Quote from: Deena on August 18, 2018, 08:59:08 AM

The problem is that Theymos can't make up his mind whether he wants to run the forum centralized or decentralized (or rather the problem is that he doesn't make it run simply centralized, because the forum technique is not suitable to run it decentralized).

He seems to prefer it decentralized, given subjective implementations like the trust en merit systems. He also expressed his irritation about the centralized cluttering of trust (which apparently isn't the way he wanted it to be). But then he does nothing to bring about a change.

And at the same time there are some rules and some moderators, which is again a move to centralization.

The forum is centralised whether anyone likes it or not, and there are rules to try keep some order here. Without them it's anarchy and a total mess. Theymos obviously wants to keep as much freedom as possible without restricting users too much but I don't think we should just use that as an excuse to get away with not doing anything about the various issues here which are numerous. Yes, users should have as much freedom as possible, but users shouldn't be allowed to freely spam their ref link or virus in every post (as they aren't) nor should ICO campaigns be free to pay thousands of users to copy and paste and spam (which is currently tolerated and shouldn't be). That isn't freedom; it's anarchy. Without rules and regulations the greedy and nefarious rise to the top and shit on everyone else along the way ruining it for everybody in the process and without punishments for those who abuse the system people will continue to get away with murder.

Quote from: Deena on August 18, 2018, 08:59:08 AM

That's why I wrote several times in different places that the forum governance isn't executed from principles. It is patch work with a bit of rules here, a bit of merit there, a patch of trust, a patch of moderating, patch, patch, patch. It's a big mess! And a clutterance of long standing members are taking full profit from the situation. But perhaps that is the way Theymos wants it because perhaps he profits from it too. Who knows what's going on in his mind? [EDIT] This forum really needs some professional updates and some clear, intelligent principles.

No system is perfect. I've never seen a perfect feedback system that can't be gamed or exploited (see eBay and Amazon etc). No law system is perfect either. Some people get punished more than others and some can even buy their way out of punishment or imprisonment. Things are never fair for all across the board as much as we want them to be. People will naturally invent whatever conspiracies they want to justify what theymos does or doesn't do, but the least sexiest answer is usually the case. I think theymos is slow to act on many things because I just don't think he has the time. If theymos wanted to monetise this forum more he could do so in multiple ways and I have personally suggested numerous ways he could do so. I've suggested users can pay for more donator ranks, ICOs have to pay a fee to list here, more forum ad slots, and even that if he doesn't trust anyone else to do admin duties then he consider paying himself an appropriate wage and doing forum administration full time because one is badly needed (it's been months since someone has seemingly had their hacked/lost account restored). So far he hasn't done anything I have suggested. In fact, he seems to be even against things like more ad slots completely. Nobody is going to be happy with whatever happens; we're damned if we do damned if we don't. People complain about spam and farming and then a system is introduced such as merit, then people complain about that. We ban or restrict campaigns and then people will cry hysterically about that. It's all about finding a balance, but I agree not much is being done to try find it at the moment and as such it's chaos and disorder, but there are certain things that do desperately need to change or be addressed and ignoring them won't make the issues go away.