Quote from: finack on June 23, 2011, 09:06:40 PM

Quote from: imperi on June 23, 2011, 08:40:36 PM

I wish the trolls would go away. All they do is hurt the public perception of Bitcoin. They make stupid threads about losing 20k Bitcoins, 400, etc.

I agree, if we only had more level headed posters like you this place would be a lot better off.

That, ahem, being said... It's clearly a moderation failure to some great degree. There are plenty of higher traffic forums than this that maintain a much higher S/N ratio. You can think laissez faire works great for economics, but it's a clear proven failure for forums. A little moderation goes a long way, there has to be a broken window theory type process going on here where people see mayhem and shit S/N and decide to contribute to it because obviously nobody cares about the forums very much.

I mean really, there are obvious trolls (no offense imperi), pyramid schemes, rehashed flame wars and hucksters all over the main subforums. Spend a few days with a real editorial policy and suddenly there'd be a lot less of that going on to have to moderate. It seems the main problem is that the moderators are mostly just checked out, maybe nobody's really in charge or they've moved on to greener pastures.

Or maybe, they are proponents of free speech and not censorship. If someone creates a post about a new pyramid scheme they have created, and it is removed, wouldn't that be considered censorship? Or if someone wants to report that their 25k BTC went missing, but their thread was deleted, would that REALLY look good for bitcoin?

The nature of new people constantly joining up means that conversations and arguments WILL be rehashed. There are a few trolls who need to be brought under control, but other than that, I see no need for extra moderation.