The forum is overrun with the hate of the day with various "hardware"(/vaporware) vendors, it has become hard to discuss anything else. Many of the participants are behaving like animals.
I'm sensitive to the risk of suppressing complaints. There have been many scam hardware "vendors" of various degrees. People should be able to communicate about the risks, seek recourse, etc. At the same time, these complaints have reached an intensity where they are self defeating. If you tell me vendor X is a scam I don't know if its because they are or because you're crazy, because you're a shill for another vendor, because you're a shill for them trying to make the complainers look crazy, if you're a miner trying to scare people out of mining, etc. As a warning this information is no longer very helpful.
I have multiple people I know (and have met in person and know not to be socks) begging me to do something about the sad state of this subforum. But I'm at a loss... how do we defeat troll culture when it's taking the form of "concern troll" about concerns we should be careful to preserve? And how can we do it without making me and miningbuddy censors who have to vet every single post?
Does anyone have any great ideas?
Will we continue to accept advertising from buttfuck labs?
This post is really at the center of this thread.
Here's the deal. If I want to discuss bitcoin or mining in a college classroom, I have to think long and hard about using your post, and by extension, this entire thread. It does not matter that all college students use language that is more colorful than yours, the fact is that *I* dare not use that language inside a college classroom.
That leaves the choice of 1) lose one way to introduce bitcoin to an audience that is very good about accepting new ideas or 2) asking for your post to be removed.
1. Is there any reason that you could not have written "Butterfly Labs?"
2. Is there any reason that this question needs to be repeated 1, or 2, or 3, or more dozen times?
3. Can you accomplish your goals by buying an advertisement that says, oh, "Butterfly Labs is 1 year late on delivery" and another that says "Butterfly Labs strongly discourages refunds?" instead of posting vendor hate?