Published on: 2023-06-12T05:26:32+00:00
Dr. Maxim Orlovsky, a contributor to the Bitcoin community, sent an email to the bitcoin-dev mail list expressing concerns about the lack of clear moderation policies and the abuse of powers by the current moderator, Bryan Bishop. Orlovsky's post referencing a new Bitcoin scalability and privacy protocol was not published initially, leading him to question the moderation process. He conducted an experiment in the past, showing that replies to existing topics are more likely to be published than new topics. Orlovsky believes that starting from an existing topic and gradually shifting the discussion is easier than explicitly starting a new one.Orlovsky proposes several solutions to address these issues. Firstly, he suggests establishing clear moderation or pre-publication peer-review policies for the bitcoin-dev mail list. These policies can be proposed and discussed within the community before becoming public and obligatory. Secondly, Orlovsky suggests replacing Bryan Bishop as the moderator with a new moderator selected from a list of potential candidates based on "least votes against." The role of the moderator should be purely executive, without personal preferences. Additionally, Orlovsky proposes creating a dedicated mail list called "bitcoin-dev-unmoderated" to publish all submissions without moderation. This would allow people interested in non-censorship to audit the main bitcoin-dev mail list. If non-spam emails are noticed to be censored, it can be publicly announced, leading to the removal and replacement of failing moderators. Lastly, Orlovsky suggests making the incentive to work as a moderator reputation-based.In his email, Orlovsky recounts his experience with the bitcoin-dev mail list's lack of clear explicit moderation or peer-review policies. He highlights the issue of personal biases affecting the publication of posts and emphasizes the need for fair and transparent communication within the community. Orlovsky signs off with kind regards and provides links to relevant tweets, email discussions, and GitHub repositories for further reference.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T01:13:13.609300+00:00