on bitcoin.org.


bitcoin.org isn't official in the sense that someone decreed it, but it is the de-facto face of the project.  It's where everyone goes when they first hear about Bitcoin and want to know more.  This won't always be the case (remember bittorrent.com?), but for now it's the reality that we have to deal with.

On the other hand, if you feel that bitcoin.org is so insignificant, why are you so concerned that this forum remain on it?

THIS FORUM NEEDS SOME REAL MODERATORS AND ADMINISTRATION!

I'm not in any way against this forum existing. Heck I even like the anarchistic streak, and will continue going here after it is moved. But still I don't think it has a place being linked from a development site. What people expect being linked to from a sane open source project is a helpful place where they can ask questions about usage or development, not a full-on trollfight arguing over the political and economical impact or speculation over prices/investment advice. If those were limited to certain threads, that's be ok-ish, but it seems every thread eventually ends up in one of those.

Hey, and people that like this kind of community still know how to find it

There is a fundamental disagreement about what the purpose of the forum should be. Jgarzik and others want the forum to simply support the "official project". They would, I'd guess, be irritated by any real "community" on the forum.

I see the forum as existing for its own sake. People should come here to participate in the community. It is not my intention to promote (or discourage) coming here just to solve a problem or work on projects.

If you don't like participating in forum communities, or you are annoyed by some of the viewpoints expressed here, then you can go to some other forum/mailing list/newsgroup. You are not "locked in" unless you incorrectly view this forum as an "official arm of the project".

It's probably already settled that forum.bitcoin.org will move to bitcointalk.org, but I'll post my argument against the move anyway. Bitcoin.org has no claim to being "official" other than it being the only Bitcoin domain that Satoshi ever owned. The client doesn't link to bitcoin.org anywhere, and no resources are actually stored at bitcoin.org. It's not even the first Bitcoin forum: the sourceforge.net forum used to be used by Satoshi. Therefore, I see no reason why the developers should take bitcoin.org from the community that has been located here for over a year. The main bitcoin.org page can be treated like a "fan site", or it can have its forum links removed, or it can disappear entirely for all I care.

There exists an unrelated problem with post quality. I've been thinking recently that this is mostly a categorization problem: some people like jokes/chaos, and others like very high-quality posts. So it might be a good idea to create a more highly-moderated forum section. Then we'll have three quality grades: "newbies", the rest of the forum, and "serious discussion". I'm not sure whether the highly-moderated section(s) should be subforums of certain categories that already exist, or a top-level section with possible subcategories.

Good ideas both!

I am in the process of getting a Bitcoin Business Assocation website built on Drupal with forums, private user groups, wikis, and filesharing for just this purpose. Expect in a few weeks.

Ease of being transferred across border. That's a dream for money launders, but for also a dream for people who need to send money to their family.

Anyway, the nice thing about bitcoin for me is how fiction-less that it can be to pay my employees. I don't need to wait for days for money to transfer. I don't need to worry about geography. I don't need to worry about paypal.

Of course, it is also hard for me to automate bitcoin because I lack l33t sysadmin skills. Nevermind about learning to use bitcoind's API. I have to learn how to set it up.(Not easy, when your OS is Debian Lenny)

In anycase, I don't believe in silver bullets. There are lot of little cases where bitcoin proves superior. What we need to do is magnify bitcoin's strength. Creating sustainable businesses one by one help with that process.

In addition to being in it for a long haul, I have big plans for bitcoin. Problem is that most don't see it as just a currency.

When I was referring to bitcoin possibly not having a clear vision I meant something along the lines of its application to the real world (or maybe just the internet) problems/issues: i.e. what problems is it trying to solve and how will it help to solve them?

From the marketing perspective, bitcoin's current fans are its biggest asset in fulfilling that vision. They are the ones who didn't need fancy language to see potential in bitcoin. Essentially, they are its energizer bunnies that just keep going and going. All that's missing is a clear sense of direction: i.e. what exactly they should be communicating to the rest of the world about bitcoin.

Use them, don't loose them! Developers used this forum to figure out how to get bitcoin to its current state. Now let its biggest fans to use this forum to figure out how to put together bitcoin's most relevant value proposition(s) for the general public. Maybe this is that time when developers start observing how the first way of bitcoin users is interacting with bitcoin.

I would migrate to a forum that's more serious about learning how to run a business.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to start an association of bitcoin business or a business cooperative where we pool together common resources.

If anybody who is also a public domainer, I would also be gald to help form the Public Domain Businesses of Bitcoin or something better sounding.

I would be more than happy if the "official" forum were cut to strictly development and technical discussion, tech support and such things that actually help people get up and running with Bitcoin. Hell, I'd be happy to make that change right now.

I may or may not remain with this forum if it remains as it is.