Proposed alternative means for accepting new members

[tim potter]

With active infiltration of bank cartel pawns into bitcoin communities, it is important to have robust membership standards.

As it is now new members must have a sponsor and also pass a vote of current members. However it is challenging for voting members to actually know who they are voting for. Reading a few tweets or reddit posts often does not help to vet new members, and it is known that bank pawns will buy or hack into accounts.

The proposed update to membership acceptance is to require technical contribution towards the bitcoin protocol as a prerequisite to applying. Alternatively, requiring sponsors to physically meet the sponsee in person is another option.

 

[torusJKL]

I had similar questions on how to know if someone is "real".
I usually request the applicants to confirm on another medium where they were active in the past (e.g. twitter) that this is them.

Having technical contributions as a prerequisite would limit us to only accept new developers.

A physical meet would be great but as we are still a small organisation the next available member might be to far away.

I don't think we need to change the AoF but I would second some non-binding guidelines for new membership standards.

 

[solex]

I'm keen that we are able to filter out potential members who have an agenda contrary to the organization, as @tim potter highlights, but, as @torusJKL says, this is not straight-forward. I notice that recent new members have a long and vigorous social media presence supporting goals which BU stands for. This is reassuring that any infiltration is minimal, at worst.

Face-to-face meets are important, and events like Satoshi's Vision are a great way to know people in advance, who may later apply for membership.

 

[reina]

I second TorusJKL in noting that "technical contribution towards the bitcoin protocol as a prerequisite to applying." would be a very limited audience, which excludes all the people who work on the peripheral of that (developing apps, UX, onboarding users, promoting Bitcoin Cash etc) and the kind of skills and perspective they bring.

I think physical meeting between the sponsor and the sponsee seems to be a reasonable requirement and at least having spent some time communicating to each other.

As for infiltration, I think it is even more dangerous that veteran members of Bitcoin community (both anonymous and with identity) are susceptible to become co-opted by outside agendas. They have more clout and respect compared to much newer members. I think this is what "anti-Bitcoin" agendas and taskforces would rather control. Reminiscent of what happened to Core.

 

[AdrianX]

I support each member creating their own criteria, and then implementing it. I don't think we need universal rules. Some members may require you have 100BTC balance with a signed public message proving you control the key, before they vote for you, others want to know your critical thinking ability, While other members may require membership acceptance dependant on technical contribution towards the bitcoin protocol. I say each to their own.

Personally, don't vote for anyone who does not comply with my criteria (its secret by the way new members need to figure it out), and I suggest each member do whatever they think is necessary.

New members need to solicit the confidence of the existing members. It takes more than just looking at a twitter profile.

Make the member work for membership. It's not your responsibility to do all the work and vet new members. It's the applicant's responsibility to prove to you should vote for him/her.

So long as the few bad apples don't become the majority, we can always vote them off the membership. And if they do we just fork BU, it is 100% voluntary after all.

 

[reina]

Haha yeah. I would say, members should rely on their own good judgment, and there is anyway a voting round, so people are not automatically accepted. So this should solve itself.

 

[theZerg]

Part of the purpose of the BU organization is to allow non-devs to have a voice in the direction of a client. If every new member had to contribute to the protocol, I would be afraid that the BU membership would eventually be solely comprised of developers.