Cryptocurrency projects and thus the developers working in that field are treated with contempt

I agree

I agree that this was a poor choice.

I agree

This is blatant discrimination and completely unacceptable.

This was the inspiration for the change: https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1399058952336277505

I think it's time for us in the tech world to speak out and make it clear the emperor has no clothes here. Cryptocurrency is sustained by a mix of money laundering, vaporware, fraud, ransomware, gambling, and delusion. It has no social benefit except helping end first dates fast

And I agree with this, and I am speaking up. I'm done being diplomatic about it. I'm done giving it a benefit of the doubt.

It doesn't matter that there's some neat technology in it, or that someone somewhere has used it legally once. The bulk of all this tech is for skirting the law. If you don't realize this, you're being played too ("It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.")

This is not a code of conduct issue. Working on code that will be used for get-rich-quick schemes is not protected personal characteristic. You can stop doing this.

closed

I have spent 20 years in investment banking working at Deutsche Bank, RBS, Dresdner, Credit Suisse and Bank of America. The existing banking system is very inefficent and is getting more efficent at a glacial pace. The credit crunch was due to lack of transparency and fear of counterparty risk - something that blockchains and clearing houses try to minimise / eliminate.

RE: Cryptocurrency is sustained by a mix of money laundering, vaporware, fraud, ransomware, gambling, and delusion.

After quite a lot of research into this field I can fairly confidently say that derivatives are what cryptocurrencies will be mostly used for ( https://defipulse.com/ ); this is also true of fiat ( https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-money-and-markets-in-one-visualization-2020/ ). Wall Street and the City of London provide a function for society but defi can cut out most of these middle men. To achieve this we need to scale and be using more energy efficient blockchains than Bitcoin (gen1). Proof of stake for security achieves this (E.g. Polkadot (a gen3 chain) and by December Ethereum (a gen2 chain) will also be energy efficient).

Today for instance was the mainnet launch of Concordium ( https://concordium.com/ ) - a rust/WASM gen3 chain with de-anonymisation built in so that governments / tax authorities can unmask account owners with appropriate safeguards ( Feel free to read more here: https://developer.concordium.software/en/mainnet/net/concepts/id-accounts.html ).

I can see that your currrent viewpoint is something that you feel very strongly about, and I am sorry that you've lost patience with the seemingly slow rate of innovation. Gradually we are coming to global consensus on robust solutions to the outstanding problems and I have no doubt that we will find robust global solutions to AML and tax avoidence over the next decade that are more effective than the patchwork quilt of national regulations we have currently. In the late 90's when we were creating the internet there were lots of 'Under Construction' images. It's the same here. Rust and Blockchain are about the same age and both are young technologies and still have rough edges.

We are both doing what we believe to be the right thing for the world which we are leaving to our kids. I suspect we will have to agree to disagree and let history take its course.

I have spent 20 years in investment banking working at Deutsche Bank, RBS, Dresdner, Credit Suisse and Bank of America.

Irrelevant, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

I am sorry that you've lost patience with the seemingly slow rate of innovation.

I don't think that what Kornel said if I understand correctly, I believe Kornel think crypto currency is mainly use for bad purpose "I'm done giving it a benefit of the doubt." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

In the late 90's when we were creating the internet there were lots of 'Under Construction' images. It's the same here. Rust and Blockchain are about the same age and both are young technologies and still have rough edges.

Totally irrelevant comparison.

We are both doing what we believe to be the right thing for the world which we are leaving to our kids.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man and a little https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children

I skip all your claim cause I don't want to talk about crypto currency here as the subject is about code of conduct.

I believe Kornel think crypto currency is mainly use for bad purpose "I'm done giving it a benefit of the doubt."

This is some first class bullshit. Computers can be used for bad purposes. This is discrimination against a class of engneers that work on a partical problem. You are entilted to your opion on cryptocurrencies, mixnet, the internet and anything else. You are not entitled to discrimination against those who earn their living off a given technology. This harassment is bigoted behaivor and we need to stand up to this.

I know that there are developers employed in cryptocurrencies who just do their small task of implementing technical details without ill intentions. But such code ends up having owners or users who aren't that nice.

It's very unfortunate that the huge amount of money poured into cryptocurrencies made this area dominate Rust programming job openings. Fortunately, Rust is becoming more mainstream, so I hope those who want to leave crypto will be able to do so.

Code isn't just code. It has real-world effects. Technical means to bypass traditional financial controls are mainly useful to those who would be blocked by the law. There are many technologies that happen to have awful uses among good ones, but in cryptocurrencies lack of trusted authority is the whole point, so they're inseparable from unregulated finances. This is why I don't want to give legitimacy to this category by treating it as neutral.

You may be just an innocent janitor sweeping the Magic Beans store, but I will continue saying that the Magic Beanstalk doesn't exist and the beans are a fraud.

I used to be enthusiastic about cryptocurrencies, and admire cleverness of them at the technical level. But it's not a new technology any more, and I think it's time to look at what it is today, and not what it was supposed to be or what it's promised to be.

changed title from Code of conduct issue to Cryptocurrency projects and thus the developers working in that field are treated with contempt

This is an absolutely disgusting move by the lib.rs team. Yes, it's a new field, and yes, there are many scams out there giving solid projects a bad image. No, that does not mean that you can just blatantly discriminate against that entire field with messages like this:

It's called common courtesy. Treat others how you'd want to be treated. Such warnings are entirely out of scope for the lib.rs website. I for one cannot believe that this message was allowed to be on the website in the first place, and your continued disrespect is all the more inflammatory.

So we have Rust taking a principled stand against scams and turbocapitalism, and then somehow that's getting interpreted as a personal attack on all developers working in a field?

"Cryptocurrency projects and thus the developers working in that field"

That seems like a leap to a conclusion. Is this thread really about personal attacks, or is it an attempt to strongarm Rust into evangelizing a particular form of software and/or economics?

If you take criticism of what you voluntarily do as a personal attack, that's your problem.

I think there are whole fields that don't deserve to be treated seriously, and it's a good thing to discriminate against them, e.g. homeopathy and astrology. I would expect a medicine-oriented website to openly warn its readers that homeopathy is a made-up pseudoscience, even if the firm believers in homeopathy felt this is inflammatory, and people selling sugar pills were upset about their reputation being tarnished.

You've mentioned giving solid projects a bad image. I am worried about incorrect classification of crates as cryptocurrency-related. For example, the diesel crate has a humorous blockchain keyword. The site has automatic categorization based on a bag-of-words model, so a crate saying "You can have a strong cryptographic identity without involving any blockchain" could get incorrectly classified as blockchain-related. If there are such mistakes, I would like to fix them.

There are also borderline cases:

There are many cryptocurrency-related crates that are most likely just a junk that nobody uses. However, I don't want to give them a pass only because they're not a problem yet. Even a useless joke like Dogecoin was hyped "to the moon", so steering more people to any of these projects only increases chances of crating a real problem.
There are crates that aren't cryptocurrencies themselves, but are meant for use with a cryptocurrency (e.g. RPC server for a wallet, coin-branded forks of generic crates). I'm not strictly against them, but I keep them in the cryptocurrency category, because such crates are generally not useful for people not using cryptocurrencies. It's more of a spam/low-quality content issue. If some crypto-adjacent crates are valuable on their own, I'm open to moving them to other categories.
There are some projects that I'm not quite sure if they're meant to be a cryptocurrency or are merely a buzzword salad of some decentralized computing revolution.

If you a find non-cryptocurrency project mislabeled, let me know by filing a separate issue (not in this megathread please).

@kornelski I don't completely disagree with what you have said. However, the way it is being said is, in my opinion, unprofessional and lacking the appropriate nuance. I worry that the presence of crates that I maintain on lib.rs implies endorsement of such wording. I am therefore requesting that you please hide all 91 crates that have "Jeremy Soller" as an author from lib.rs indefinitely.

Everything that involves finances has its share of ponzi schemes and scams, but that doesn't automatically mean that it's reasonable to attack the entire field altogether. Central banks are the greatest ponzi scheme of history, and the way that the stock market is controlled by a few entities (including the banks / federal reserve) is equally problematic. Central banks commit money laundering in broad daylight on a scale that's two magnitudes worse than what's done with cryptocurrency, and they are involved with pumping and dumping on the stock market (as well as the crypto markets unfortunately). So it's only fair if you give a snarky description for all financial-related crates as you do for cryptocurrencies.

Many people around the world aren't able to obtain a bank account with a credit card, or aren't permitted to own money. If they happen to live in a country whose central bank is scamming the entire population by devaluing their currency through inflationary measures, they most likely can't readily purchase stocks or hard assets to escape poverty either. My sister, for example, isn't allowed to own a bank account due to having a mental disability, but I set up a crypto wallet for her so she can have the option of managing her own money. She can send money within seconds on her phone, and be rewarded for doing chores around the house, or as gifts. She sends the equivalent USD-based amount of crypto to me when she uses her credit card linked to my credit account.

I also wouldn't agree with the technology in general being wasteful with energy. While that may be true for Bitcoin and Ethereum today, blockchain technologies have advanced since then. Blockchains that use proof of stake and sharding are able to compete with centralized networks like Visa and Mastercard in energy efficiency.

Beyond that, they do have use case as decentralized databases and decentralized hosting. And they'll likely see continued use in these areas as it gets cheaper and easier to integrate with.

cryptocurrency is only "banking the unbanked" or whatever as long as more people keep buying in. if i have DogsCorn in my iWallet and i want to buy food, i have to get some other poor jerk to buy my DogsCorn in exchange for something the grocery store considers to be money. if I have USD, that gets me groceries without having to scam an additional person first.

I also wouldn't agree with the technology in general being wasteful with energy. While that may be true for Bitcoin and Ethereum today, blockchain technologies have advanced since then. Blockchains that use proof of stake and sharding are able to compete with centralized networks like Visa and Mastercard in energy efficiency.

The proof of stake oh the one that mean "rich" have more power to valid blockchain and so reduce the number of people who valid the blockchain and make that mostly rich people get fee to valid transaction ? MeH. Still better than proof of work I guess.

If a mental disable person is not allowed to have an account that not because the person would not be able to handle it ? Just asking. Also, in what country there is such law ? In France I think everyone have the right to have an account.

central bank is scamming the entire population by devaluing their currency through inflationary measure

You don't know what you are talking about.

Central banks commit money laundering in broad daylight on a scale that's two magnitudes worse than what's done with cryptocurrency, and they are involved with pumping and dumping on the stock market (as well as the crypto markets unfortunately). So it's only fair if you give a snarky description for all financial-related crates as you do for cryptocurrencies.

I fail to know the crate central bank use in Rust. And worse doesn't allow the "less worse" anyway.

unprofessional and lacking the appropriate nuance

@kornelski I suggest you lock this unproductive discussion. I'm unsubscribing now.

I am finding this discussion productive and informative.

@kornelski , I used to have a list of crates that were mislabeled, but decided not to bring the issue up. It didn't seem as though it would make a difference.

I've been told by colleagues that Rust has a welcoming community. After watching this thread, and several others throughout the Rust ecosystem for a few years, I've now reached the conclusion that the Rust community is not as 'good' as it projects itself to be. I'm also questioning my colleagues view of what a 'good' community is.

Yes, cryptocurrency has been and will continue to be the subject of many get-rich-quick schemes and controversies; both in the software and hardware side of things. (See: Butterfly Labs, ASIC Burn-in, Ripple, NFT's, etc.)

The core issue itself has to do with the language used to categorize crates, and define entire categories in a descriptive manner. It also concerns whether or not a maintainer's own sociopolitical/financial/economic viewpoints should be used to define an entire section of crates, and the unintended consequences that could arise from that.

Ultimately, it is @kornelski 's project, and his decision. That being said, if this was a private crate list that was kept, there would be no controversy. Once a resource like this is public, and heavily tied into the community of a language, recommended across various modes of communication (Reddit, Discord Servers, etc.) there is a point these services become a pseudo-public face of a language, and the community that surrounds it. It is each individual's choice whether or not they continue to use lib.rs to search for crates. There are other providers, and some in this thread many be inclined to build their own web-app for crates.

Ask yourself this: If I was a new programmer, or someone wanting to learn Rust, and saw this vitriol and contempt among a community, why oh why would I ever want to be apart of that? No matter how solid the language is from a technical standpoint? Rusteceans have an attitude problem, and an adjustment has been overdue for years.

If you would all humor me for a moment:

Let's say I were to build a crate for easy handling of data structures, but one of the included structures is a basic blockchain with nothing else. No flavor-of-the-month coin/token or anything. Do you think it is then fair that my crate be put in the Magic Beans category, since it implements a structure that is used by cryptocurrencies, but might not be explicitly used for that purpose? In your view, do I deserve to be thrown under the ponzi scheme umbrella for daring to include this feature? Is my crate problematic? Do I need to atone for my sins? I certainly wouldn't want to be in the position @jackpot51 is in, maintaining 91 crates that may or may not pass the selection-bias algorithmic sniff test.

Then you also have projects like LBRY, where a cryptocurrency is involved, but not necessarily the main focus of the project. Of course, that depends on your view, and many in this thread have made their views loud and clear. Obviously, LBRY is evil and must be brought down! We cannot let their attempt at a censorship-proof decentralized video platform that utilizes cryptocurrency go any further!

You might as well change the 'Emulators' section to the 'Piracy & Intellectual Property Theft' section, since many crates there are video game emulators, and may be used for the purposes of playing pirated games; all non-offenders be damned.

I'll continue watching this thread for awhile, but I expect I will be met with contempt and vitriol from many. At that point, I will unsubscribe and allow the community of crabs to pull each other back into the boiling water. It seems to be the nature of Rusteceans, and the natural order of the community.

Ask yourself this: If I was a new programmer, or someone wanting to learn Rust, and saw this vitriol and contempt among a community, why oh why would I ever want to be apart of that? No matter how solid the language is from a technical standpoint? Rusteceans have an attitude problem, and an adjustment has been overdue for years.

It's interesting that you think this is a "gotcha", since many people who come up to a particular technology scene would be put off by the promotion or uncritical presence of loads of projects that promote something clearly bad. You can debate about how clear this is to whom, and I'm sure you will, but if you accept that these programs are clearly for facilitating a spectrum of scams and turbocapitalistic accelerationism, it becomes a much more welcoming place here for many if those things are kept in a weird corner instead of in the spotlight.

Cryptocurrencies are advertised using a lot of positive ideals, such as decentralization, democratization, "programmatic money", "banking the unbanked", etc. I have not seen them living up to them yet. Like I've said before, I'm done waiting for vaporware, and giving a pass real scams that are happening in the name of dreams that aren't materializing.

I doubt that cryptocurrency proponents even honestly believe in these ideals. For example, I'm amused that Thether is taken seriously, because it depends on a private company that needs to be trusted. It's basically beenz.com but with a very obfuscated and inefficient API.

Cryptocurrencies despite "democratizing" promises are more like plutocratic oligarchies (miners who invested most real-world capital choose which devs they will listen to). Cryptocurrencies attract a lot of people who have issues with existing governments and financial systems, but that doesn't mean cryptocurrencies are any better (it's the "we need to do something, this is something, therefore we must do this" fallacy).

The programmatic APIs are incredibly slow. So far they seem to be mostly gimmicks and self-owns, and have fundamentally limited usefulness due to the oracle problem. There are APIs for moving fiat money, and it turns out the difficulty and cost is in dealing with real-world fraud (and non-reversible pseudonymous transactions don't prevent it, only help it, as evidenced by the flourish of ransomware).

The "unbanked" people don't use the financial system most often simply because they are poor. They don't have enough cash to need a bank, or are so in debt that banks don't want them any more. Even get-rich-quick schemes, even for the lucky at the top of the pyramid, need capital. Cryptocurrencies aren't even cheaper or easier to use. Lifting people from poverty through bankruptcies of VC-backed crypto startups is not an effective long-term strategy.

Code isn't just code. It has real-world effects.

I concur - please rename "Emulators" to "Piracy & Intellectual Property Theft" as this is the real-world effect of emulation software.

I've now reached the conclusion that the Rust community is not as 'good' as it projects itself to be

Community management is not as simple as indiscriminately accepting anyone. Rust is what people using Rust are, and I don't think growing number of cryptocurrency fans makes it a better community. Cryptocurrency-related public forums I've seen are "polarizing" to put it mildly.

Then you also have projects … where a cryptocurrency is involved, but not necessarily the main focus of the project.

I'm aware that borderline cases exist. I'm interested in finding a better solution to this.

For now my solution is to manually move such crates to other categories if they have good uses outside of cryptocurrencies. I realize it's imperfect and not scaleable, so I'm open to suggestions (other than tacit approval of cryptocurrencies).

One solution I'm considering is removing borderline crates entirely from the site (hiding from search, redirecting URLs to crates.io), so that they're not displayed in a context pooh-poohing them, nor get implicit endorsement by being on lib.rs. Does that sound satisfactory?

please rename "Emulators" to "Piracy & Intellectual Property Theft" as this is the real-world effect of emulation software.

That is a fair point. It often is. We could double the length of this thread by discussing fair use, problems with DMCA, IP lobby's (Disney's) undue influence on copyright laws, and the woeful lack of laws for orphaned works and software preservation.

I'm aware that borderline cases exist. I'm interested in finding a better solution to this.

I'd recommend a "separate the wheat from the chaff approach. Filter out obvious tags (#binance, #bitcoin, etc.) and any crates with abysmally low downloads per month. Anything that is 'borderline' gets redirected to crates.io. Allow for searching; get rid of the 'Magic Beans' category all together.

That, or nuke everything. Your call, boss.

I'm done here.

But, before I go...

Community management is not as simple as indiscriminately accepting anyone.

X is not as simple as indiscriminately accepting anyone

I'm stealing this.

Pretty hard to defend a site dedicated to getting stats right when it goes out of its way to not do so. It's one thing to have a personal opinion on something and write a diatribe about it on a category, that can be ignored as some insipid attempt to insert your opinion, hey it's your project.

It's another to deliberately fudge the numbers for something people rely on to find crates. Extremely bad look for Rust and the whole safe and correct thing it has going for it when you have people buggering up figures based on ideological biases.

mentioned in issue #121 (closed)

I am glad that people are discussing this. I can understand why people take some of this personally. Any concepts even close to discrimination are difficult to discuss rationally. Still, we should try.

When I talk about discrimination here, I'm referring to this definition:

the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of ethnicity, age, sex, or disability: victims of racial discrimination | there is widespread discrimination against women.

I am not referring to this definition:

recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another: discrimination between right and wrong | young children have difficulties in making fine discriminations.

(UPDATED) Now, I'll make two points about discrimination that hopefully are well-understood and accepted:

feeling offended does not necessarily mean discrimination is happening
if you are treated differentially only because of who you are, that is likely discrimination (whether legally defined as such or not)
if you are treated differentially because of what you choose to do, this is not necessarily discrimination

Sometimes a person defines who they are by what they do, but this does not change what discrimination means.

Lastly, one point about curation: There is no way for lib.rs to be value-neutral. All of the following choices make some kind of value-judgment:

allowing anything allowed by law
establishing curation policies
using ad-hoc decisions

I encourage all of us to embrace the realization that we can't be value-neutral. It might be easier and conceptually simpler to not 'get involved', but that does not mean doing so is morally correct.

Personally, I'd like to see even more technology people recognizing the moral implications of their choices. The idea of philosophy isn't abstract. When you think about your choices and principles rigorously, philosophy feels almost tangible.

There's no defending number fudging, either list the crates or don't, but don't fudge the numbers around them.

If I know your crates site knowingly goes out of the way to not have a subset of the crates then I know I don't need to use it. But the stats meddling is just an insidious compromise.

For anyone who , I would request a favor: please explain what you disagree with in particular.

I can't think of anyone who agrees that "number fudging" is a principle to strive for. But I'm not taking a position on whether that is happening here until I look more deeply.

Above, I've framed the issue in a way that too many overlook. It is one thing to disagree with the editorial decisions here based on various principles and reasoning; however, it isn't persuasive to argue that any curation is wrong as a foundational principle. There are deeper moral principles in play.

Too many people assert the philosophical position of i.e. {don't inject your point of view} / {don't interfere} / {don't curate} / {don't editorialize}. People arrive at this claim in lots of ways. Here are some:

An anarchist might reject curation as a form of control. Even if you accept such a view, this argumentation doesn't apply to libs.rs because it isn't an authority; it is an optional resource.
The 'bias skeptics' might argue that curation introduces bias. This is a foolish claim; bias already exists even before curation. To take just one example: sure, doing nothing and letting criminal activity persist on a network might be viewed as non-interference, but this is a form of bias: a bias towards non-action.
The normative kind of moral relativist might argue that curation imposes a specific set of moral or ethical beliefs. Given their belief that no objective moral standard exists, such an imposition would be unwelcome. If such a moral relativist suggests no curation is the morally correct thing to do, they have created a paradox, since they are making a moral claim in doing so!
A market fundamentalist might argue that curation is unnecessary because 'the market will handle it'.
- I encourage such people to visit any retail store and notice that it is intractable to offer everything. Curation is not optional when physical space is concerned.
- Putting aside the physical, moving to the virtual, online markets seem to work even better with curation, provided that the curation isn't uniform.
- Why? If a place doesn't curate, the cost of finding useful things goes up. Markets reward places with lower transaction and discovery costs.
A techno-utopian might argue that curation is unnecessary because usage patterns will 'handle it'. I've studied too much history, sociology, and psychology to take such a theory seriously.
A libertarian might view curation by a website might as a form of coercion. But you can't have it both ways: Lib.rs is controlled by a person; if that person cannot curate, then their liberty has been curtailed.

I would encourage anyone with a strong belief on this topic to dig into the philosophy. It isn't what it seems. For most human beings, there are deeper moral principles in play: freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom from oppression. I will be happy to debate the question of curation in terms of how it impacts those principles. There is a lot of room for nuance there. But too many people have knee-jerk, unexamined beliefs.

Many of us think of themselves as constant learners and/or having a growth mentality and/or supporters of diversity and/or rational thinkers. Great. There is a lot of opportunity to do those things. Pressing little emoji buttons probably won't get you very far though.

Sorry, I don't think whether the number fudging took place/ is taking place is even a debate. Already posted examples of this a year ago.

I highly recommend taking a look at that before posting. It's far more important to this thread than whether you think curation is good or bad.

Lock this issue already for all our sakes.

Yup. I wasn't aware that this thread was still going.

For anyone who , I would request a favor: please explain what you disagree with in particular.

I disagree with this in particular:

Personally, I'd like to see even more technology people recognizing the moral implications of their choices.

I do not need a librarian with a moral imperative to tell me why the books she hid in the corner are bad.

@avidj You deserve it.

@MichaelTheriot wrote:

I do not need a librarian with a moral imperative to tell me why the books she hid in the corner are bad.

Let's unpack this metaphor. It assumes that lib.rs is e.g. a "typical library" with some "baked-in" assumptions about what is appropriate. It boils down to e.g. 'this is what I want' or 'this is what I expect', but it doesn't defend why such desires/expectations are morally preferable. As such, it isn't logically persuasive, because it doesn't make any arguments based on deeper principles.

I get it -- this is a common perception. But it is only a perception. And popularity isn't the key metric here. This perception is not bedrock. First, the creators/stewards of libs.rs are not obligated to conform to such an idea. Second, any claim that a library shouldn't curate is logically inconsistent, for the reasons I detail above. Any collection of anything in the real world has to curate.

Once one recognizes that curation is inevitable, we can move onto more productive questions, such as: what kind of curation do we want? What kind of curation serves the community?

As one example: many open source library registries care about supply chain security. This is a kind of curation, and I welcome it.

I've seen these kinds of arguments play out thousands of times. In them, I see a lot of relatively unexamined 'slippy slope' arguments that lurk in people's heads. One of the thought patterns I see sometimes is: "I value liberty, and I want to push back against anything that degrades it, even slowly." This is a laudable intention, but like any intention, it needs to be balanced and weighed against other factors. Defending against potential degradations of personal liberty in any and all fora isn't the only game in town. Morality and ethics are so much bigger than that.

A lot of software developers, whether they admit it or not, have a very deep need to follow rules. I think this is a big reason why such people get into the field. They like the mechanical precision of software development. Unfortunately, this is a huge bias that sometimes leads us to latch onto ideas too firmly. It can lead to what sometimes appears to be a worshipping of simplistic moral ideas. I like the quote: "never let your sense of ethics prevent you from doing what is right." One's conscience can sometimes illuminate an incomplete system of ethics.

I'll leave you with one more quote:

Is simplicity best? Or simply the easiest?

I like the idea of lib.rs ranking more maintained and/or downloaded crates, it saves me time, but the fact that a category of crates is being ripped out off their ranking spots because of someone's beliefs is a big no-no for me. If you have an opinion on a matter, do notify people who are in search of the crates in the disfavored category about how that category is bad or may contain scammy crates, but, please, by no means lower the rankings because you believe that the entire field is a scam. If someone is looking for a tool that will aid them in cryptocurrency deeds, they won't care if it's one scroll away from the top of the page, they'll just add it in their project unaware of the potential dangers you believe to be present.

In short

Notify people and make them aware of the issue, don't just lower the rankings, it doesn't do anything as long as someone's really in search of that crate.

I'm not saying that I'm unaware of the scams in the cryptocurrency world, I've seen many videos on that matter, but I'm just concerned that, one day, one of my crates will be disfavored and I won't be notified about it. You have to understand that the more beliefs you put into the project, the less I trust you, because what are the chances you won't start disapproving of what I like one day? It's a trust issue that can't be patched with a simple promise.

It's the kind of trust issue similar to how Go proposed transparent telemetry. It's good, it doesn't collect sensitive data, but what are the chances you won't silently start collecting user data without notifying me? That's why people want it opt-in, even if it's good.

The people who come here to argue in favor of scams make me further distrust the entire field of computer-touching. Nothing in the world can be neutral, even and especially technologies. Everyone who works on Rust decides where their values lie. Asking someone else not to have values is inhumane. If your values are different you can make your own website.

By any chance, would you volunteer which other things would make you further distrust the entire field of computer-touching? I think it would benefit from no longer having both cryptocurrencies and you, personally, and one of those problems is easier to solve than the other.

Sincerely confused about why I'm in your head at all

I'm confused that:

You describe the field as "computer touching"... wut.
Cryptocurrency scams are the last straw that broke the camel's back that makes you distrust computers and their usage - so much so - that it's the only thing you mention

Ngl, computer-touching is a pretty accurate and funny synonym to crypto-mining, lol.

I think it's the problem that crypto field is used for bad (money laundering, pyramid schemes, etc), and it is a problem, but you can't solve it with a ranking system, it just doesn't work that way, people will find what they're looking for. It's best to warn and notify users, to leave an influence and a speck of curiosity than to lower the ranking by half-page (which is one finger motion away on the mouse wheel).

I've already said it but I'll say it again anyway:

I'd rather they just outright not include the crates and inform users that the category is not going to be filled than mess with the numbers to obfuscate them - the latter of which is a particularly spineless way to handle it and no good to anyone.

That way users can know that the site doesn't have that category and people can decide for themselves if it's worth using in general as a result (given that it's now less useful for them). A lot of people won't care - but some will.

But the warning you're talking about is probably the better compromise, but again, this is probably how it kinda used to be via the tongue in cheek magic bean labels (though not particularly incisively) - till the author decided to add some dirty stat manipulation in.

It's not really about values, it's just that until you start banning cryptocurrency packages altogether, it's kind of meaningless, and even then you'd get one hell of a backlash from people making such crates, and innocent crates that are false-tagged. Such approach makes everyone angry, and you don't get your point across to the majority.

Instead, I propose to make a warning label on all crates that are in some way related to cryptocurrency, and show a warning message on the top of the page for those crates, with links to blogs and/or YT videos that show the dangers of cryptocurrency. That way, you don't disturb cryptomonsters that don't care about the warning, and educate those that are yet to be eaten by the cryptocurrency money pit. This also comes with a benefit that false-tagged crates can clearly see when they're false-tagged, and open an issue on it right away, without double-guessing.

I should also point out that since governments and banks cannot fully control cryptocurrency, they will never adopt it. It's simply more beneficial to control than to innovate. Crypto will always be that way, and because it's open-source tech and some people are money-hungry pricks, they make intentionally bad crypto systems, leading to massive scams and controversies.

It doesn't mean all crypto is bad, it's just that it's easy enough to make your own and scam people with the loopholes you intentionally put there. This doesn't apply to good crypto systems, but the biggest scams are usually heard of the loudest.

locked the discussion in this issue

Re: suggestion to show warnings on cryptocurrency crates. I thought about linking to relevant topics on https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ and https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption but I'm not sure if they will be effective, and most likely just bring me another round of complaints that I'm messing with the cryptocurrency crates.
Re: "Fudging numbers". I downrank cryptocurrency crates, because I don't think they're relevant to my target audience. There's no objective ranking. It's by nature full of context-specific judgement calls and trade-offs, you just don't agree with this one. Plus a lot of them is actually quite spammy — having pointlessly rebranded forks of the same few crates.
Re: why I don't just remove all of them? StackOverflow intentionally keeps closed questions and rejected answers visible, to show site visitors not only what content they want, but also show what kind of content is unwanted there. I think that's a clever design. But I've also realized a plan I've mentioned earlier to remove crates that are in a gray area, plus especially spammy and useless ones. Those are manual actions are a drop in a bucket tho.

As for the rest of the debate about (de)merits of cryptocurrencies — I think my previous answers are still relevant.

Please keep in mind that this is a bug tracker, not a public forum. The rest of this discussion belongs on Musk's X.

Cryptocurrency projects and thus the developers working in that field are treated with contempt

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