
Possible citogenesis concerning whether MtGox ever hosted an MtG trading site - dsirijus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mt.Gox#Possible_citogenesis_concerning_whether_MtGox_ever_hosted_an_MtG_trading_site
======
nwh
There's a nice explanation by _bunderbunder_ in a previous discussion too:

> _Interestingly, if you go back and look through the Wikipedia page 's
> history, you can see what appears to be exactly that process happening._

> _Before the Wired article, the Wiki article implies that the site was an
> operating Magic card exchange, but the citation is a link to the Internet
> Archive 's copy of the stub page, with absolutely nothing there to
> substantiate the idea that it was actually an online exchange. The Wired
> article appeared later and is unsourced, but could plausibly have taken the
> Wiki article's unsupported statement at face value. Then just the other day
> (February 9) the Wiki page was edited by a user named Agyle to use the Wired
> article instead of the Wayback Machine reference._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7220414](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7220414)

------
derefr
Note that there's another equally-simple explanation that fits all the facts
gwern posits here:

1\. The MtG app was hosted on a subdomain (CNAME record, no A record) that
sometimes had an accompanying apex-record lead-gen website to "sell" it, but
usually didn't. (When you're an engineer making a webapp, writing the lead-gen
copy is usually the last thing on your mind.)

2\. The app subdomain served a robots.txt that prevented the Internet Archive
from indexing it--as is usual practice with app subdomains.

3\. McCaleb doesn't generally want to talk about how his site used to host an
MtG exchange, because that'd make people less willing to take BitCoin
seriously. He doesn't _deny_ it, though, nor use the misapprehension as a
source of humor in interviews. He just clams up.

I'm not saying gwern is wrong, but he hasn't inviolably proven his hypothesis
yet, either. I look forward to a comment from McCaleb, if there ever is one.
(My own hypothesis would support McCaleb never responding to gwern's query.)

~~~
nwh
> _The MtG app was hosted on a subdomain (CNAME record, no A record) that
> sometimes had an accompanying apex-record lead-gen website to "sell" it, but
> usually didn't._

There's no links to, references about, or any other evidence to suggest that
this happened. I too did roughly the same searches of Magic the Gathering
forums and websites for any reference of mtgox and found absolutely nothing,
not even people mentioning a beta site or that they'd heard about it.

> _The app subdomain served a robots.txt that prevented the Internet Archive
> from indexing it--as is usual practice with app subdomains._

That's not possible. If you deny the IA bot with a robots.txt, it removes all
prior records as well. The "coming soon" would not have been indexed and
visible if this occurred.

> _McCaleb doesn 't generally want to talk about how his site used to host an
> MtG exchange, because that'd make people less willing to take BitCoin
> seriously. He doesn't deny it, though, nor use the misapprehension as a
> source of humor in interviews. He just clams up._

He hasn't denied being a flying spaghetti monster either.

Occam's razor. The site never sold Magic the Gathering cards.

~~~
derefr
People have never _accused him to his face_ of being a flying spaghetti
monster, though. I'm sure he's heard the wild speculations of how exactly his
MtG exchange operated: on Reddit, years ago, there was an entire discussion
about how the MtGox trading engine for bitcoins was crap precisely because it
was originally built to trade in unique artifacts (MtG cards), not
quantitative commodities. He must see a lot more of that than anyone who just
happens to be reading about MtGox, to the point where you'd think he'd say
something about it one way or another.

Also,

> That's not possible. If you deny the IA bot with a robots.txt, it removes
> all prior records as well. The "coming soon" would not have been indexed and
> visible if this occurred.

It would have removed the records _of the app subdomain_ , not the apex
domain. Which the evidence supports--we see no record left of an app
subdomain.

~~~
baddox
> People have never accused him to his face of being a flying spaghetti
> monster, though.

Simply _not_ denying some claim is not evidence that the claim is true,
regardless of whether the claim has been presented to you face to face.

~~~
leoc
> Simply not denying some claim is not evidence that the claim is true,
> regardless of whether the claim has been presented to you face to face.

No, in general it is evidence to that effect, though depending on the
circumstances it may be weak or very weak evidence.

------
javert
> While your Mt. Gox theory sounds plausible, unless a reliable source
> challenges the claim or provides an alternate history, I think all we can do
> is treat the now-established history as an uncontroversial fact.

Translation: Although there is no evidence for X, let's assume X because it is
repeated often.

This is so stupid that it bothers me that someone who edits Wikipedia (which,
yes, could be anyone) said it.

~~~
lmm
That's how wikipedia works. They explicitly won't accept edits that are simply
true; the goal of wikipedia is to be an accurate summary of what other
secondary sources say.

~~~
javert
That makes sense, but this person was advocating assuming something to be true
_without secondary sources_ other than hearsay.

------
mikeash
It's going to be hilarious if it turns out that this never happened. So many
people have used the MtG origins of the site to criticize it.

(I'm one of those people. I guess this is a lesson in not repeating something
just because you saw a bunch of comments discussing it.)

~~~
ubernostrum
As I pointed out in another comment: maybe this could also be a lesson in how
little you actually know -- if you're using involvement in Magic as grounds
for criticism (when the various marketplaces for Magic are many times more
reliable than for Bitcoin, and when hedge funds are a common career
destination for pro-level players), you may be far more ignorant than you
realize.

~~~
mikeash
I'd agree for people who are seriously saying that its origins as a Magic
exchange implies that it must be bad now, but most of what I've seen
(including my own) has been doing it jokingly.

------
judk
> While your Mt. Gox theory sounds plausible, unless a reliable source
> challenges the claim or provides an alternate history, I think all we can do
> is treat the now-established history ad an uncontroversial fact.

Nice, Wikipedians actually believe that citogenesis creates real information.

This is difference between "citation" and "scholarship".

When a wikipedia article cites a non-primary source, if that source doesn't
care its own sources, _it is not a valid source_ for its claim, it is just
hearsay.

~~~
gwern
We don't actually know the 2 Wired writers were relying on Wikipedia or the
version floating around the Internet. They might've gotten it straight from
Karpels or McCaleb or a Mtgox staffer or someone, and just not given the
source for it in their article. If going to McCaleb didn't work, my next step
would be contacting them to learn their source: if they said they got it from
Wikipedia or didn't know, then it'd discredit the article as a source for that
particular assertion and the claim could at least be deleted & doubt cast on
any other RSes asserting the claim without clear rationale.

~~~
bjourne
I am not a Wikipedia rules lawyer, but my understanding is that Wikipedia
forbids original research. So even if you contact McCaleb and get the true
answer from him, Wired's statement still stands because your research isn't
admissible.

The question has come up before in historical articles where someones
secondary source is directly contradicted by some editor with direct access to
the archive files.

~~~
gwern
For statements by involved people, AFAIK we already have procedures for
handling correspondence; I can forward the emails to OTRS and we cite the
ticket as our ref. Same way as we handle copyright grants.

------
gkoberger
Wayback machine (far from conclusive) has this:

    
    
       * 2007: A landing page saying it's coming soon
       * 2009: A blog (about Magic?), with nothing about trading
       * 2011: Bitcoins
    

Source:
[http://web.archive.org/web/*/mtgox.com](http://web.archive.org/web/*/mtgox.com)

Seems to be the domain was bought with the intention of trading Magic cards,
but an actual exchange never launched. Now, it's possible they had started
developing it and just repurposed code, but I see no evidence that it was ever
launched as a Magic trading site.

Most likely, though -- they just had an unused domain laying around, and "Mt.
Gox" sounded cool. I've repurposed domains before; I have a ton.

~~~
brazzy
That's exactly what the Wikipedia talk page discusses.

------
dopamean
Relevant xkcd

[https://xkcd.com/978/](https://xkcd.com/978/)

------
adamnemecek
What would MtGox gain from making that up? Also, maybe the original site never
launched but he reused the code, that was originally intended to be used for
the MtG card exchange and repurposed it for Bitcoin.

~~~
Crito
Maybe. Is there any evidence of that?

~~~
adamnemecek
Nope, just speculating.

------
PhasmaFelis
You know, regardless of whether MtGox is built on trading-card code, it's
still pretty mockworthy that a supposedly serious monetary exchange chose to
open and operate under an initialism whose only meaning is "Magic: The
Gathering Online Exchange." Domain names are not expensive, at least not if
you're already willing to settle for something like "mtgox.com."

~~~
pistle
Who should be mocked? Site owners or users? While you decide, let me get my
mocking stick warmed up.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I was thinking the owners, but you know what, go ahead and mock the users too.
It's like a party!

------
captainmuon
Does it really matter whether there was a running MtG trading site with actual
trades? I think it's established that that guy _wanted_ to make a magic the
gathering online exchange, then discovered bitcoins, and started MtGox, before
selling it to the current owners. He may or may have not facilitated trading
playing cards on that domain, a subdomain, or somewhere else - it doesn't
really matter. The fact is that the MtG online exchange idea was put online
first - so you can say MtGox started as an MtG trading site. Whether the site
was actually open to the public, or a closed beta, or just on some guy's
laptop is just a detail.

Funny how self-referential (no pun intended) Wikipedia has become. Instead of
just changing "was a site for trading MtG cards" to "was a planned site for
trading MtG cards", or the more ambigous and certainly true "the original idea
was a MtG trading site", they spawn endless threads on the discussion page.

~~~
baking
All people really want to know is where the name came from. It would actually
be kind of absurd to take a working MtG trading site and convert it to bitcoin
trading.

------
dublinben
How difficult should it be to get the founder on record?

~~~
nwh
> _Fortunately, this is not some distant historical problem. All the people
> involved are still alive. I 've emailed McCaleb for a comment on this
> question: after all, he should know. --Gwern_

~~~
fotbr
But in wiki-land, that won't be acceptable, because it wasn't published
anywhere else first.

