Re: [Bitcoin-development] The forums...

Re: [Bitcoin-development] The forums...

[Chris Acheson]

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I've been pushing for the Bitcoin Stack-Exchange as our main
user/merchant support site:

<http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30763/bitcoin-crypto-currency>

I think the Stack Exchange format is ideal, since the
acceptable/unacceptable topics are defined in advance, and it has a good
user moderation/reputation system.  The site will be for technical and
conceptual questions only, no politics or philosophy, and obviously no
buying and selling.  This makes it unattractive to the kooks and
hucksters, and therefore unattractive to the trolls as well.

At the time of this writing, we still need 64 more people to commit to
using the site before it will launch, 48 of which need to be established
Stack Exchange users.  At the rate we've been going, the site should be
up around the end of August.  I'd like to make it happen before then, so
please join up!


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Re: [Bitcoin-development] The forums...

[John Smith]

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Ah, right, I think stackexchange is pretty good for that. I committed.

JS

On Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 8:08 PM, Chris Acheson <chris_acheson@lavabit.com>wrote:

> I've been pushing for the Bitcoin Stack-Exchange as our main
> user/merchant support site:
>
> <http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30763/bitcoin-crypto-currency>
>
> I think the Stack Exchange format is ideal, since the
> acceptable/unacceptable topics are defined in advance, and it has a good
> user moderation/reputation system.  The site will be for technical and
> conceptual questions only, no politics or philosophy, and obviously no
> buying and selling.  This makes it unattractive to the kooks and
> hucksters, and therefore unattractive to the trolls as well.
>
> At the time of this writing, we still need 64 more people to commit to
> using the site before it will launch, 48 of which need to be established
> Stack Exchange users.  At the rate we've been going, the site should be
> up around the end of August.  I'd like to make it happen before then, so
> please join up!
>
>
>
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> _______________________________________________
> Bitcoin-development mailing list
> Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>
>

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Re: [Bitcoin-development] The forums...

[Chris Acheson]

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Could we just get the forum link removed entirely?  The current Google
search link does very little to disassociate the forum from the Bitcoin
project.  There's no need to have a forum link anyway, as there's
already a link to the wiki, which links to the forum, and can be edited
to link to other unofficial forums as well.

I just came across a thread by someone offering to sell a bitcoin mining
virus:

<http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=21524.0>

I know there'd been complaints about illegal activity, but this is a
whole new level of bad PR compared to people just offering to sell
drugs.  Especially when there are responses like:

"Excuse me while I put this on every computer at my school."

"This would be so awesome if I could install it at every computer in my
college lab. So many bitcoins for me."

It doesn't just look like some one-off cybercriminal spam, it looks like
forum members in general support this kind of thing.


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Re: [Bitcoin-development] The forums...

[Vladimir Marchenko]

I am in a final stage of preparation for launch of bitcoin community
portal at https://bitcoin.org.uk . It contains fairly advanced forum
functionality, blogging platform, community calendar, and even chat.
Professionally hosted on highend dedicated servers running FreeBSD in
a DC loated in Amsterdaam, NL

There is a  "by invitation only" section, which might be suitable for
bitcoin developers. Please consider starting using it and helping to
jump start it.

Additionally, if any bitcoin businesses would like to have their
"support" forums set up there so that they retail moderatorial control
over it please let me know.

Soft launch is scheduled on 15th of August, but it is fairly
functional already and open for registration. Feel free to register
and ping me for setting up appropriate permission for use of private
forums.

Any suggestions and feedback are also very welcome.

Kind Regards,
Vladimir.

[Bitcoin-development] The forums...

[John Smith]

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I'm getting really, really annoyed by the forums.

Can we please please remove the link to them from bitcoin.org, and replace
it with a forum that has but one goal: help users of bitcoin (and merchants,
and developers)?

No speculation about economic or political futures, no philosophical pissing
contests, no "I trust/distrust this/that exchange/company" FUD, no repeated
discussion of things already answered in the FAQ, etc.

There is a place for all of those, but not in the official forums of an open
source project. IMO, if we link an official forum from bitcoin.org at all,
it should be a neutral place for helping people adopt the technology (a bit
like the Ubuntu forums, for example).

Just my two bitcents...

JS

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Re: [Bitcoin-development] The forums...

[Matt Corallo]

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If we had the moding power, yes, but we don't have nearly enough people
who could mod such a forum.

Matt

On Sat, 2011-07-16 at 09:34 +0000, John Smith wrote:
> 
> I'm getting really, really annoyed by the forums.
> 
> Can we please please remove the link to them from bitcoin.org, and
> replace it with a forum that has but one goal: help users of bitcoin
> (and merchants, and developers)?
> 
> No speculation about economic or political futures, no philosophical
> pissing contests, no "I trust/distrust this/that exchange/company"
> FUD, no repeated discussion of things already answered in the FAQ,
> etc. 
> 
> There is a place for all of those, but not in the official forums of
> an open source project. IMO, if we link an official forum from
> bitcoin.org at all, it should be a neutral place for helping people
> adopt the technology (a bit like the Ubuntu forums, for example). 
> 
> Just my two bitcents...
> 
> JS

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Re: [Bitcoin-development] The forums...

[John Smith]

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On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 10:54 AM, Matt Corallo <bitcoin-list@bluematt.me>wrote:

> If we had the moding power, yes, but we don't have nearly enough people
> who could mod such a forum.
>


I think a simpler forum would also be easier to moderate. Main criterion: is
it helpful to users? If not, lock/remove it.

Two categories: Technical Support, Development (which can be split up
between client work, and other software/websites integrating bitcoin).

Those two can be replicated per language if a large enough group exists in
that country that is also willing to maintain order.

I have no problems with volunteering some time moderating, but not on the
current forums.

If this is really a capacity issue then IMO we should simply remove the link
and come up with an alternative medium to address user issues (such as a
moderated mailing list).  But I don't really believe this. There's a ton of
successful forums that did pick the right structure and helpful moderators,
and a lot of them are volunteer-driven.

JS

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Re: [Bitcoin-development] The forums...

[John Smith]

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I know most of the people actively working on bitcoin (and active on this
list) ignore the forums, for good reason. But there's a lot of people
(everyone new?) that think the most active members of the forum have a major
influence on the project's direction. Which is making us as developers look
really bad. As if we're some political faction that wants to bring down
world governments and unleash a global anarchistic doomsday scenario.

It really needs to be more down-to-earth. Ideally, the forum would simply be
a way to communicate with the *actual* users. For example, I use it for
soliciting user feedback on UI features.

JS

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Re: [Bitcoin-development] The forums...

[Jeff Garzik]

On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 7:20 AM, John Smith <witchspace81@gmail.com> wrote:
> I know most of the people actively working on bitcoin (and active on this
> list) ignore the forums, for good reason. But there's a lot of people
> (everyone new?) that think the most active members of the forum have a major
> influence on the project's direction. Which is making us as developers look
> really bad. As if we're some political faction that wants to bring down
> world governments and unleash a global anarchistic doomsday scenario.
>
> It really needs to be more down-to-earth. Ideally, the forum would simply be
> a way to communicate with the *actual* users. For example, I use it for
> soliciting user feedback on UI features.

I agree completely.

While the owner of the forums and bitcoin.org is Missing In Action and
has not responded to emails in more than a week, we do have access to
change the main www.bitcoin.org home page, to link to another forum.

Or we could simply de-link the current forum, as a first step.

-- 
Jeff Garzik
exMULTI, Inc.
jgarzik@exmulti.com

Re: [Bitcoin-development] The forums...

[Douglas Huff]

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On Jul 16, 2011, at 6:35 PM, Jeff Garzik wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 7:20 AM, John Smith <witchspace81@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I know most of the people actively working on bitcoin (and active on this
>> list) ignore the forums, for good reason. But there's a lot of people
>> (everyone new?) that think the most active members of the forum have a major
>> influence on the project's direction. Which is making us as developers look
>> really bad. As if we're some political faction that wants to bring down
>> world governments and unleash a global anarchistic doomsday scenario.
>> 
>> It really needs to be more down-to-earth. Ideally, the forum would simply be
>> a way to communicate with the *actual* users. For example, I use it for
>> soliciting user feedback on UI features.
> 
> I agree completely.
> 
> While the owner of the forums and bitcoin.org is Missing In Action and
> has not responded to emails in more than a week, we do have access to
> change the main www.bitcoin.org home page, to link to another forum.
> 
> Or we could simply de-link the current forum, as a first step.

I say just kill the forum.bitcoin.org DNS entry along with it.

-- 
Douglas Huff



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Re: [Bitcoin-development] The forums...

[Jeff Garzik]

On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 9:16 PM, Douglas Huff <dhuff@jrbobdobbs.org> wrote:
> I say just kill the forum.bitcoin.org DNS entry along with it.

Hopefully sirius will do this when he moves forum.bitcoin.org to
forum.bitcointalk.org.

But sirius is the only one with keys to bitcoin.org DNS, so....

-- 
Jeff Garzik
exMULTI, Inc.
jgarzik@exmulti.com

Re: [Bitcoin-development] The forums...

[Robert McKay]

On 7/17/11, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@exmulti.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 9:16 PM, Douglas Huff <dhuff@jrbobdobbs.org> wrote:
>> I say just kill the forum.bitcoin.org DNS entry along with it.
>
> Hopefully sirius will do this when he moves forum.bitcoin.org to
> forum.bitcointalk.org.
>
> But sirius is the only one with keys to bitcoin.org DNS, so....

At the risk of making myself very unpopular, perhaps it's the
development project that should move to a new URL?

Rob

Re: [Bitcoin-development] The forums...

[Matt Corallo]

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On Sun, 2011-07-17 at 03:12 +0100, Robert McKay wrote:
> On 7/17/11, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@exmulti.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 9:16 PM, Douglas Huff <dhuff@jrbobdobbs.org> wrote:
> >> I say just kill the forum.bitcoin.org DNS entry along with it.
> >
> > Hopefully sirius will do this when he moves forum.bitcoin.org to
> > forum.bitcointalk.org.
> >
> > But sirius is the only one with keys to bitcoin.org DNS, so....
> 
> At the risk of making myself very unpopular, perhaps it's the
> development project that should move to a new URL?
> 
> Rob
Its not that people dislike the forums or dislike having the forums.
Its that they are giving bitcoin a very, very bad name with all the
illegal crap, etc in them to the point of even possibly creating legal
risk in the future.  So its best that the forums are marked as
unofficial and not part of Bitcoin proper but just some group of kids
who for some reason think Bitcoin is good for their drug-buying habits.

Matt

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Re: [Bitcoin-development] The forums...

[Douglas Huff]

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On Jul 17, 2011 5:46 AM, "Matt Corallo" <bitcoin-list@bluematt.me> wrote:
> Its not that people dislike the forums or dislike having the forums.
Speak for yourself. I think they're a cesspool.

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Re: [Bitcoin-development] The forums...

[John Smith]

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On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 5:12 PM, Douglas Huff <dhuff@jrbobdobbs.org> wrote:

> On Jul 17, 2011 5:46 AM, "Matt Corallo" <bitcoin-list@bluematt.me> wrote:
> > Its not that people dislike the forums or dislike having the forums.
> Speak for yourself. I think they're a cesspool.


Yes they are. Which is why the current forums will be moved to another
domain. It grew into a monstrosity.

On the other hand, I do like forums in general.  It would be nice have an
official help forum dedicated to just the client software (and protocol) and
how to use/integrate/modify it.  It should come with a link to the FAQ
before posting.

Also, as a mailing list is (kind of) limited to text only, a forum makes it
easier to discuss graphical subjects such as UI.

Then again given the kind of people bitcoin seems to attract, it might be
unrealistic to think a normal forum can be maintained... On the other hand,
people that misbehave can then be sent to the bitcointalk forums :-)

JS

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[Bitcoin-development] The forums...

[John Smith]

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> At the risk of making myself very unpopular, perhaps it's the
> development project that should move to a new URL?
>

So you'd want to rename the project?

I'm not sure that'd be a good idea. For better or worse, even though most
people don't get it because they think it's about mining or investments, the
'bitcoin' name has become pretty well-known.

JS

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Re: [Bitcoin-development] The forums...

[Luke-Jr]

On Sunday, July 17, 2011 6:59:58 AM John Smith wrote:
> > At the risk of making myself very unpopular, perhaps it's the
> > development project that should move to a new URL?
> 
> So you'd want to rename the project?
> 
> I'm not sure that'd be a good idea. For better or worse, even though most
> people don't get it because they think it's about mining or investments,
> the 'bitcoin' name has become pretty well-known.

The "Satoshi Client" doesn't really have a formal name yet.
Don't confuse an implementation with the network itself.