6 ms·

What is staggering is that one would assume that this service was created with the aim of helping open source developers, but when the developers ask personally

by art2 12y ago

What is staggering is that one would assume that this service was created with the aim of helping open source developers, but when the developers ask personally to make a reasonable change to how the site is functioning, the owners decline. So the reason the site exists is something different. I don't think it's fraud. It's probably the weird culture of the (younger) part of the Bitcoin community, for whom the Bitcoin is more like cultural revolution. It's hard to rationally explain why liking Bitcoin leads to liking tip4commit's approach, but surely the Bitcoin revolutionists like to place themselves above the rest, and don't see themselves as a part of the "old" world (legal, financial system etc.). For example, the currently highest-voted comment on /r/bitcoin for the story [0] says "I disagree with him [mitsuhiko]". [0] http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2kz9x0/please_remove_mitsuhiko_this_guy_is_complaining/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2kz9x0/please_remov...

mbesto 12y ago
I think it's fair to say that the vocal majority of BitCoiners have a very naive view of some basic economic concepts.
- WallWextra 12y ago
  Also that they like ramming it down everyone's throats.
  - techrat 12y ago
    Given the value of BitCoin relies on desire and the only way they can possibly convince people that they want BitCoin is to spam it until they believe it...
- wyager 12y ago
  >a very naive view of some basic economic concepts. Which concepts in particular are you referring to?
  - shiven 12y ago
    The failure, nay the pigheaded refusal, to learn from history. BitCoin is faux money and will likely be recorded as the "Dutch Tulip Bubble" [0] of our times. Intentions and wishful thinking alone are not enough to create revolutions. Crises are invariably required to change such fundamental concepts as value of currency in the public's mind, and it has to happen on a massive scale in a tiny span of time. BitCoin will be no more than the butt of jokes in another decade unless it finds it's destiny in a crisis made for it to shine. [0] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
    - wyager 12y ago
      You haven't actually mentioned any economic principles; you've just compared Bitcoin to a historical bubble (of which there were certainly many) without any evidence supporting this comparison. >BitCoin is faux money Could you expand on this? How do you define "faux" money?
    - ougawouga 12y ago
      OK, you're making 2 different claims. The first claim is that Bitoiners refuse to learn from history. But the second claim is that crises are required for revolutionary change (history says, I presume). So how are Bitcoiners refusing to learn from history? By trying in the first place? Or by failing to manufacture a crisis? And really, linking to the wikipedia page of tulip mania, as if we haven't heard that trope 10,000 times?
  - mbesto 12y ago
    For one, there's a massive disconnect in distinguishing between the value of the currency and currency as a medium of exchange. For example, most sites and discussions focus on the value of BTC vs USD. Very few look at volatility and transaction volume.
    - wyager 12y ago
      >Very few look at volatility That is fair. Do you think this is an insurmountable disadvantage? >and transaction volume. I don't know about that. Bitcoiners have been very vocal about the regularly increasing transaction volume since its inception. See https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-popular?timespan=all https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-popu...
- kordless 12y ago
  I think it's fair to say that's a blaming statement. Comments by people who appreciate the value of the blockchain are not all naive. I'd say the vast majority of people don't quite understand the ramifications yet, and would rather talk about what we all focus on: money. That's not what I think the value of Bitcoin is, however.
- yxhuvud 12y ago
  Well, the vocal majority of EVERYONE has a very naive view of most basic economic concepts.
  - geofft 12y ago
    Fully agreed -- but I'm not trying to do very much with economics other than save money and pay taxes. For the things where I'm trying to act towards specific social change (e.g., privacy and security, in my case) I make an effort to be well-informed about, technically, socially, and legally. I don't have any illusions that the status quo is good, but there are also things that you can't be naive about when changing. I think there are a lot of broken things about how currency works, but there are also quite a number of good things, and setting the whole thing on fire without understanding which parts are good and why is a recipe for hurting people and also failing to get your idea to succeed. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://xkcd.com/592/ http://xkcd.com/592/
ortusdux 12y ago
>It's hard to rationally explain why liking Bitcoin leads to liking tip4commit's approach A currency only works if people use it. A good way to support bitcoin is to expand adoption. It seems to me that the creators of tip4commit have blinders on and only view the project through bitcoin colored glasses. The issue as I see it is that the bitcoin movement mirrors the technology's decentralized nature. There is a general optimism and push towards adoption, but no real methods or direction towards that goal. It's a rather organic, evolving system. Things that have helped adoption have been repeated and things that cause a backlash are squashed and learned from. The latter is what I would say is happening here.
jchrisa 12y ago
The non-sketchy version of this would only accept tips for repos that had a bitcoin address committed to a well-known location in their repo. And it would send the tips directly to that address. No possibility of scamming, and opt-in by its nature. Is there already something like this?
- tokenizerrr 12y ago
  That seems to go against the idea of tip4commit, the idea is that contributors (through pull requests etc) can be compensated as well automatically. Same if there's multiple contributors to a project the compensation is split between them based on the amount of commits they make.
  - stkhlm 12y ago
    Couldn't that be fixed by having contributors creating a specifically named repo with the address in a file? Still opt in. It could be opt in for the maintainer too, following jchrisa's suggestion, meaning the maintainer could veto payments.
  - jchrisa 12y ago
    Maybe the better solution would be to look for Bitcoin wallet addresses in commit messages. If maintainers don't like it they can scrub them on merge.
- pbreit 12y ago
  Except everyone knows that asking for forgiveness beats asking for permission every time.
wyager 12y ago
Or maybe it's just a cool hackathon project using Bitcoin and the Github APIs... Seriously, what is the big deal with this? The developers are more than able to simply ignore the donations. Anyone who wasted time complaining in that Github thread could have clicked "mark as spam" in a fraction of the time and been done with it.
- aaronmusk 12y ago
  there are normal people on this thread ;)
- krick 12y ago
  I guess the real reason was Armin's sincere indignation (quite justified in my opinion) about some random site on the web making use of his project name in some questionable way that appears like it is encouraged by the project maintainer himself. Emails are minor nuisance as you always can create one more filter to get rid of known spam. And then "shit just hit the fan", so all discussion that follows is more about making noise and threats about throwing lawyers in each other than really trying to solve anything.
  - wyager 12y ago
    >some random site on the web making use of his project name in some questionable way that appears like it is encouraged by the project maintainer himself. Everyone who used this tipping mechanism would have at least a cursory idea of how it works, and that's all it takes to understand that project maintainers have zero involvement with it.
- DanBC 12y ago
  But then we'd have to listen to someone complain that the "mark as spam" button was being misused by a bunch of people.
krick 12y ago
I don't think the second part of your comment is correct and the fact that this situation about tip4commit and discussions around it makes it to seam correct forces me to dislike it [tip4commit] even more. I mean, there isn't really "two armies" fighting each other: "old world" vs "bitcoin-ish world" with completely polar ideologies, there's no black and white. So when someone on one side is doing some ridiculous nonsense it doesn't make the other side automatically "the right one" and vice versa. Even not being part of Bitcoin community I personally think there's quite real need in "cultural revolution" of some sort, because what you are calling the "old world" isn't really "old" one as you surely understand yourself: it's quite significant part of the only world we are living in, and it is as full with nonsense as the "new, revolutionary" one. I mean, there truly is quite a lot things that one can disagree with about the "old" world, maybe even somewhat forcefully, in "Gandhi's way" rather than "Kant's way". So when somebody associated with the "new" world behaves stupid he causes much more harm for the supporters of all kind of "cultural revolutions", because makes them look like a bunch of idiots no matter how different from each other their actual beliefs and reasoning may be.
marcell 12y ago
> For example, the currently highest-voted comment on /r/bitcoin for the story [0] says "I disagree with him [mitsuhiko]". Not true (anymore?). The top 3 comments are now: - "I think [mitsuhiko] complaint is 120% fair..." - "It seems like tip4commit is trying to ram a Bitcoin service down peoples throats..." - "This has nothing to do with Bitcoin at all. It's people being jerks..."
- eli 12y ago
  On the other hand, the whole thread has been killed by an /r/bitcoin mod apparently for inciting anti-bitcoin sentiment. http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2kz9x0/please_remove_mitsuhiko_this_guy_is_complaining/clq3yl2 http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2kz9x0/please_remov...
  - zorbo 12y ago
    I got the exact opposite of that (or I'm misunderstanding you).. The title of the story on reddit is: > "Please remove mitsuhiko/* (This guy is complaining about tip4commit, please help educate about Bitcoin)" and the mod writes: > "You are not allowed to incite brigading. Please resubmit using the original source - the github link. You are part of the problem of why people hate our community" Seems like the mod is reprimanding the submitter of the story for the "please help educate about Bitcoin" part of the submission (which is inciting brigading).
hyperpape 12y ago
I do feel some sort of kinship here with the Bitcoin attitude, but it's worth remembering that readability pulled an (arguably worse) version of this stunt in the past few years, and were called out as scumbags for it. No Bitcoin in that story.
- redalastor 12y ago
  Do you have a link to that story?
  - y2bd 12y ago
    Reposting from down below: http://blog.readability.com/2012/06/announcement/ http://blog.readability.com/2012/06/announcement/
LyndsySimon 12y ago
I think you were probably referring to my comment - and for what it's worth, I'm thinking you're absolutely correct about it being a cultural difference. The Bitcoin community is made up of predominately radical libertarians; I say that with the utmost respect, as I consider myself part of that very group. The culture is very different from that of the Python community - and one of those ways is that it is often acceptable to alienate a portion of your potential userbase.
sfall 12y ago
the top comment right now is http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2kz9x0/please_remove_mitsuhiko_this_guy_is_complaining/clpzqjr http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2kz9x0/please_remov... and that comment agrees with mitsuhiko

by art2 12y ago

mbesto 12y ago

I think it's fair to say that the vocal majority of BitCoiners have a very naive view of some basic economic concepts.

WallWextra 12y ago
Also that they like ramming it down everyone's throats.
- techrat 12y ago
  Given the value of BitCoin relies on desire and the only way they can possibly convince people that they want BitCoin is to spam it until they believe it...
wyager 12y ago
>a very naive view of some basic economic concepts. Which concepts in particular are you referring to?
- shiven 12y ago
  The failure, nay the pigheaded refusal, to learn from history. BitCoin is faux money and will likely be recorded as the "Dutch Tulip Bubble" [0] of our times. Intentions and wishful thinking alone are not enough to create revolutions. Crises are invariably required to change such fundamental concepts as value of currency in the public's mind, and it has to happen on a massive scale in a tiny span of time. BitCoin will be no more than the butt of jokes in another decade unless it finds it's destiny in a crisis made for it to shine. [0] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
  - wyager 12y ago
    You haven't actually mentioned any economic principles; you've just compared Bitcoin to a historical bubble (of which there were certainly many) without any evidence supporting this comparison. >BitCoin is faux money Could you expand on this? How do you define "faux" money?
  - ougawouga 12y ago
    OK, you're making 2 different claims. The first claim is that Bitoiners refuse to learn from history. But the second claim is that crises are required for revolutionary change (history says, I presume). So how are Bitcoiners refusing to learn from history? By trying in the first place? Or by failing to manufacture a crisis? And really, linking to the wikipedia page of tulip mania, as if we haven't heard that trope 10,000 times?
- mbesto 12y ago
  For one, there's a massive disconnect in distinguishing between the value of the currency and currency as a medium of exchange. For example, most sites and discussions focus on the value of BTC vs USD. Very few look at volatility and transaction volume.
  - wyager 12y ago
    >Very few look at volatility That is fair. Do you think this is an insurmountable disadvantage? >and transaction volume. I don't know about that. Bitcoiners have been very vocal about the regularly increasing transaction volume since its inception. See https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-popular?timespan=all https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-popu...
kordless 12y ago
I think it's fair to say that's a blaming statement. Comments by people who appreciate the value of the blockchain are not all naive. I'd say the vast majority of people don't quite understand the ramifications yet, and would rather talk about what we all focus on: money. That's not what I think the value of Bitcoin is, however.
yxhuvud 12y ago
Well, the vocal majority of EVERYONE has a very naive view of most basic economic concepts.
- geofft 12y ago
  Fully agreed -- but I'm not trying to do very much with economics other than save money and pay taxes. For the things where I'm trying to act towards specific social change (e.g., privacy and security, in my case) I make an effort to be well-informed about, technically, socially, and legally. I don't have any illusions that the status quo is good, but there are also things that you can't be naive about when changing. I think there are a lot of broken things about how currency works, but there are also quite a number of good things, and setting the whole thing on fire without understanding which parts are good and why is a recipe for hurting people and also failing to get your idea to succeed. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://xkcd.com/592/ http://xkcd.com/592/

ortusdux 12y ago

>It's hard to rationally explain why liking Bitcoin leads to liking tip4commit's approach A currency only works if people use it. A good way to support bitcoin is to expand adoption. It seems to me that the creators of tip4commit have blinders on and only view the project through bitcoin colored glasses. The issue as I see it is that the bitcoin movement mirrors the technology's decentralized nature. There is a general optimism and push towards adoption, but no real methods or direction towards that goal. It's a rather organic, evolving system. Things that have helped adoption have been repeated and things that cause a backlash are squashed and learned from. The latter is what I would say is happening here.

jchrisa 12y ago

The non-sketchy version of this would only accept tips for repos that had a bitcoin address committed to a well-known location in their repo. And it would send the tips directly to that address. No possibility of scamming, and opt-in by its nature. Is there already something like this?

tokenizerrr 12y ago
That seems to go against the idea of tip4commit, the idea is that contributors (through pull requests etc) can be compensated as well automatically. Same if there's multiple contributors to a project the compensation is split between them based on the amount of commits they make.
- stkhlm 12y ago
  Couldn't that be fixed by having contributors creating a specifically named repo with the address in a file? Still opt in. It could be opt in for the maintainer too, following jchrisa's suggestion, meaning the maintainer could veto payments.
- jchrisa 12y ago
  Maybe the better solution would be to look for Bitcoin wallet addresses in commit messages. If maintainers don't like it they can scrub them on merge.
pbreit 12y ago
Except everyone knows that asking for forgiveness beats asking for permission every time.

wyager 12y ago

Or maybe it's just a cool hackathon project using Bitcoin and the Github APIs... Seriously, what is the big deal with this? The developers are more than able to simply ignore the donations. Anyone who wasted time complaining in that Github thread could have clicked "mark as spam" in a fraction of the time and been done with it.

aaronmusk 12y ago
there are normal people on this thread ;)
krick 12y ago
I guess the real reason was Armin's sincere indignation (quite justified in my opinion) about some random site on the web making use of his project name in some questionable way that appears like it is encouraged by the project maintainer himself. Emails are minor nuisance as you always can create one more filter to get rid of known spam. And then "shit just hit the fan", so all discussion that follows is more about making noise and threats about throwing lawyers in each other than really trying to solve anything.
- wyager 12y ago
  >some random site on the web making use of his project name in some questionable way that appears like it is encouraged by the project maintainer himself. Everyone who used this tipping mechanism would have at least a cursory idea of how it works, and that's all it takes to understand that project maintainers have zero involvement with it.
DanBC 12y ago
But then we'd have to listen to someone complain that the "mark as spam" button was being misused by a bunch of people.

krick 12y ago

I don't think the second part of your comment is correct and the fact that this situation about tip4commit and discussions around it makes it to seam correct forces me to dislike it [tip4commit] even more. I mean, there isn't really "two armies" fighting each other: "old world" vs "bitcoin-ish world" with completely polar ideologies, there's no black and white. So when someone on one side is doing some ridiculous nonsense it doesn't make the other side automatically "the right one" and vice versa. Even not being part of Bitcoin community I personally think there's quite real need in "cultural revolution" of some sort, because what you are calling the "old world" isn't really "old" one as you surely understand yourself: it's quite significant part of the only world we are living in, and it is as full with nonsense as the "new, revolutionary" one. I mean, there truly is quite a lot things that one can disagree with about the "old" world, maybe even somewhat forcefully, in "Gandhi's way" rather than "Kant's way". So when somebody associated with the "new" world behaves stupid he causes much more harm for the supporters of all kind of "cultural revolutions", because makes them look like a bunch of idiots no matter how different from each other their actual beliefs and reasoning may be.

marcell 12y ago

> For example, the currently highest-voted comment on /r/bitcoin for the story [0] says "I disagree with him [mitsuhiko]". Not true (anymore?). The top 3 comments are now: - "I think [mitsuhiko] complaint is 120% fair..." - "It seems like tip4commit is trying to ram a Bitcoin service down peoples throats..." - "This has nothing to do with Bitcoin at all. It's people being jerks..."

eli 12y ago
On the other hand, the whole thread has been killed by an /r/bitcoin mod apparently for inciting anti-bitcoin sentiment. http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2kz9x0/please_remove_mitsuhiko_this_guy_is_complaining/clq3yl2 http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2kz9x0/please_remov...
- zorbo 12y ago
  I got the exact opposite of that (or I'm misunderstanding you).. The title of the story on reddit is: > "Please remove mitsuhiko/* (This guy is complaining about tip4commit, please help educate about Bitcoin)" and the mod writes: > "You are not allowed to incite brigading. Please resubmit using the original source - the github link. You are part of the problem of why people hate our community" Seems like the mod is reprimanding the submitter of the story for the "please help educate about Bitcoin" part of the submission (which is inciting brigading).

hyperpape 12y ago

I do feel some sort of kinship here with the Bitcoin attitude, but it's worth remembering that readability pulled an (arguably worse) version of this stunt in the past few years, and were called out as scumbags for it. No Bitcoin in that story.

redalastor 12y ago
Do you have a link to that story?
- y2bd 12y ago
  Reposting from down below: http://blog.readability.com/2012/06/announcement/ http://blog.readability.com/2012/06/announcement/

LyndsySimon 12y ago

I think you were probably referring to my comment - and for what it's worth, I'm thinking you're absolutely correct about it being a cultural difference. The Bitcoin community is made up of predominately radical libertarians; I say that with the utmost respect, as I consider myself part of that very group. The culture is very different from that of the Python community - and one of those ways is that it is often acceptable to alienate a portion of your potential userbase.

sfall 12y ago

the top comment right now is http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2kz9x0/please_remove_mitsuhiko_this_guy_is_complaining/clpzqjr http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2kz9x0/please_remov... and that comment agrees with mitsuhiko