Fair point.  However, the current state of this forum doesn't exactly inspire confidence that an anonymous section would be properly moderated.


You're right that it's not just that the "Bitcoin PR" folks aren't doing it right.  Our PR department, so to speak, has suffered a hostile takeover by those who have no clue how to do PR properly, if they even care.  It's not even a "too many anarchists" problem, it's a "too many tactless fools" problem.

I don't think this is an inevitable result of the nature of Bitcoin.  The core developers come across as fairly reasonable people, after all.  I see this forum as the focal point of the image issue.  Everyone looking for more information about bitcoin goes to bitcoin.org, which directs them here, where they see all the tactless fools who have set up camp.  The forum admins have made sure that this place is a welcoming environment for tactless fools, who need not fear having their nonsense censored.

This. I would say it was book quality advice. She could write a book about her industry and it would have a good chance to become a bestseller.

It is sad that the owner of this forum and the developer of blockexplorer.com calls her a troll.

I believe this is not true. Why did she put the following text in her signature?

I'm calling it a "PR problem" because despite the threads on the subject we still don't really have any sort of PR strategy. People are letting the things that individually attracted them to Bitcoin become representative of the entire idea despite the fact that many others (who simply aren't as loud in public) didn't get into it for the same reason, and that those reasons are unlikely to ever attract a large population at all.

It becomes an issue of slippery slopes because the more people soap-box about the evils of government and whatnot here, the less people like me want to talk about Bitcoin to others for fear of being lumped into the same category as these people whom I disagree with politically.

The political forum should, IMHO, absolutely be done away with - if you want to have an anarcho-capitalist or Randian circle-jerk there is absolutely no shortage of places on the internet you can do it. You may even be able to espouse the wonders of Bitcoin over there, if you can do it without being run out by the rabid precious-metals fetishists.

Turning away everyone who's not an extreme incarnation of libertarianism, turning away perfectly good business owners who are interested in the currency, turning away "crybabies" is not going to grow this thing outside the realm of a small, irrelevant niche. If that's all the majority here wants, that's fine - but understand that there's probably still vast amounts of investment in this market from people who are waiting for it to blow up, so if you want to cut that possibility off, those people are probably going to want what's left of their investment back.

If you want any decent level of worldwide adoption from Bitcoin, people are going to have to realize that politics are irrelevant unless it relates directly to Bitcoin - not everyone is going to agree with your minority political opinion, nor do they have to for the idea to work.

I agree. It used to be my policy to loudly and vocally challenge Anarcho-Cap/Libertarianism on the forum whenever possible so that new-comers and perusers would know that not all bitcoiners were... y'know, fraggles.

However the campaign soon proved exhausting and impractical. And anyway I always felt a little dirty afterward and not in a good way, more like I'd just wasted two hours of my life arguing with the smelly guy on the street corner who's always shouting at the space beside the street-light.

Now I just don't talk about bitcoin anymore to people I know.

Those posts were not deleted, though they were merged in a confusing way. (This merge was not something I advocated or was happy about. Atlas is no longer a moderator.)

I don't think the kooks are a majority, they're just very vocal.  The trolls are as big of a problem as the kooks are.  Normal people are definitely interested in Bitcoin, we just have to shut the kooks and trolls up so that the normal folks will tend to stick around.

Once Sirius stops dragging his feet, this forum is supposed to be removed from the bitcoin.org domain, moved it to bitcointalk.org, and the "forum" link will presumably be removed.  He has the new domain now, he just hasn't actually done the move yet.

There's also an effort to get a Bitcoin Q&A site on Stack Exchange.  This will help a lot, as we'll finally have a user support site with decent moderation.  You guys should join and help get it off the ground.

Wow vegetta is a tool

At the rate it's been going, it should open by the end of August.  It would be nice to have it happen before that.  We're currently ahead on new users (119/200), what we need are more people who have an established reputation on other Stack Exchange sites (48/100).


Doubt it.  The SE site is strictly for technical and conceptual stuff, not for political/philosophical stuff.  Nothing interesting for the kooks, and with no kooks there's no lulz for the trolls.  Not to mention that there's a moderation system in place that actually works, unlike with this place.

Sure, but I think it's bad to have our anything-goes dumping ground right out in front, as the public face of the project.  I'm sure bitcointalk.org will be the the first Google result for "bitcoin forum", but I hope it doesn't even make the first page for "bitcoin".  It should be kind of like IRC: it's a wild place, but you only end up there if you go looking for it, and in that case you know what to expect.


Thanks.  Upvoted.