The moderation occurred on r/bitcoin at a moment where it was literally flooded with big block whiners and core dev haters that promoted a protocol that contained a highly controversial and consensus critical change. That made a lot of people exhausted and uncomfortable. Forums are supposed to be a friendly place to think, share and discuss, and attempting to force a change through pressure, disruption and mobbing is unhealthy.
Reddit is built in such a way that posts which are considered "bad" are downvoted by users and therefore never see the light of day on the front page. If the majority of people are against something, that post will get downvoted and there will be no problem. This is assuming all people are honest and there's no bot automatically upvoting posts, which of course can happen, but I personally never saw that on /r/bitcoin.
This all started when an influential developer (influence he got from a former position at the bitcoin foundation) suddenly decided some irrelevant change was urgent and started lobbying users and the ecosystem through populist tactics to support an incompatible software he and his friend controlled. This is the opposite of the Bitcoin consensus spirit.
Saying that "this is the opposite of the Bitcoin consensus spirit" is just wrong. Consensus is the opinion of the majority of users and nothing else. If the majority wants XT then XT should not be put aside.
Also I run an XT node and can confirm that it is not "incompatible software" since it works perfectly fine. If changes are made to XT which makes it incompatible without the consensus of the network, I will instantly switch back to Core and I can guarantee you that everyone else will as well.
This software propagation war was very unhealthy, because it incentivized other core devs to defend their position and lobby too, wasting enormous time communicating instead of solving problems. These few weeks were a big waste for the Bitcoin community, many here don't seem to realize that.
I have to respectfully disagree. I think this "war" was a very good thing, even though it might seem that it wasted time. We now understand the danger of having a few people controlling the major forums and that it can lead to a very skewed debate. Who knows how many other proposals they have censored, or they will censor in the future? They have the power to remove what they think is "incorrect" before we can even see it.
Theymos's moderation was a defensive mechanism to the social attacks the community was facing. And he did a very good job, since now, r/bitcoin is friendly and peaceful place discuss and share thoughts.
Look at the first two posts in this thread by Roger. Think about that users in /r/bitcoin won't be told that this forum exists, or that this $1000 competition exists. Do you honestly think that is good? The moderators actively makes sure that their users stays with them by censoring all competition and pretending like everything is fine. This is literally dictatorship and propaganda.
When you walk on the street discussing important things with a friend and someone starts following you yelling nonsense in a microphone, you may be patient for sometime but at the end of the day, you will censor him.
When you walk on the street discussing important things with a friend and someone starts following you trying to cover your mouth, you may be patient for sometime but at the end of the day, you will have to move to a different city because you are unable to tell anyone that you can't talk.
Wow, sorry for the wall of text. It's actually not that much but it looks like it is because of the quotes. For the record I think it's good that you have come to this forum to debate about the current status of /r/bitcoin! We all think differently and it's good to actually discuss our thoughts and try to see it from the others perspective. As of right now I think most people will argue against you since it seems like people that are against XT have not come to this forum yet. Please don't be discouraged by this, instead try to make others come here as well and defend your point!
