Looking around some interesting posts on bitcointalk, I chanced to see what I can only imagine to be an ad/link for the site:
cryptotalk dot org
Although I'm usually averse to clicking on weird links; however, in the interests of science I clicked. You can change the words into a proper URL if you want, I just thought I'd put some friction in your way to stop you doing it without arming yourself with information first.
Dining Out
Any business would want to have a close look at the competition. Any restaurateur would want to dine at a rival restaurant at least once.
Looking at the history of the site it seems to have started as far back as 2013 and that the site, originally paid in sats for posts. This changed to paying with tokens linked to a questionable Russian exchange called YoBit. At present, these payments are in 'TALK tokens'.
This forum seemingly did pay sats for good English language posts - but now is largely only used by Russian speakers:
Payment for posts in English section is temporarily completely disabled (in BTC and tokens) due to a large number of spammers (we may return it back after updating the quality assessment system).
Incidentally, I noticed one competition (from November 2020) that appeared after the introduction of the token that awarded the prizes - 0.05BTC, 0.03BTC, 0.02BTC, 0.01BTC AND 0.005BTC for first, second, third, fourth and fifth place respectively. These rewards, whether real or not, were again linked to the YoBit exchange.
Compare this to the song & dance they seem to be making of 1.25 satoshis in the image below. Yes, you read that right, 1.25 satoshis.
So, what went wrong with the site? Was it just a way to introduce their own tokens? I can't say. It's cited, above, that it was due to spammers and the quality dropped.
One could give the benefit of the doubt to the original intention of the site - but if it was encouraging non-critical thought of the 'crypto' world (NFTs, ICOs and various derivatives of Bitcoin) this non-critical mindset can hurt not only your community, but the extended community too. Surely having spammers and bots pop up in large numbers is a sad reflection of this.
Cryptotalk Menu (a la carte)
- Chia mining (with Wonderful Spam)
- Coins / Tokens talk (lots of Spam)
- NFTs and Collections (+ Spam on rye)
- Trading (garnished with Spam)
- ICOS/IEOs (with entrée of Spam)
- Gambling/HYIPs/freecoins (and f̶̶r̶̶i̶̶e̶̶s̶ Spam)
(Just) Desserts
- Premier Сasual Dating Real-life Girls (with added ̶s̶̶p̶̶e̶̶r̶̶m̶ Spam)
- Fast Dollars (Terrible Spam)
Spam begets Spam - one chef's solution
Thankfully @ek had the foresight to squat and moderate the ~crypto territory - a great way to ensure a critical thinking community and not one filled with useless coins and useless spam.
In contrast to this site, SN has never knowingly entertained anything other than critical thinking in this space. Sure, there's been experiments - right now it's no longer just Bitcoin and tech but, in spite of this, spam has been kept at bay.
The forum needs great posts to grow, but we shouldn't forget to create Bitcoin posts.
The more helpful and thoughtful Bitcoin posts are created, the greater the amount of ideas and knowledge that's produced. We all see things from different angles and spark ideas. Although it's nice to kick back and talk about other things, and in other territories, Bitcoin has always been it's backbone. To nourish that territory is to deeply nourish the site.
No matter what the waiter (or their comic song) might say, even a small serving of Spam is far from wonderful.