Bitcoin Forum

We've been losing good members for months now.  The post about a dismal level of discourse (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174864.0) is telling.  If things do not change in these forums we will continue to lose smart contributors like Jason.  For those of you who do not know what Jason did for the community let me tell you.  He, along with Gusti and a small group of other engineers, tried to develop a public mining asic chip.  While they didn't complete their task the effort was nothing short of amazing (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=76351.0).

When I arrived on the scene almost exactly two years ago it was a small and fun community of computer geeks.  Like half of you we came to mine bitcoin.  We were mining on deepbit and slush's pool and using the brand new cgminer, it was awesome.  People were helpful and kind and it was a community.  But things have changed.

Part of the problem comes from the traffic.  The admins claim they just do not have the time to manage all the noise.  With more than 100,000 registered members and sockpuppets their task must be daunting.  But that's why people gave them money, right?  It recently came to light that Theymos is now paying the moderators and that he is distributing the $600,000 worth of bitcoin the forums have collected from donations in addition to the $130,000 per year the forums generate by running BFL ads.

Now I'm not here to tell Theymos what to do with HIS money but I'm tired of the lack of support from he and the team and the fact that they hold more than 1/2 million dollars and are doing little to improve the forums is embarassing so I'm calling them out and starting a new forum.  


So I am calling for a group of volunteers to help design the next version of this forum, bitcointalk 2.0.

If you want to volunteer or you have an idea to improve the forums in the next iteration please post it here.  Any and all are welcome to post.  If you do not want to reveal your main avatar feel free to create a new account just to post in this thread.  With no rules here, no privacy policy, no terms of service, sock puppets are encouraged and that is, imho, half the problem.  

What would you do different if you were in charge of this forum?


(Edit: June 30) Here's the list we've come up with so far:

Brand:
 -Cryptocoin or Bitcoin only???
 -Catchy - easy to remember name

Possible Platforms:  (vote here - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=246936.0)
     -Discourse
     -Xenforo
     -MyBB
     -SMF


Mandatory Requirements:

Good Design
  - Anonymous or Transparent?
    > what form of company is the forum?
    > what country should the forum be hosted in?
  - The site should be modern
  - Better mobile platform support
     > Tapatalk?
  - Better social media support
     > Integrate with
        o - Bitmessage
        o - Facebook
        o - other?
  - Offers two factor authentication
        o - Google authenticator

Rules:
  - Defined Up Front
     > Terms of Service
     > Privacy Policy
     > Moderation Policy
        o - deleting spam posts
        o - only one account per user (sock puppet ban)
        o - bans on users that are obvious scammers
        o - qualifications for perma-ban (what constitutes a ban?)
     > Moderators
        o - volunteed vs paid
        o - how selected
        o - how removed




What should be added or removed to/from this list?

Invitation only?  

I would really like to have Tapatalk support. And a lot of other users too (see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2319.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2319.0))

Good call, thanks for that contribution!

Hey this is Pizza, using my friends account since mine got hacked. I was just thinking this same thing today, after the ordeal of trying to prove ownership of my account. This whole time the mods haven't even bothered to stop my account from posting, the hacker is posting on my name and If I never bothered to say anything would of scammed alot of people.

I'll tell you what I think there should be a policy against sock puppetry. 

There must be a simple machine module that helps identify and prevent sock puppets, yea?  With fewer sock puppets running around I would think it would be much easier to help a person reclaim a hacked account. 

What process have you had to go through to try to reclaim the pizza account? 

"All Data was shown to Thymos.

1. Gave him my old password to which he replied you could be the hacker and the real pizza changed it. If I was the hacker and I gained access to the account I would have changed it on the spot, makes no sense logically.

2. Provided usernames of users I had PMd

3. Asked me to sign a bitcoin address that I had used with a User. I PM him the whole message from that user. I show him a screenshot of that address in my Armory. Unfortunately, signing in Armory doesn't work for me, so I showed him a screenshot. It's been almost 2 days since he last responded.

I've come to the conclusion that they real just don't give a shit, because providing my old password, Users who I've PM'D, and an exact PM word for word, screenshot of the Bitcoin address, should of been more than enough proof for any logical person."

Be a shitload more liberal with bans and deletion of useless posts.


EDIT:
Crazy amount of poll options much?  Need something that just says "yes"

Very professional, thank you for your useless contribution.  Take your hostility elsewhere you are banished from posting in my thread.  Future posts by you in this thread will be reported to the ADMIN as you are obviously trolling.

edit:
Tysat is a paid moderator in these forums.

Super edit:

Maybe Tysat didn't mean what I thought he meant.  Perhaps it is good to have cool headed moderators...

I'm trolling?  I was being serious.

Am I not allowed to have opinions because I'm a mod?  I was a moderator before I was paid as well.

Sorry boss I may have jumped the gun.  I'm in a heated battle with BCB.

I'd ban his ass if I had a banhammer because I swear to god he is blackmailing buyer.  (I don't swear to god much).

Yea I agree they all need to be banned all the freaking crooks.  How can it be done?  Won't they just pop back up as a sockpuppet?    

I am here to volunteer with Web design, We can make a new future of Bitcoins!

I like the new avatar ironcross.

Lol

Hell yes.

Why did you delete the OP in the thread you're pointing to?

What would be better?

What would be done differently?

How would it not end up becoming another clique of power hungry dictators?

Because I shared information on that thread that, perhaps, I should not have.

Ah ok
Yeah I think you should have left it there

I'd agree with this. As the forum grows, I think adding more mods would need to go along with this.

I also wish there was a way to kill off sockpuppets ..it's seriously to the point now where I can't tell if I'm talking to actual newbies, or just the same guy with 5 different accounts.

Dunno..maybe that's just me.

Is there a forum software (like simple machines) which has a module that help to identify and remove sock puppets?

Maybe you could keep an eye on Discourse (http://www.discourse.org/). It's open source and it's from the people behind Stack Overflow (http://stackoverflow.com), one of the biggest online programmer community.


I don't know community software that does that. But according the one of the authors, Discourse does have a great way of keeping out trash:


(source (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/02/civilized-discourse-construction-kit.html))

Nice find superman, thanks!

Please guys, install a new forum.

If you guys want to work, fork of some forum CMS like SMF in Github and offer bountys for doing some things.
If that is too much work, install last SMF version and install some plugins, install tapatalk, change some code and implement some Bitcoin features like a tip bot.

I tried starting up a Bitcoin forum back in 2011.  It was largely unsuccessful, despite being the 2nd result in Google when searching anything like "Bitcoin forum".  I own bitcoin-forum.net, and would be game to try starting something up again, now that the Bitcoin userbase is much, much larger than it was in 2011.

I prefer more modern, web 2.0 stuff.  The forum software I ran was Xenforo, and, while it was neat and pretty, there are still some minor issues with it.  Because of this, I am pretty open-minded about what software to use, depending on what is necessary to integrate the features I'd want.

All of this said, I would be interested in being involved in a project to develop a new, better forum.  And here's what I'd do differently:  I'd charge a small amount of Bitcoin for each account, say, 0.02 or 0.05 BTC (no one could register or post without paying the Bitcoin first), and hand out bans liberally (though where appropriate, of course).  Sockpuppet?  You're banned.  Post something rude/disrespectful?  You get a warning, and get banned the next time you do it.  Etc, etc.  This would provide a small stream of revenue to support the forums, keep the forums useful and relevant, and keep all the trolls at bay (unless they just have a ton of money to blow on alt accounts).

The only thing is that newbies would consider Bitcoin as a scam that requests money to write in a forum.

So students or poor people can't register but scammers who got money scamming can?

That's ok.  Newbies can discuss topics elsewhere.  It's not that I don't like them, but many of them ask elementary questions that truly do "clog up the system" with posts that most others have zero interest in seeing.  Have a FAQ page to address the easy questions, then leave the rest of discussion up to people who are already familiar enough with Bitcoin to be able to send/receive transactions using it.

Scammers would be banned, or prevented from registering in the first place if they are known scammers.  Students and poor people can read along, find a different place to discuss Bitcoin, or scrounge around until they can find $3 of BTC.  The idea is to make the bank of information and discussions stored in said forum useful for more advanced users.

Maybe too much Facism ? Adolf

Well, there's a dang lot of freedom here, and look what happens?  If people want a clean forum with useless stuff gone, it's only going to happen with some set rules that are strictly abided by.  If you think a decentralized self-moderating solution would work, just look at reddit to see that it doesn't (not saying that reddit is bad, only that it rewards the bottom-of-the-barrel sorts of discussions).

Things that interest me regarding the topic:

Alternative ownership models... non-profit preference, cooperative
non-anonymous ... for those who are willing to interact without hiding behind anonymity

I'm happy with bitcointalk, except changes to the site have been slow, it's ugly, and scammers are literally everywhere.

That is a curious approach, a non profit.  How could that improve things?  I'm generally not a fan of nonprofits but I'm curious to know how that could improve things.

Unless everything is defined upfront (before the new forum begins) it'll lead to discontent and then disillusionment.

Sounds like we'll be swapping some pros and cons with a different set of pros and cons.

We can't know without exploring this.  I imagine the current forum was a reaction to a need rather than a well thought out approach.  If we start with a well-thought-out approach it's likely we'll come up with a better forum.

I agree that some degree of exploration will be required but I think there are some big issues that need to be discussed first e.g. payments, what justifies a ban, etc.

Let's list them without defining them yet.

what constitutes a ban?
what form of company is the forum?
should new forum allow sock puppets?
what terms of service exist?
how can a new forum better interact with smart phones?
what forum software exists that might work?
what country should host the forum?
should it be anonymous or transparent?
does it integrate with Facebook or other services?


what other questions might we address?

I don't imagine some of these will affect user signup dramatically but all useful.

Also, it seems that additional competition to Bitcointalk would actually strengthen the community and it would certainly speed up development here too.

My additional questions:

What is the policy on moderator choice?
Is there recourse against moderators?
Who pays for costs?
Who would own the domain name?

I had a similar though with regard to bitcoin vs other coins.  When this forum was created there was only bitcoin.  Now litecoin has made some headway and it seems there may be some other coin that might show up.  So the question is...

Should it be about all crypto coins which are basically just forks of bitcoin anyway?

Personally I think litecoin has the power to grow.  I don't think it should be an "alt coin" as much as a different flavor of crypto coin.   

VBulletin ? Looks like good forum software, also paid.

Better to get a paid forum software such as Xenforo

Vbulletin became shit after 4x version.

Currently Xenforo is best paid software and mybb is best free one.

Almost all main forum software (Mybb,Xenforo,IPB,vbulletin) have that plugin.

Power to grow or not, it is an altcoin. Period.
Also, if you accept altcoins it won't be 'Bitcointalk 2.0' but 'Cryptocoin 1.0'

I support Cryptocoin name.

This forums either needs to be cleaned up & add more useful features, or we need a new one simple as that. The amount of sock puppets is unbelievable. There's ways to prevent that. Very simple ways too. I know it will only prevent sock puppets but at the moment nothing is being done about it. The new forum would be nice to have a mobile version, eg Tapatalk. Just because I use this forum a lot on my phone in and out of work maybe not the best software to use as I don't like Tapatalk for many reasons.

Obviously have a nice catchy name. Also, pick you're staff wisely. I had to report a mod the other day on the thread that you made. You know who I'm on about the homophobic guy. Turns out he deleted my post after I didn't say anything offensive whatsoever. So pick you're mods wisely.

Also, I think instead of everyone posting "Hi I'm new". Maybe you should just have one thread which covers that. It saves space and people who actually ask questions when they new always get drowned out because of the "Hi I'm new here" threads. Maybe that's why the newbie restrictions are so hated. Don't get me wrong I think the newbie thing is perfect. It prevents people who just register to ask a question from spamming the main threads.

 Also, I would have a forum games section. So that would be home to the "Think of the first word that comes to mind" threads. It prevents spamming. Plus it will minimise the mods workload. I have seen these games in Bitcoin discussion & gambling....Yeah gambling.


EDIT: Have a privacy policy. A decent one. The big down fall of this forum is the privacy policy, or the lack of one.

Thank you all for your contributions.  This is turning into a great discussion.  I look forward to reading about other things that we could do toward building a better community!

These are great points although I'm sure it would be easy to solve the "I'm new here" threads issue.

I can see, right away, that this thread needs a secretary.  Anyone want to volunteer to keep all the points straight?  

Preventing sock puppets would be a huge step in the right direction and help to curb the scams.

Is LGBT not allowed? :)

Almost everything :)   Count me in for the move, I've been saying this place has gone to the dogs for quite a while now.

+1 - I only have the one account - multiple accounts pisses people off

I would be interested in this project. I don't like the fact that if you're high ranking member of this forum you can get away with pretty much anything .

You can get the forum up now; figure out appropriate forum boards,  get a few moderators. Workout some forum rules that will differentiate yourself from bitcointalk. Choose the forum software, i recommend phpBB https://www.phpbb.com/

The Original Post should be organized in sections explaining what needs to be done that the community can figure out right now. He then should constantly update the post once he gets more answers/feedback. I don't think calling for help in the air without specifying everything is the most efficient thing to do.

Example:

The amount of Staff required and the prerequisites.
Forum Software.
What boards we should have.
What rules

Specify what you want and you will get answers. Then you should constantly update the OP until you are ready to implement everything.

Launching another forum is trivial, that is not the issue.  What we are doing at this point is exploring what exactly needs to be fixed.  If we can identify some major areas for improvement then we can start to address those issues.  Launching a forum today is putting the cart WAY before the horse.

I do like your "main headings" but there is a ton of sub content (rules) that we haven't even discussed yet.  Perhaps you'd like to go through the posts and generate a list of bullet points so we can start to organize this group-think project?  


edit:  thank you for this!

Brand:
 -Cryptocoin or Bitcoin only???
 -Catchy - easy to remember name

Possible Platforms:
     -Discourse
     -Xenforo
     -MyBB
     -SMF


Mandatory Requirements:

Good Design
  - Anonymous or Transparent?
    > what form of company is the forum?
    > what country should the forum be hosted in?
  - The site should be modern
  - Better mobile platform support
     > Tapatalk?
  - Better social media support
     > Integrate with Facebook or other?

Rules:
  - Defined Up Front
     > Terms of Service
     > Privacy Policy
     > Moderation Policy
        o - deleting spam posts
        o - sock puppet ban
        o - bans on users that are obvious scammers
        o - qualifications for perma-ban (what constitutes a ban?)
     > Moderators
        o - volunteed vs paid
        o - how selected
        o - how removed



What should be added or removed to/from this list?

Be strict about '+1's
Make a popularity count (using very-established users opinions only)
Display posts count+registration date next to avatar
Put posting limits: no more than 1 post per hour (or 2, or 0.5, or whatever you think would fit) during the first week after registration. Then 2p/h during the second, etc.
IMO mobile phone support is not a top priority

Edit1: be clear about the acceptance of altcoins

Edit2: personal opinions
NO social media support!
NO tracking like Google analytics or shit like this at all
Mods paid by users through public donation addresses

Edit3: no ads in signatures allowed
Or if people find this too anti-freedom.of.speech, no colours/glow/big font

It would be cool if when you sign up, you also register a Bitcoin address. To modify any  profile settings you must sign a message with that address to have it saved. This address could also be used if password is lost or forgotten or to prove someone else has your account.

I have created a new thread specifically to discuss the forum software choice.  


Possible Platforms:  (vote here - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=246936.0)
     -Discourse
     -Xenforo
     -MyBB
     -SMF

dillpicklechips, that's an awesome idea.  Would you propose it in the thread above?
jackjack would you do the same?

Thank You!

I've been reading up on Bitmessage lately. Wouldn't it be possible in theory to build a forum that uses Bitmessage as the backend? Run a node that archives the messages and creates a web interface to the discussion. If someone doesn't want to run Bitmessage to communicate, a web interface can be provided.

Make an invitation system, every registered member will have number of available invites that he can share.
Create a special thread for guests that can ask for invitations, maybe a daily invitation give away thread.

I think it would be a good idea to create now a new forum (I mean outside bitcointalk) to discuss all the ideas: one thread per idea would be much easier to manage
I'd do this if you want


Edit: I didn't see your previous post. Let me put internet on my laptop and I'll look at that link

Bitmessage rocks, integration suggestion added to OP.

I just look at the link you posted, it is only about the software, I don't get why I'd post my suggestions there
You don't like the idea to create a new forum dedicated to all the features?

I do not like the idea of rushing this conversation off to a room where there is nobody to contribute ideas.  Bitcointalk is the largest community of bitcoin users anywhere in the world and while there are indeed a number of major issues that need to be addressed I think it is way to soon to create any kind of new forum.  It is even possible that we could generate a list of meaningful issues and have the admin of this forum try to deal with them.  I am not a fan of jumping ship.  

I am a fan of improved communication and reduced scamming.  There is no reason to leave this forum at this time.  I will note that you are not alone in your desire to get me off this forum, many people who posted in the poll would like me to leave.  

>If you don't ban Viceroy I'll just scream (22%+)  :o

Don't get me wrong, I proposed this because I think that discussing ideas is much more easy when there's a whole thread for each
I fine with staying here too

Be wary that decision by consensus isn't a good idea.

So long as we're not all helping you build a new fiefdom  ;D

Where do you want us to post new suggestions? Here or in the poll?

By the way:
Forbid account selling
Suggestion box where everybody can propose, but only established users can vote

I think restricting each user to one account (aka ban sock puppets) eliminates the possibility of selling accounts.  I'm not sure what to do with the idea of a suggestion box.  Shouldn't this entire project be considered the suggestion box?

>Be wary that decision by consensus
If it was easy to fix this forum by just making a new one I would have done that long ago.  This is a group problem that requires a group solution.

Has 2FA been mentioned?  With the recent hackings here I think it's definitely something to be considered for any serious forum.

As for moderators, I think unpaid is the way to go... the forum shouldn't exist for making money.  The only money that needs to be made (IMO) is to pay for hosting/other required services for the forum.

>Has 2FA been mentioned?

I added it to the OP.  Do you think it should be required or optional?

Optional

Optional... unless there's a service offered by the forum involving any type of trading/escrow/etc, required if you want to use those services.



This isn't the thread to talk about why something hasn't been added to the bitcointalk.org forums.

+1   (sorry jackjack).  edit: because you don't like +1's.

It just requires forbidding users without 2FA to use those services.
It also depends on the 2nd FA used. I don't know many of them and I don't like the only ones I can think of (sms, yubikey) but maybe I'd like some other ones. Is there a list?


I think you quoted the wrong part of the post. If not, I don't get it.

Google Authenticator is probably a solid option for 2FA, though I haven't looked into how it works at all.

He was making a joke about the fact that you hate +1 .

I think we need to cut down on the amount of bad language and scams so many now people to this site are being treated badly scammed and what not that and they are just leaving!

this community is going to destroy it self if we don't do something about it soon !!!

I have reported loads of scams loads of threats of violence and all it says is you have reported x amounts of posts with 0% accuracy

Ha yeah, indeed!
I don't hate +1s that much ;D

It's true I often read people considering it. I never studied this either though.

Good call.

Hi,
I am very new to the forum. When we are a part of a community we should love it and try to make it good. Whatever problem occurs we should try to short it out, rather than get out of the community and creating a new one. So if the problem is here, lets solve it here.

If you are trying to create a complete new community, I think we will loose our strength. But if you are trying to create a updated version of this community here I just appreciate you and I will volunteer you.

You won't be able to ban sock puppets completely. You can discourage them but rest assured if someone wants to make an anonymous account on your forum and use it as a sock puppet, it will happen. The only thing you can do as a website administrator is make sure you do everything possible by your abilities.

I think the real problem here is:

People are trying to turn Bitcointalk into something it is not.

This is obvious just looking at the Altcoin board. Many calls to break it up into sub forums were denied by the admins, and rightfully so because this isn't an altcoin forum, it is a forum about Bitcoin specifically and should remain as such. Altcoins need to move out of mom and dads basement.

When Bitcoin was the only digital currency at the start, the forum made sense. There was only one coin to mine, one to trade, one to talk about. But this is not the cas e anymore, there is way too much subject matter packed in where it doesn't really belong. Each section of this is simply overgrown, and needs new places to congregate and focus on distinct subjects, or at least diversify into more general coin forums to create smaller communities. Bitcointalk is "too big to fail" and needs to break up :) I in no way disrespect Bitcointalk or its operators with these thoughts, but the reality seems to be everyone in the crypto scene is trying to use Bitcointalk as a waystation for everything, and is now hindered by its own weight. Time to branch out and let Bitcointalk just be about Bitcoin itself again.

Bitcointalk.org either needs to evolve itself into something more broad, or face an exodus in the form of new communities branching out.

Though ad revenue and what is done with it can be a thorny subject, the simple matter is hosting isn't free and managing a large board can take a lot of time and effort to the point of being a part time job, I don't see harm in sharing a portion of the revenue as long as bills are paid and forum needs are taken care of first from those funds. But I think a proper donation bin should be enough for the community to support the board and keep it operating without pesky ads all over the place. In the case of BFL it became a big joke for them to still be advertised here a year late with their products with no admin interdiction. The nature of ads is bad to me anyway, if a maker of a product wants attention they should get involved with the community opposed to just paying for a little space and calling it a day.

Rule wise its pretty simple to me: act like an adult and things will be fine. Fail to do that, meet Mr. Banhammer. Another way to do this is not ban, but set up a forum jail as a punishment group for misbehaving, with certain jail time for each offense. 3 strikes and gone kind of thing? Just a thought. But it does seem like here people are allowed to get away with scamming, spamming, trolling, etc entirely too much, some areas of this place are a digital cesspool.


To that, I would be willing to donate the following resources to the project:

VPS hosting package

Graphical design for logos, theme modification, etc.

I could have an SMF installation up and running in about 20 minutes and would happily do this for the community. I would digress direction of this board and setup to the OP as head admin, myself functioning as a back-end admin and forum mod mostly (I have other projects on my plate to which I wouldn't want to be the lead on this). Whatever allocation of donation funds deemed appropriate for hosting costs would be going to me

I'm here to help any way I can, let me know. And if I get banned for this, well, obviously I can go make my own  :D

Changing the domain name would be a pretty dumb move, People already know bitcointalk is the place to go to talk about bitcoins, As far as the forum software goes i think phpBB would be a nice choice, Really SMF is fine it just needs a new default skin/theme, The default blue theme looks unprofessional and tacky.

I just mentioned the above just because I already have them on tap and did some graphics already, and will just be let go when they expire otherwise, but whatever the domain choice I can provide a hosting solution for it. Though I don't think just making  a "bitcointalk2.org" would be appropriate or respectful either, another board should have a voice and feel of its own.

SMF is what the this board and the Litecoin forum are, it would make sense to make it a familiar platform. The stock templates are terrible but there are many more that are better. This is my SMF for BlockBurner (http://blockburner.net/forum/) as an example. Or I am sure a competent SMF themer could create something new for a few coin  :)

Looks clean but the background should be a darker color like gray or something, The bright white hurts my eyes.

Seems less piercing to me compared to here even (it is actually not a full white, but very light grey), but that can be changed easily. This was based on a theme called "Minimal". I will have another example to show after tonight that was further modified.

Don't jump the gun now.  We are not ready to talk about a logo, we don't even know that we need a new website yet.  Let's just keep gathering information at this time.  The first post has been updated with all known ideas to date has it not?  What else should be added/discussed?

what if thread creation was governed?  Should just anybody be able to start a thread?

how about google integrated searches.  I contend the reason people make threads is they cannot find what they seek.

what about a follow feature where you could follow people who you agree with or people you disagree with

or a popularity feature where you could sort responses by 'most agreed with first'
what about being able to sort the responses

are these interesting?

That might limit discussion too much.

The most agreed with sounds like it would need a lot more thinking about like how to age a thread.

I know from my Ban evading Times, that some Sites using a Service like http://dev.maxmind.com/proxy-detection/
but they pay for 1000 Queries, to block known Tor Nodes you don^t have to be an Expert, you just have to dig deeper for Proxy's.

Maybe there are really Search Algo's for this kind of Issues, but they will cost you some Coins.

TERRIBLE idea.  You want to give hackers free reign against those users who don't bother to proxy in?

If you want to give people a tool to identify sock puppets, then hash the IP address.  The same IP address will have the same hash.

With a complicated, non public hash algorithm, like sha256(ripemd160(endianreverse(sha512(md5(IP)))))

Satoshi's first post in these forums:

A random salt would be better - then you don't need to depend on 'secret sauce'

I ancerd the post but it was removed  >:(

Support micropayments throughout the site for a permanent funding mechanism to replace ads with fees.

Why a secret salt would be better than a secret algo?

There's this common misunderstanding that salts should be secret. (and also the common misunderstanding that salts should be used at all).
Salts protect against rainbow tables, nothing else, and they do not need to be secret to achieve this purpose, only different for each value that gets hashed.

We're not talking about passwords but IPs here. If the salt and the algo are not secret, using a hash to make the IP unguessable is useless.

my last post was removed   :(

its is not hard to block sock puppets using smf you can block people making multiple accounts from 1 ip address ( would stop 90% of them )

Not necessarily true. People can utilize a VPN and switch up their IP without a problem...or even just go over Tor. Blocking multiple accounts from the same IP only limits the "casual" sock puppeteers :P

as I said 90% would be blocked other than that its hard to prove it is a sock puppet

If you use micropayments then you just make each user pay a nominal fee for a ticket. If they are thread/site abusive then tickets can be revoked. This could be done on a thread by thread basis or the entire site. If tickets get revoked they have to pay for a new ticket which now makes creating sockpuppets irrational. Trolling is easily solved with micropayments but I guess no one considered anything I had to say in my post.

There should be no reason to rely on ads when we have our own currencies we can work with. Sure in the beginning ad revenue might be needed, but once the site gets popular enough it can pay for itself in transaction + ticket fees.

Thread authors should be able to charge fees to allow people to click their locked threads. This should allow thread authors to both moderate and also make a slight profit if they make a thread which a lot of people want to track and post in (such as when a new coin is being launched). Simply give the thread author a cut of the ticket sale revenue, then give a portion of that revenue to the posters in the thread who get modded up (karma system?), and give the rest to the site.

As these coins gain more value the ticket fee system will generate hundreds of dollars day. Hundreds of dollars a day is more than enough for the site. Everyone can get paid for anything, whether good posts getting tipped, popular thread authors charging tickets access to site exclusive information, everything. Every click should make people in the community some money, some small micropayment per click site. You can do stuff like have a karma system combined with micropayments so that people who make shitposts pay a fee for every post they make which keeps getting higher until their karma becomes excellent. Of course with tipping it could be that they could have bad karma and make a few brilliant posts that month and be able to pay for all the shit posts.

Micropayments everywhere for everything because why not, we can and Paypal cant. Stop playing by the old rules when we don't have to play by their rules anymore.

Let me say it one more time. The way to stop trolls and sock puppets is to charge everyone a fee for making an account. If it costs money to make an account you'll be very careful not to get your privileges revoked because that could mean anything from not being able to access the VIP threads anymore, to not being able to log with that account anymore without paying a fee. If the fee is high enough then no one will ever sock puppet again.

Imagine having to pay 1 litecoin per ticket or 0.01 bitcoin. This would have the effect of making it so that for certain areas of the site non-stake holders cannot access. If you don't have any Bitcoins, why would you want to access a private thread on Bitcoin speculation? If you have no Bitcoins then someone on the site might loan you an account until you earn enough in tips to pay them for the account but there should be a no free ride policy.

At the same time if you have some Bitcoins, the site should allow me to attach a fee to any thread I create and the fee should be of any size I wish. If you can't pay the fee you can't enter the thread unless I put you on the whitelist. Suddenly you have compartmentalization along with verification that everyone in the thread is an actual stakeholder combined with making it troll proof and maintaining anonymity.

Guess I missed the part about publicly displaying the values, and not keeping them hidden and using the hashing as a catastrophe prevention measure in case of a server compromise, or even a limited blind SQLi.

How would a salt even work in that case ? If it's different per IP you'll get different hashes, which sounds useless in that use case.

Overall it doesn't look like a very good idea (hashing+displaying IPs), too easy to get wrong and limited usefulness.

"If the fee is high enough then no one will ever sock puppet again."

Lol.

Let me tell you: it's going to be impossible to catch someone who knows what they're doing sockpuppeting.

I think you're right - you can't produce the same hash for the same IP without using the same salt so it does seem useless at this point.

Also, instead of producing a new forum, try making an easy to use secure messaging system. I'll contribute a few bitcoins of funding.

Here's another rather radical idea:  Bitcoin addresses as usernames.

In order to "sign up" for the forum, you must have a legitimate Bitcoin address with a balance greater than 0.1 BTC.  You use this address to digitally sign a message verifying that you own the address.  In order to trade on the forum, your Bitcoin address must have a balance greater than, say, 2 BTC.  Usernames are simply full Bitcoin addresses (or firstbits, if you want to shorten them up a bit).

This would virtually eliminate forum spam, removing one major headache from administration.  It would make sockpuppeting more expensive (would have to put 0.1 BTC "on hold" for every sockpuppet you wanted to create) and more difficult to conceal (any accidental link between Bitcoin addresses could be proven by anyone, not just the forum administration looking at IP addresses).  It would also force people brand new to Bitcoin to actually acquire some before joining in on any discussions, bringing up the quality of the discussions that do take place.  But it wouldn't actually cost the forum users anything.

So to participate at the peak, it could have cost $520?

Numbers could be adjusted to whatever is deemed appropriate, of course.  The balance required for participation that I suggested was only 0.1 BTC too - I was just suggesting a higher balance required to participate in trading, as it lends a bit more trust to that person if they have to hold that much of a balance in limbo, so to speak.  And it doesn't actually cost anything - you just have to prove ownership of that much.

By forcing a user to pay with bitcoin you eliminate all those who do not yet own bitcoin, which is a much larger group than those who do... it will hinder adoption of the forum.  Perhaps if you want to create a thread you should need a bitcoin address but anyone can post in _______ section.

To the idea of not advertising, I don't see the benefit.  Opportunities that ad dollars could provide include things like community events or even advertising the forum in a bigger forum... advertise the forum on google, for example.   There are many possible benefits that ad dollars can help with and I do not see the downside to charging companies who want to advertise to do so assuming the money is used to benefit the community.  Here's another thing money could/should be spent on: a political lobby toward the Dept of Treasury to benefit the community instead of letting big banks or the winklevoss twins run the exchanges.


Great contributions everyone thank you.

You misunderstood SgtSpike: you wouldn't have to pay to register/post, you would just have to sign a message with a signature whose corresponding address has at least 2BTC
I agree with this

Maybe not in all subforums though

That would make the forum extremely unfriendly to newbies and many others. A lot of people don't have btc due to their financial issues for example but the still believe in bitcoin and want to discuss it with the community.

People being required to demonstrate the ability of not having financial issues before voicing opinions sounds like a very good thing to me.

Seriously? So you think that people with financial issue due to their class, situation etc shouldn't have an opinion?

I am a professional web developer.

EDIT:

My account was hacked...I did not write this...I have upgraded my password and am posting on as many threads as possible...watch your backs and consider a more secure password...standard shit no longer cuts it.

I am not a professional web developer...although occasionally, I play one on tv...well, no, I don't do that either.

Portfolio links?  Just saying you are doesn't make you one  :P

A reminder to one and all:

Please be civil.  Challenge ideas, not people.

What if someone wants to find out more about Bitcoin or is looking for investment but has no Bitcoin themselves?

So for them, no matter how small the amount of Bitcoin, they would need to have a bank account (not everyone does), they would then need to transfer fees to an exchange, then buy some Bitcoin.

Sounds like quite a barrier to entry.

Ooops - I replied to an earlier post without reading all the new posts first so I've repeated some of your comments later.

Having no advertising sounds like a bad idea unless all running expenses are to come from donations which can be quite scary if you're the one left holding the bag.

Not sure it's easy to prove you don't have financial issues.

I could have 10 Bitcoin and still be in Dollar debt up to my eyeballs.

making people have money to join is a sure way to make your forum fail

My suggestion was a mere 0.1 BTC.  My point was, they should prove they can do the legwork of acquiring BTC and understanding how to use it before being able to post on the forum.  It would prevent some of the same old newbie posts from being reposted over and over again.  It also helps, in a small way, to prevent sockpuppets.  People could more easily connect the dots between sockpuppet accounts, unless the sockpuppeteer works hard to make sure the two addresses never interact.

But it also depends on what you want the forum to be.  Should it be a place of higher-level discussion with less "noise"?  That's what I heard it was supposed to be.  Locking out people who are just finding out about Bitcoin is a good way to do that.  They can go research elsewhere and discuss elsewhere until they have a greater understanding of Bitcoin, enough to keep down the noise and keep up the number of relevant and interesting conversations relative to noise posts.  If the new forum is supposed to be friendly to all, then it'll just turn into the same cesspool we have here (IMO).

The minimum balance required to participate could be reduced then.  Heck, make it 0.00005430 BTC, and tell them to get it from a faucet.  Anyone can still participate for free, but they must at least prove that they know the basics of how to use Bitcoin.  This wouldn't prevent sockpuppets at all, but it would at least prevent people who have no idea about Bitcoin from generating extra noise on the forum.

EDIT:  But if the idea is to promote higher-level discussions of Bitcoin, is such a barrier to entry a bad thing?

I think that the forum should be as newbie friendly as possible. This will help allow to attract a lot of members. It's better for all of us if we treat newbies in the best possible way.

I guess it's your call Viceroy

More members does not necessarily make a better forum.

That's why I said what I did.  Viceroy's goals seem to be to hold on to "smart contributors".  You don't do that by making a forum newb-friendly, you do that by making a forum smart-people-friendly.

would it not be better to improve this forum ?

I can do some java, php, cake, mysql and data modeling, if it helps...

It would be a better to improve this forum but good luck convincing Theymos to do anything suggested in this thread.

It's not the minimum balance that's the issue.

It's the fact that they have to acquire them at all.

It could take days -> weeks for someone to do that.

Even if it's for $0.01 worth of Bitcoin.

You're in the lucky position of already having a bank account. What about those that don't?

There's nothing wrong with promoting higher-level discussion but are you saying that users of this new forum should have a minimum level of understanding (and ownership) to even participate?

You don't need a bank account to acquire 0.00005430 BTC.  I'm not sure how often faucets typically pay out, but I'm sure a person could find one that pays out at least once a day.  So that makes the longest potential time to acquire 1 day, if you really want to set the bar that low.

I'm not sure why everyone is so against exclusivity.  Forums do not have to be open to everyone to be good.

If you want to get away from the "noise", which is what Viceroy is proposing to do in order to keep smarter people around, then absolutely yes, people should have a minimum level of understanding and ownership to participate.

Open source so anyone can build features.
Secure login (something like -otc)

Mr Kent, please add that to the thread about software available from the Top post. 

The issue of barrier to entry is simply that there are two kinds of people:
People who contribute meaningful input and people who contribute noise. 

Separating the two makes sense because not everybody adds useful information to threads.  I suggested that perhaps you need to get to a "level" before you can author a thread.  We definitely need to promote useful dialog and thwart meaningless noise... by some means or another.  Maybe by fee, maybe by having someone sponsor your account maybe through some other method... but we need to end the noise otherwise we have not accomplished anything.   

Zach, as I said in PM creating a forum is trivial and not the solution we need.  We need to define the problem then identify possible solutions.  Adding another format this time just adds noise unless we have a reason.  I am not yet convinced you are adding meaningful dialog to this conversation as much as you are promoting that you have a forum for alt coin.  Please try to contribute more meaningfully.

Im pretty new here, but here is my 2 cents:

OpenID, google, facebook auths
2fa
mobile theme
Mods that actually help when you are in need, im talking to you maged
privacy policy
terms of service
no sock puppet accounts
no selling of accounts
ban hammer

so you pretty much agree 100% with the op.

Pretty much, this place has turned into a veritable diagon alley of the web.

btw, I am a web developer by trade, c#, mvc 3, jquery, jquery mobile, css, html, good old javascript and would be more than happy to help.

Adding:

Disallow the use of registration and posting via tor or other crap like that.

You forgot, prevent scammers from offering bounties for work done ;D

They'll have to pay a fee to sockpuppet. It's not about catching them it's about attaching a cost to the practice so that it isn't free.

This is similar to the idea I was promoting only more detailed and fleshed out. I endorse this.


For certain discussions we should exclude people who don't really own any Bitcoins. For certain threads it should be required that you have Bitcoins to participate at all. This keeps out the sort of people who are only involved with the community to try and sabotage it, or keep an eye on it, or spam/scam it. If the scammer/spammer has to actually have Bitcoins to sign up to the site then that is proof that they have faith in or believe in it enough to have purchased or have earned some.

Also you're right not every thread should cost coins. There should be newbie sections of the site. I'm just saying the people who want to get to VIP sections should pay to access those sections and to register and not be restricted to the newbie section I think having to verify that you own Bitcoins, Litecoins or some other kind of coin worth beyond a minimum value is important.

I think it shouldn't be hard for newbies to acquire enough of these coins from being tipped, lotteries, bounties or from trade. After they have Bitcoin experience or cryptocurrency experience (proven by the fact that they own some), then they should gain access to the more trusted part of the forum.

These are just my opinions.

On ad dollars, if I'm willing to pay a via micropayments to not have ads on a per page basis then I shouldn't have to view any ads. If and when I'm not paying enough so that it's beyond what the forum would have made off me in ads then I should have to see ads. I think with transaction fees and micropayments you could easily get enough money to not have to worry about ads but I don't blame you if you keep ads because micropayments might not work well or might take a long time to work.

This is like Bitcoin eventually going from paying miners through coin generation and then the switch to transaction fees. I think at some point websites are going to switch to transaction fees. How would your forum compete with another forum which offers similar capabilities but paid for entirely in transaction fees? I think the best approach for short to medium term is to profit from ads and micropayments until we know which mechanism will power websites in the future (right now I don't think anyone knows how profitable micropayments could be).

I agree with the political organizing aspect. I have posted on that topic in the past. I think we'd need ad revenue, micropayment, all sorts of different methods of getting people to spend their coinage for access.

Everyone starts as a newbie. I think right now because the perception is that it's still hard to get Bitcoins you have a point. But I don't think it's hard to earn Bitcoins for anyone who is truly determined. When the person signs up they could be directed to websites to buy or work for Bitcoins which would completely remove all excuses for why someone couldn't have $1 worth in Bitcoin.

They can either buy it, or work for it, but since the forum isn't free why shouldn't they be made to work for Bitcoin to access the better part of the forum? It also would act to prove they truly believe in Bitcoin because anyone who would buy or work for it is now invested in it and that in my opinion is essential for a community to thrive.

It should go like this, you sign up for the site and prior to verifying your commitment you're stuck in the newbie section. The only way to get out of this section is to gain enough Bitcoin experience.

You can do this by either purchasing Bitcoins, or working for Bitcoins. You could be posting in the newbie section and someone can give you a tip and now you have Bitcoin experience. You can now use that tip money to buy a pass out of the newbie section.

But what if no one decides to tip you? Then you can actually go work for Bitcoins. There are sites which offer jobs which pay in Bitcoins and those sites will increasingly become more popular. The forum should be set up so that when you try to exit the newbie section without any Bitcoins then you get redirected to a page which lists various sites to buy Bitcoins from or work for Bitcoins. The point is to make people earn their way into the privileged parts of the site so that they are committed and value it more.

Let's say they decide to work for the Bitcoins and after 45 minutes they have $1. Now they can say they have Bitcoin experience and can exit the newbie section of the site. At the same time the site makes plenty of money if everyone pays $1 just to get out of the newbie section, and it's really equal to what they'd generate in ad revenue based on my calculations (actually it's possibly much more).

If someone cannot take the time to learn how to earn Bitcoins, will not take any bounty off a forum or go to the Bitcoin job sites or sign up at an exchange, or just make a good post and get tipped, then why would the forum want people who don't intend to contribute?

let the dictatorship begin  :)

How is what he posted a dictatorship?  Why are you posting here other than to promote your alt-coin forum, zach?  How is your post of any value to this discussion?

Yeah I see this guy's post is OTT - but being in this thread early - where do we start Viceroy? You need to make a plan/timeline project manage it etc - I would be happy to help code wise but I think we all need to see an action plan...

[EDIT]

Overview
Requirements
Volunteers (to do the tasks)
Tasks (divvied out)
etc

We've got many of the core requirements.  Should we adopt an existing software or start from scratch?

We could start with a debate about the pros and cons of one of the action items... just a suggestion.  I am not trying to dictate anything as if I had all the answers I'd have completed the project already.  I do not have all the answers.

I am open to suggestions on next steps.  I am also open to continuing to identify the major problems if we have not exhausted that issue.  What I do not want to do is rush this.  We need input from many people so that we do not miss important points.

I am also available to fund this project.  If needed I will personally sponsor any and all software licenses, server fees, etc to get this off the ground (advertiser free). 


note:
We also have a team in Germany working on the problem with us, so we'll solve the problem for English and German speakers in the first round.  

That is from reading all the posts if you high grade the users it will never succeed you need all the newbies because there the ones that will be the future of bitcoin

If bitcoin becomes mainstream you will be on the frontline setting an example to all the new people if you stick them all in a newbie section and make them pay to join they will not support bitcoin as they will see it as a dictatorship

Is that what you really want from your forum ?

what I would suggest you do is think long and hard about what you are trying to achieve by making the forum

If you charge for anything what happens when the price of bitcoin goes up ?

If bitcoin doubles in price you cant just charge half the amount because all the users that paid more would be annoyed

For example on here when bitcoin was 10usd you could buy the vip tag for 50BTC ($500) now 50 BTC is ( $5,000) and now all the people that paid 50BTC will not let them lower it to 5BTC ($500) as they say 50BTC is 50BTC


I am not advertising my forum on you thread even if I was would it mater as it altcoins only  :)

People on board is always good.

I would suggest:

Gather interested parties (documentor, coders, testers, project manager).
Scoping study - a document (or list of requirements) signed off and agreed with all interested parties.
Allocation of tasks to interested parties by project manager.
Daily updates from PM as to the task progress.
Delivery to beta.
Delivery to prod.

Zach you are not getting the bigger picture.  It's not about the method, it's about restricting the noise.  Having a members only section where noobs cannot post (or perhaps even read) would provide a place where we could have quiet intelligent discussions.  This forum, open to all, does not allow for that.  It is impossible to have a meaningful conversation in a stadium full of people if everyone has a microphone.

Nottm28, I agree we can start to scope.  I would not restrict the interested parties to coders and testers though. I think we need input from all types of users.  You clearly have a handle on this, give us some specifics.  Let's talk about scoping the project and see what it looks like (preliminary, with no regard for software or platform).

Ok scope is ready imo. Invite people to add requirements and then choose top 10-20 requirements as the start to the scoping study. Phase 1. Items not in top 10-20 go to scoping phase 2.

E.g.

Must have ability to add trust to a user.
Would be nice to somehow stop multiple accounts.
etc

List of 20 most popular must have's = scope

Then onto assigning PM, design discussion, technology to use (I love jave but there's loads of younger kids in here who like php, perl etc etc - PM to decide).

Request for volunteers (given chosen tech).

Tasks assigned.

PM to manage progress.

Testing, testing and more testing. Then some more.

Go beta, go live

do you think there is any chance of using an off-the shelf software platform? 

I would say it is far, far more likely to have success with adding plugins/extensions to off-the-shelf software than to have new forum software programmed from scratch.  I haven't seen any features yet that would require programming from scratch, so why reinvent the wheel?

if you use the now version of smf there is not much you cant change  :)

This is my thought, exactly.   

We all started at "Four legs good, two legs bad!"


Sort of like a two tier society where we can keep those who have and those who don't have, separated. An apartheid if you will. That way people who have Bitcoin can air their more valuable opinions.


The scammers that cause the most damage are the ones that are successful. I.e. the ones that already have Bitcoin or find it trivial to obtain some.

Your barrier to entry is going to hurt more people than it helps.


Yes, the rabble should have their own section.


A 'VIP' section would be ok as it's optional.



You're going to make it annoying for genuine users and only make the cost to a scammer $1? Downloading of Pirate Bay or ripping a DVD is simple too but you'll find most home users buy DVDs and sit through the FBI warning and adverts time and time again. To a determined scammer/spammer your barrier to entry is too low. To an ordinary user, the barrier to entry is too high.

Sure, you might have eliminated all but the most harmless of scammers (which aren't the ones you need to worry about) and a large chunk of new users who decided to go elsewhere.


You'll have a lot of issues like people currently do here where they want to participate in a discussion immediately but can't.

I don't have a problem with your suggestions - I just think it doesn't solve any problems. It just seems to exclude newbies and very low end scammers.

Absolutely - existing software.

There should need to be no discussion about this - not because you should be a dictator but because it's a fools errand.

Are we saying this forum is for the 'elite' of Bitcoin?

How high will you make it to deter the hardcore sock puppeteers (and thus also punish the innocent)?

I think using already made forum software is the way to go, something that's easy to make extensions/plugins for though.  As long as it can be changed easily enough then you'll be able to modify it how you want.

And on another note, I think replying 4 times in a row should be made against the rules (see above).  Should just consolidate it into one post.

The idea never said newbies shouldn't have access to some part of the forum. They should be restricted to the newbie part. How is that any different from Bitcointalk right now? Only my idea would take it to the next logical step and make people earn the right to progressively higher levels of access. Why should you get free access to something you don't really support or believe in enough to earn?  Also the site has to be paid for somehow so charging for access is just a logical way to do it while also growing the economy for everyone (including you). How do you think we will reach that $5000 a Bitcoin without doing stuff like this?

Who said anything about a dictatorship? When you take a bus or train you pay but no one says it's a dictatorship. But somehow you expect a free ride and for the forum to run itself. You want everything for free? That is not sustainable nor does it make sense when it's a money forum.

If free were sustainable there would be mining pools and exchanges which don't charge any fees but which work only on ad revenue. No one says the exchanges are a dictatorship, or the mining pools.  I say if we're a money forum and it's all about trade, exchange, and gaining experience with using Bitcoin then what better way to help people do that then to require them to do it in order to gain more access?

I think new software should be programmed from scratch. No off the shelf software is going to be designed with cryptocurrencies in mind. You could do micropayments and all that with off the shelf software but the level of control would be limited. What about escrow for instance? I don't think it's a big deal to code a forum from scratch so why not do that and make that design open source so other forums can easily integrate cryptocurrencies into them to build up the economic eco-system? If you're trying to build up market cap this is how you have to do it, you have to give people an excuse to earn and spend coins even if it's for stuff like accessing certain threads or parts of a forum or purchasing special features. This allows the programmers to actually get paid for adding these features in cryptocoins.

Like for instance you have VIP features and you let forum members purchase them. Or maybe make it so anyone can write a plugin and let people buy the ability to access those features and then give a percentage of the coins to whomever developed it. The wallet could even be built into the forum itself if it's build from scratch.

It should be left up to whoever made the thread. If I make a thread and decide to make people pay to access it then I should get a percentage of the revenue and the forum should get a percentage allowing me and the forum to make money. This tread could be technical analysis, the launch of a new alt-coin or whatever. This would make it so that people will pay for access to the latest news on the topics they really want but it also would allow people to get paid for providing that service.

You forget we are talking about money here and not charity. I thought Bitcoin was about people working to earn them and spend them? I thought Bitcoin is supposed to be a currency? When are we going to start treating it like a currency and using it like one?

Don't people pay for newspapers and magazine articles?

What barrier for entry? The whole point of creating the barrier is to create an economy around the forum so that the market cap grows. How exactly will anyone be able to earn Bitcoins if no one ever thinks to try to earn them because the trend is trading USD for them or trying to mine them? Until we get out of that attitude of having to buy Bitcoins or mine Bitcoins it will never be a currency and remain nothing more than a speculator toy commodity. If it's not used on forums with hundreds of thousands of users then why have Bitcoin exist in the first place if it's politically incorrect even among so called supporters?

I say let the thread owner decide if it's a free thread or a fee based thread. Let the thread owner set the fee to the thread. This way you wont have any spammers in certain threads at all. In fact I'd say you probably wont have spammers on the forum except in the newbie section.
Now you're onto politics. But what is the point of anyone working if we all have the exact same privileges in the end? And if you don't give people anything to work for why do they want to use Bitcoins? Isn't the idea to get people to use Bitcoins the way other currencies are used? So you gotta give people stuff to buy on the forum and stuff to earn even if to you it seems trivial. The forum can use fees to make money from all this in addition to ad revenue and forum users like yourself could make money from starting threads, making good posts, or doing the bounties on the job board.

I don't see why we shouldn't encourage a culture where people want to earn Bitcoins and actually contribute to the community.
Everything I suggest should be optional. It should be if me and others decide to create a VIP section and you wont pay the fee then you just can't access it. No trolls, no spam, no sockpuppets, no newbies, because we created the thread or that section and agreed by consensus to put a fee for access. Some people would greatly appreciate this feature enough to pay the fee.

Most people are newbies who don't really want to dig deep into Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency and they should be in the newbie section. Why should they be allowed to access sections where people have invested their life savings into Bitcoin, or who are working on projects, or who are legitimately trying to learn about technical analysis?

If you just want to chat about the weather or talk to other newbies that part of the forum should always be open. The VIP areas shouldn't be open. If you want to know the most valuable technical analysis report then perhaps you should pay to access it. Why expect good trading advice to be given to you for free or expect anything to be given to you at all? Doesn't that go against the whole point of Bitcoin?

New users will just stay on the newbie section just like new users are in the newbie section on this site. What is the difference? You earned your way out of the newbie section on this site did you not?

It reduces noise. It removes the sockpuppets. It increases the quality of posts. It allows all users to make a profit from the forum. It allows for lotteries, bounties, access control, per click fees, pay per view, VIP accounts and privileges and more. Basically if you earn your way up then you wont be a newbie but if you want a free ride you won't get far.

Tell me why it's good to give everyone a free ride when we know that wont grow the economy for Bitcoin or altcoins? We can't all be miners expecting to just plug in an asic and generate unlimited coins. Some of us have to work on projects, start businesses, do the bounties and other kinds of work.  There are threads on this site where people are writing stories for Devcoins, there are people trading for all kinds of stuff, there are people starting projects or businesses and that is what Bitcoin is about. In my opinion it's not about people just talking about Bitcoin but never really trying to earn any and it's not all about speculation (buying and selling Bitcoins like it's a commodity).

So what I'm saying is the forum should be more about doing business and less about uninformed speculation, pump and dump, trolling and all that crap.

This is why I think we need a class system.  I'd like to hang out with people who respect one another while still providing a place for rude people to yell at one another.



No I am not saying that at all.  But I do think a VIP section where people can go that don't want to deal with all the noise would be welcome.  I have no problem with a class system, unless people cannot change their class.  If it is a free choice class system that should be fine, no?

Not sure that helps with anything.

Also it would mean someone like me who visits the forums twice a day would take about 45 minutes to reply to a busy thread.

Absolutely it can be left up to the OP but we're drifting from the original goals.

The new forum was never about making money, nor was it about providing a high quality paid for service. I'm not saying any of that's bad but that never appeared to be the intention.

If that's what you're trying to build that's fine but it's certainly not what I'm trying to help build. I'm not doing this to make money off the community but if that's what you're after that's ok too - I'll just stand down.



I think you're confusing the properties of a currency with the properties of a forum.

I want the new forum to be the following:

All inclusive
Trolls banned
Scammers banned
New method of graduating newbies (still unresolved)
Fair environment where users feel they're not being ignored/disrespected
Areas which require higher levels of experience to reach (perhaps only 2 tiers so it doesn't turn into a game of volume posting)

I don't think we're looking for an entirely new forum - there's little wrong with the existing one. What we don't want to do is create a forum too complex and 'gameified'.

Sure, there will be a few smaller paid areas (like for advertising or services) but on the whole, the place is free to use.

As for the running costs, Viceroy has already kindly offered to fund the place initially. I'm sure advertising and possibly donations would cover the rest.



I hear what you're saying and it's a good point but I'm still against pay-to-play. Most services these days can't survive on that model - notice how almost all games on mobile phones have a free and a paid version? The free gets them in, which all the other forums are so they'll go there first.

If you're looking to build a community of 200 users, you're going about it in the right direction.


I don't get it. Did I not mention that $1 isn't going to keep spammers and scammers out? Looks like you agree too if you think they'll still spam the newbie section having paid their dollar but at the same time, you'll have excluded all the other newbies who thought they weren't going to pay a dollar for a community they've never heard of. The reason why you won't have scammers is because they'll see a small community and realise the return for their efforts isn't worthwhile - it definitely won't be because they can't afford a dollar.

Viceroy was looking for some community input for how it should work. I'm sure he's heard your opinion and he's heard mine on the matter by now.


Now you're confusing the new forum with the real world. The goal of the new forum isn't to rebuild society with Bitcoin as the basis. Originally it was because Viceroy was frustrated and felt persecuted by the current forum.

I agree that everything on the forum should be Bitcoin denominated but I don't think the new forum will make more than a fraction of a dent in the Bitcoin economy. I'll be impressed if there's more volume than 1 Bitcoin a day.


What makes you think we need to encourage this behaviour? It's already present in people. People don't care what currency their store of value is. We don't need to foster that feeling in people with propaganda.


Ah, how little you understand scammers. If anything this signals to a scammer - here are your high value targets. Sure, these high value targets will be significantly more wary of scammers but there will be scammers none the less. Money isn't a barrier to entry for successful scammers - I think I've said this about 5 times now so I won't mention it again.


Because we were all newbies once. A lot of the original community here didn't spend a dime buying Bitcoins yet they'll have dozens of them. A lot of people don't have money from other countries.

I get you want to build a better community but excluding the less fortunate won't help with excluding scammers.



Because we're a community and we help each other. I for one am not trying to make things better for me - I'm doing it for the community. If you're doing it for yourself and those already with Bitcoin then that's up to you but again, you can count me out.



My point was that people who aren't members will take one look and go elsewhere.



It's becoming quite clear to me that you're looking to make money out of this. I don't have a problem with that but it's not something I want to do off of the back of a community I'm trying to build up.


There's a reason why we have separate sub-forums for that kind of thing. If you're not interested in it, you don't have to read it.

There's a spam/troll/scammer issue on the current forum, not a lack of earnings problem nor a, I'm-more-privileged-than-other-people-so-I-should-have-better-treatment-problem.

I have no problem with that as it's free choice.



Sounds like you've got your forum strapline :)

How about this additional proposal, the forum should offer shares on https://www.litecoinglobal.com/

Shareholders could then sign in with their shareholder information and use their shares to vote on different features, or to get special privileges. This will encourage people to not only spend their Litecoins but to become investors in the community. When the site profits they profit, when the site is under attack their investment is under attack.

The shareholders should not have to see any ads ever. There should be a limited amount of shares released. This way the site can immediately fund itself in an IPO process and I'll go on record and say I'll buy shares if this happens.

If it's just going to be an exact clone of this forum then what is the point? We can all just stay here. If it's going to be something never done before then I'm in. My interpretation of the function of a forum is to build a community. The cryptocurrency community is primarily technologists who are trying to make money. And when I say make money I mean literally. Shouldn't a new forum contribute technologically and also bring people into the process of creation? We can talk, I'm fine with that but I think if Bitcoin or any of these cryptocurrencies reach their potential it will be because millions of people are involved in the economy. Right now we don't have enough involvement.


In that case we want the same thing, I just think why not be more ambitious about it? If it's supposed to replace Bitcointalk it has to be ambitious because if its just an ordinary forum why would anyone bother? It has to be the best forum and have some technological innovation.

Are you sure about that? Complex isn't the issue. Gamification on the other hand is bad why? This forum already is gamified. There are bounties everywhere, people working on projects, and doing all kinds of stuff. You could call it games, but people are being paid to play with virtual money and to mine alt-coins so those games make real money but lets be honest, it's still a game. Bitcoin is a virtual currency, Asicminer is a virtual company, the virtual stock exchange is a game that just happens to have real value.

I agree the majority of any forum should be free to use. But do we want tipping? Yes. Do we want contests and tournaments? Yes. Do we want polls, or even paid polls? We need that stuff to collect statistics so once again I say we need it and it can't always be free. People aren't going to take a survey for free, but if all you have to do is take a survey and earn Bitcoins because someone is willing to pay the forum for it then isn't that better than an advertisement? It's better for the forum and for the users right? And the same or perhaps much more money is generated which can circulate back to the forum members if for instance they own shares and receive dividends.

I do underatand the concern that the site could become too commercial. There has to be a balance. Perhaps this thread can allow us to find that balance.

Donations and advertising are not sustainable though. When the site gets DDOSed or when it gets too popular what then?


Most services can't survive on that model because there was no such thing as micropayments until now. We don't even know what could work yet. And some services only survive on that model, look at Spotify which is more popular than you think. The only problem with Spotify is that it doesn't run on Bitcoins.

I disagree with that statement. I think active users matter more than just people who never post or never take part in anything. How do we encourage people to be active without providing incentives? We keep hearing no one wants to spend their Bitcoins, but we never encourage people to earn or spend. Why not create a culture?
I think if we can keep the spam in the newbie section then that is a good decision. I think there can be surveys, lotteries, tipping and other mechanisms to encourage people to actually apply their Bitcoins and get active. You know, actually make a wallet and actually start using the technology as a currency rather than just talking about how cool it is or how to buy some.
I disagree. I think if the forum were better than this one then most of the active members from this community would go to the better technology. That is why I think you need good technology. You want to get the active members first, because they are posting every day. I do understand you can't only have active members, so a newbie section which functions like the newbie section on Bitcointalk would be fine.
I recognize my view is just one view. I don't expect every idea I offer to be implemented. But I do think the idea I offered to solve sockpuppets is the best solution offered. I do believe some of my ideas will have to be implemented because there is no better solution to the problem. If you can make the forum friendly to newbies, encouraging members to actually gain experience, encouraging an active membership. encouraging commitment, then I'm for that.  
I agree. Maybe I was over ambitious.
And this is where I disagree. I think a new forum could generate a lot more than 1 Bitcoin a day. I think it all depends on the technological design of the forum. I think it also depends on the quality of the membership, the content, and how active the members are. You can encourage an active membership which creates quality content and easily generate 1 Bitcoin a day if you had the kind of membership size you see on Bitcointalk. But let's be honest, it's unlikely that would happen overnight even if the technology were better, I just think if you're going to invent another forum, why not actually invent something no other forum can do? Kind of like with alt-coins, if you're going to invent a new coin why not innovate?
I'm pretty sure they already know who the high value targets are. High value doesn't mean easily accessed.
The less fortunate? I'm not sure what you mean. The option seems to be keep the door open so scammers and spammers can pollute the forum, or lock the door and charge a fee for entry. I say we should have a public area and a VIP area which gives the best of both worlds. I don't think you can do it all open without someone trying to mess it up. I've seen threads get ruined on this forum by one person shitposting.
I'm doing it to make things better for myself and the community. There is no reason why I should lose to help the community when, if I can win helping the community win. Why not just adjust the incentives to encourage people to help each other? Devcoin is doing exactly that, and it seems to work at least to get people to accept bounties and fund projects.
How do you know they'll go elsewhere? Those users sign up for Facebook and jump through way more hoops to do so. They sacrifice their privacy and civil liberties to be part of something cool or to try the cool new technology. I think these users will jump on the Bitcoin train when it becomes cool enough, but they wont know how to buy the coins, or how to use it, or what the coins are, and in my opinion the best way to teach is by making them use it. Actually make a wallet, and sign in with a wallet address, why not?

Tell me what demographic of newbie does not have a Bitcoin address and does not want try using Bitcoin as a currency? If you're not part of the blockchain as a miner and don't have a Bitcoin address?
What demographic does not have a Bitcoin wallet address? If they have at least that, then we know they at least cared enough about Bitcoin to do that. A lot of people making shitposts and spamming just sign up to do that and don't even care about Bitcoin enough to download a wallet or get an address. I've seen people literally make one or two posts about nothing and then start spamming.
Finance is about making money but it's also about community. This is a finance community where everyone here should want to make money. Why else are you playing with virtual money if you don't want to make money? The goal is to make the virtual money function like real money? So we have to actually use it. You're presenting a false dichotomy where someone has to either be fighting in their self interest or for their community as if they oppose each other. The most rational position is enlightened self interest where you fight for yourself and your community. You should be able to make money, so should I, so should anyone in the community, and if the community fails we should lose money, but that is how it can work. At the end of the day everyone is connected by the success or failure of Bitcoin and the price volatility affects us all if we all have a stake in it. If someone doesn't care about that then I would be more suspicious of them.

I think both problems are linked. People spam to make money correct? People are attracted to Bitcoins because that is a new money? The Bitcoin miner is in it to make money right? Whether you think of it in the literal sense of generating a new money, or the purely economic and self interest of making profit, the whole point of Bitcoin is to make, spend, and transfer value. I keep reading that everyone wants to hoard and no one wants to spend, but then I read from you that this is not a problem.

I think the only reason it's not a problem is because there are only 1 million or so people who know what Bitcoin is. I'm saying these forums are not going to scale up just like Mt Gox couldn't scale up, and for the same reasons. These forums are not prepared for 10 million members, or 20 million members, and wouldn't know what to do with that many people, but the truth is, if properly designed the sky is the limit.

It's all about content. In my opinion the forums with the most active membership will create the best content, provide the most opportunities, and as a result attract the most new members. I think Bitcointalk is that forum right now. I think to get people away from Bitcointalk will be hard unless you attract the most active (VIP) members from Bitcointalk onto a new forum and then convince them to be active in the new forum.

It addresses the problems of the current forum.

Also, what makes you think a newbie is going to build a community for you to profit from? Also why denominate things in Litecoin if the ultimate goal is to bring Bitcoin to the forefront of cryptocurrency usage?


One of us has missunderstood badly. I hope it's not me.

The new forum isn't to replace Bitcointalk - it's an additional forum to promote competition between forums and to strengthen the ecosystem. It'll help each of the forums strive to be better or lose users to the other and that's a good thing for the community.

You certainly won't be able to replace Bitcointalk with your current ideas. If anything I believe you'll put a great many people off it.


Bounties and incentives don't necessarily gameify a site. It's how those incentives make users behave. For instance, if you have 15 levels of 'experience', you're encouraging users to post as much as they can as soon as they can to reach the upper levels.

A bounty in an advert to research something isn't gameification.



I don't disagree with any of that.


Perhaps I just don't understand your desire to turn the forum into a business. A business with equity at that.

I also don't get why people wouldn't answer surveys without being paid if it's to improve the community. I get why they'd want paid if you were lining your pockets from the results/research.


You don't think you've gone too far by the time you've paid to sign up, paid to get into VIP areas, bought into the forum with Litecoin shares, allocated shares for the new forum, etc?

Or do you see that as balanced?


I suspect with your suggestions, the site will never get popular unless you define popular as 200 very rich users funding the site costs and generating a profit for the 'owners'.


You'll have fewer active users - your community will simply be smaller due to the barriers to entry you're imposing and also why will newbies feel inclined to help build your business?



I think you've missed the point I'm making but if I haven't been able to explain it so far it's unlikely I'll be able to do it now.

Encouraging users to start spending is a difficult one but making the forum where they can learn about it chargeable just to be on, is not going to be the solution. The two objectives are independent of each other and in my mind, shouldn't be mixed together. You're tying an activity to a goal to try and achieve that goal.


Of course if the forum was 'better' than this one people would go but you define 'better' as 'run like a business' and I'm not sure everyone would agree with that.

You also define 'better technology' as 'gameified'. I would describe your 'better technology' as 'different' but not better. I'm sure you don't mean the database will allow a higher volume of transactions or that the motherboard uses a faster bus speed. That's what technology is in my mind.



People don't go to a forum for the 'technology'. Also, are you defining an active member as 'non-newbie'?  ???



I feel that your problem will be everyone will run a mile when they see how much of a business the new forum will be. You'll never get to the size of Bitcointalk with all the fees, the shares being handed out (to whom? by whom?).



You don't think $1 is easy access for a scammer? If you told a scammer that there's a forum full of pre-validated, high value assests that will cost you $1 dollar to access, you can bet they'll beat a path there.



I don't think we disagree here - just where that line is drawn and how high it's drawn.


What do you lose helping build a community?

Are you saying you'll only help if you're paid?


Facebook users don't see an immediate financial cost. They also don't see that Facebook is making money off of their accounts.

People will give up their civil liberties because they don't know better.

Make the Bitcoin wallet signing one of the 'experience levels' sure, but make it as a barrier to entry and you'll lose a great deal of newbies.


I don't have that info.


What proportion of spammers don't have a Bitcoin wallet? Without that info, we're speculating as to whether your proposed solution would work against them.

I don't see a problem with making it a requirement later on once people can already participate.


I might have an interest in stocks and shares but I wouldn't expect to have to deal my shareholdings on a forum. I might like tropical fish but for sure I'm not going to use them on a forum as currency.

It's not a finance community - there are people here from all walks of life.


I've not made that claim - you have. I simply have no interest in making money off the back of the community I'm trying to build, if for no other reason than a conflict of interest. If you don't see that conflict, you soon will once people begin to ask questions.


Perhaps this is where some of my confusion comes in. You use the meanings of things slightly differently to me. A spammer is anyone who posts junk and that can often be things like selling services (to make money) or just posting rubbish to troll etc.


A lot of people here are here to make money - absolutely. I don't think anyone has a problem with that. The hoarding issue is a problem but you can't make people spend if they don't want to, otherwise you're as well using a fiat currency where if you don't spend, your value is inflated away.


Forums don't need to scale like Mt. Gox. They have raw power issues, a forum doesn't have the same resourcing issues. There's no way the new forum will have too many users - not for years. There's no point in over-engineering for a situation that'll never happen.

Even with all the inactive/troll/sockpuppet accounts, we only have 135325 users here.


I don't think people come to Bitcointalk for the content. I think they come here for the community.

I guess we'll need to agree to disagree.

50 minutes a day spent on replying to each other's posts lol

Anyway - good discussion  ;D

Holy Moses! WALL OF TEXT!

 ;D

Late to thread and I'm sure it has been said but the thing I dis-like most about this place is that user accounts can be sold.

Only reason I stayed once I found that out is because there aren't any other places to go. I looked.

It does mean I have very little trust in buying anything from anyone here because the account could have been sold and I would not know the person I looked up history of was no longer the person using that account.

Very hard to get around this problem but allowing them to be openly sold certainly can't help.

Bitcoin would be fine. I have no problem with that. See https://btct.co/
In that case if it's not going to be better by design then what is the point? One example of better by design would be to make it decentralized so it's DDOS proof. Bitcointalk was under constant attack by the price manipulator which helped to cause the price crash in April 2013.
You know this because you're psychic? An idea which isn't tried or tested should be treated as an unknown. My idea is to build the better technology but I admit the result would be unknown just like with any new thing.
But it's already working. Bitcointalk already has incentives to encourage people to post to get out of the newbie section. I don't see why it's a mistake to encourage an active membership.
Because I believe the Bitcoin community is a community of entrepreneurs and that entrepreneurship is the key to the success of Bitcoin as an experiment. Why have a new currency if you don't want to start a business to create jobs? No one is going to give you a job and millions of people are looking for a job right now so I would think the idea of starting your own business is why most people are attracted to a forum like this in the first place.
Because people want to earn some Bitcoins. I don't see why it's all that complicated. What if you're from the developing world and someone offers a survey and you can earn a few bucks just by answering some questions? How else will people get Bitcoins honestly?

Also if I'm willing to pay for the research results with my Bitcoin stash or Litecoin stash then why shouldn't the forum allow me to do it? It's revenue for the forum and for the members and it's much better than advertising which tends to be totally annoying.
I say we don't know what is balanced until we try stuff and analyze the results or we conduct a poll. I think we should try something, see how they respond and then decide.
You have no understanding of how economics work. If the active membership are the only people who truly are involved with Bitcoin, are you saying only 200 members on Bitcointalk are (rich)? Because I don't see it. I don't see it like that on reddit where peopel tip each other either. I think anyone who has a Bitcoin wallet will have some Bitcoins in it eventually and if they do not then something is wrong with the community that forces people to purchase Bitcoins at an exchange.
Based on what? Until you test out certain ideas we don't know what the effects will be. When the first mining pool was set up I'm sure people thought it was a stupid idea to charge transaction fees, just let people donate to the pool. For some pools this might work, for other pools there is a fee, and both seem to have plenty of users. So I don't think people are afraid of fees just so long as the fees are very small and trivial. If it costs some mBTC it's not a big deal. If it costs some uBTC it's not a big deal.
The principles or goal would be to encourage active membership and to encourage use of Bitcoin as a currency. I'm not claiming that any specific idea is guaranteed to work but that any idea should be tried to see how well it can work. If you don't agree with the goal thats another matter.
By better I mean if you're going to do something then why not take advantage of the strengths of Bitcoin? Right now even Bitcointalk doesn't really seem designed for Bitcoin. It's just an ordinary forum populated by Bitcoin users. It can easily be DDOSed because it's centralized, it doesn't promote Bitcoin use as a currency and only promotes speculation. As a result we have a lot of rumors, speculation, and not enough people actually transferring Bitcoins around.
It probably wont get to the size of Bitcointalk but you never know. For certain types of discussions it will be much better. Bitcointalk is like a stadium and you can reach a large audience here but when you want to have deep technical discussion or discussion business then it's not so good.
It solves sockpuppets because every time the sockpuppet gets banned they must pay again. It prevents scammers because $1 might get them into the VIP section but if threads can be locked then they'll have to pay fees to get access to the locked threads as well. It's access control by rings.
I lose time. Do you think people have unlimited time?
Volunteering is great but be realistic. While you volunteer who is going to pay your bills?
So you make it profitable and now you can spend all your time doing it, which makes you a lot more active right?
So because they don't see it happening then we can pretend like Facebook is free? Websites aren't ever operated for free though and Facebook is just clever and sneaky about how they get money.  To have a sustainable organization, you need to be able to profit through some mechanism and the same applies to the community. If mining is not profitable it will not be sustainable, and eventually it ceases.
It should be that to verify your account you need a wallet. I don't see why we should give the same treatment to people who are so new that they dont even have a wallet yet. Those people should be directed to a how-to guide on setting up a wallet. Otherwise we will be flooded with the same basic questions of how to get Bitcoins and how to setup a wallet.
The funny thing is I've stumbled upon some spammers who make an account here on this site with no intention of ever using Bitcoin for anything.
But that is what Bitcoin allows us to do that we couldn't do before.  The best way to show what Bitcoin can do is to show what it can do.

A community also makes money off the back of your labor. Everyone makes money off of each other in symbiosis. You want a sustainable community, so if it's going to last then everyone has to be able to make money somehow or once again how will people be fully committed if they have to work at McJob to pay their bills? The more you allow people to grow the economy within the community, the better it is for the community.

Absolutely right. Spammers typically want to make money and by making it cost money to spam, you'll get less spam. Also if they need a Bitcoin address to spam then at least they'll have to know what Bitcoin is.
The thing is, people do want to spend and just don't have a lot of options other than a new mining rig because that is all that gets advertised. This is why most of the money of miners is going into losing ventures like BFL. I would rather people diversify and have shares in stuff like forums, websites, exchanges, anything which can make them a long term profit rather than everyone trying to get ASICs and mine like they can do that forever. These people are almost guaranteed to lose money from mining and there isn't anywhere better for them to go because what else can they invest in?
You never know. If a new forum is built (on the software design level) it should be designed to scale in such a way so that the forum is open source like many other forums and that any website or blog can adapt the technology .This way it does scale, but it's also a forum designed to take advantage of cryptocurrencies. Small machines forum is not designed for this. It's not designed for Bitcoin which is why when Bitcoin is DDOSed this site goes down. If the forum were designed for the kind of attacks it's going to face from malicious individuals, or designed to take advantage of the strengthens of the technology why not?

So let's find strengths and weaknesses and come up with some new ideas.
Do you have any solutions which take advantage of the strengths of Bitcoin?
That is nearly 10% of the entire Bitcoin community. How many people have downloaded the Bitcoin client? 3,416,343 all time. Considering the fact that probably only 1 million are active users, and if we get rid of bots and assume 80,000-100,000 are active users here, then that is where I get 10%. If that scales up then yes a site like this could have millions of users and probably will.


I think it is about content or why would we reply to each other? Also it's not just these discussions but the new alt coins which get released, the new apps, the new businesses started, the news from friedcat, that is what I mean by content.



Would a digital signature permanently linked to a Bitcoin/altcoin address work as a means of verification? When the account is sold it would not have the same digital signature or coin address but it would have the same alias so only the alias should be able to be sold. Would this work?

attack ideas, not people

question,

is lucky bit adding to this discussion or detracting?

I think Luckybit is adding to the discussion - his stance is far more businesscentric than mine. His opinion is valid and one that you should consider.

Obviously we have very different ideas about how things should work lol

I personally don't think a forum should be the social change Bitcoin needs because that way, the forum will fail as that's not what people go to a forum for but I could well be wrong and it might thrive (in my experience of people and business, I don't see that being the case).

You could go to the huge trouble of setting up a business oriented/gameified forum and find it doesn't work or you can go with your original goals of fixing what wasn't working here and seeing how that works out before doing another round of community research and asking if each feature to be added is wanted/needed by the community.

At least that way you can start to build a community, you won't alienate anyone and you'll have the option to add all the business features that Luckybit is looking for.

Why would anyone in their right mind want a forum with MORE moderation. There is already far too much happening here. Users get their threads' titles changed. The start of "self-moderated" topics to make it even easier to scam. A default trust settings with theymos and all his buddies in it. You are right about this place going downhill but its from too much moderation. The trust scoring page was a good idea, but the default trust list ruins any integrity it could have. There should be virtually no moderation short of removing spam.

I feel as though most cryptos would be discussed anyways, so why not have both. However I feel that in order to get traffic you will need to have a website name that relates specifically to bitcoin. People are more likely to google "bitcoin forum" than "cryptocurrency forum".

 
You have two options here: with more transparency you have less possibility for scams (assuming that the scammers put their real information) but less people are likely to join. I think that maybe what would be best is that just to join you don't need any personal information on the site, but in order to go into the "lending" or similar forums where scamming is a possibility it is mandatory that you fill out basic profile information (name and email). Without this information you cannot post in those subforums.


Nonprofit, although you can have paid mods. You certainly shouldn't charge people to get in, and the majority of money should go towards bitcoin-related projects and improving the site.



I don't think that it really matters. Whichever country hosts the fastest servers. I don't think that any government is going to take down a bitcoin forum.


Agreed. Current is pretty ugly.


Agreed, although I don't use mobile I'm sure a lot of people do.


This would be cool, but would most people use it? It might be a waste of resources.


This should be in place, but not mandatory.


The problem is that these are almost never read. But it doesn't hurt to clearly define them.


The main spam posts I see are "+1" or "agreed". Maybe there could be a way to vote on whether a post is constructive or not, similar to reddit and other social media.


Maybe you could restrict IPs to one account? But with Tor people could still make multiple. If a sockpuppet is discovered, it should be instantly banned and the original user should get a warning.


Yes.

I like the idea of a trust system as well, but feedback shouldn't be limited to people in your trust list. In fact, a trust list should not even exist. Anyone should be able to review anyone. If you perform a transaction with someone, you should fill out a quick feedback form which has their name and yours, whether it was positive or negative and how much you transacted or got scammed for. This should be posted under the user's name in threads. I think it should have two counts: one for negative and one for positive. This means that just because you are a "trusted" member of the community you can not get away with scams. Even one incident would permanently tarnish your trade feedback. Because of this, there should be a request to have the feedback looked at if it was falsified.

I think that there should be a seperate ticker for upvotes/downvotes on posts. This would allow people to tell whether or not someone is worth debating with, and in general would show their contribution to the community. Unlike trade feedback, this would be the sum, as it's more likely to be abused by people who just don't agree with what your posting. If you truly were a good contributor, you would stay positive.

Of course post count and activity should be shown, although I feel as though activity is kind of meaningless unless the equation for it is changed.


I think that permanent bans should be based on trade feedback. If you get 10+ transactions that are negative, and you don't appeal them, you should be banned forever.

A normal ban should based on the "reputation" (the aggregate of upvotes/downvotes I mentioned earlier). For example, if you get -10, you get a temporary ban explaining why you were banned which gives you time to rethink your method of posting.



Volunteer moderators would show more effort, as they have no reason to do their job right other than wanting to do it right. Maybe, however, their reputation would result in payment from the community fund.
 
I think that anyone should be allowed to "run" for moderator (within reason, maybe 200+ posts and good rep?), and that mods should be voted on in a community poll, which could take place every month. No one, besides admins, would be permanent mods, although people could run (and win) as many times in a row as they want. Mods would run for subforum positions, with an additional "global moderator" poll. In order for a user to win the spot, they must have positive rep for the duration of the poll, they must receive the most votes, and they must receive at least a certain number of votes (I don't know how many people would vote, but maybe 100+ votes are necessary? Just throwing out a number).

The same thing could happen for removing moderators- obviously if a mod does not win their reelection, they were not too good of a mod. However, if a mod acts poorly early, there should be a seperate running poll (maybe every week) which has the current mods, and a vote on whether or not to remove them. For this, mods would have to be "nominated" to be removed. Note that this poll would be much more serious than simply losing re-election, as it implies that not only did a mod not do their job well, but they in fact did it poorly.


No. There should be no restrictions on who can join, but newbie jail is a good idea.


Those are my ideas. I don't know much about the technical aspect of a forum, but I hope that there's some way that these can be implemented, especially the reputation idea.

Two things:

1. Definetly integrate with Bitmessage if possible.
2. Consider PHPBB as well (I have no idea how it compares but I've had good results in the past.

The software selection thread can be found here:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=246936.0

Read this:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50617.0

Except that when this forum is made, ASBO-I mean censorship enthusiasts get to administrate it.

Yeah, I agree that a new forum needs to be made, but how will you control the staff? The staff are decently controlled at the moment - and I know that if you get your wish, you're going to go and ban people such as TradeFortress because you dislike them.


This also kinda re-enforces my point. "they all need to be banned" "freaking crooks" "I'd ban his ass if I had a banhammer"

Your comment is valid, and welcome.  I am not here to tell the world I know better than "you".  Instead I created this thread to gather feedback from the community about some of the problems we have all experienced here in this forum.

I think there need to be rules.  As I pointed out in the very first post THIS FORUM has no rules.  It doesn't even have a privacy policy and as such Theymos wields the ban-hammer as he sees fit with no over site; he also has the right to sell your information to marketers... because there is no policy saying he will not.  And under the current lack of rules scammers are now allowed to do as they please because the scammer tag is no longer employed.  Each and every day new sockpuppets enter this forum in the currency exchange and alt-cypto currency forums where they steal actual money from unsuspecting victims... and the admins do nothing about it.

I have no interest in being king of any forum.  I have a great interest in being a MEMBER of a forum where:

- people can have intelligent discussions
- sockpuppets are minimized
- criminal behavior is minimized
- BFL is not allowed to advertise as they are a suspected criminal entity under state and federal investigation  
- illegal securities are not sold to non-qualified investors (Trendon Shavers)
- ponzi schemes, such as TF's, are not welcomed and promoted (The new Trendon Shavers)  

Allowing activity like the above does great damage to the reputation of bitcoin and it keeps adoption rates low.  

Actually, Joey Rondini got the tag and he scammed a grand total of .4 BTC...

top posting because this forum has a silly 20 posts per page limit.


I don't know who that is but I tried for a month to get a known criminal tagged and was told by JohnK that the scammer tag is no longer employed.

I believe that he scammed 1 BTC (.85 lent, he was due to pay 1 BTC back), possibly more depending on how much his other accounts got, if any. He mainly got the tag because he was being really persistent and annoying, and the admins just got bored and gave him it. Which doesn't do much.

Good points, well made, but where do you get the idea that TF runs a ponzi scheme? O_o Feel free to continue this discussion in PM, to keep the thread on-topic.

Who was it? Rondini (or joeyjmr8484) got it pretty quickly. Of course, Joey didn't even dispute the claim that he was a scammer...

He did actually, by attempting to argue that his inability to pay makes him something other than a scammer

In regards to the new forums, if it has not yet been mentioned -- mobile browsing is lacking on btctalk right now.

Yea we all agreed though it's not clear there are good solutions in the marketplace.

i just read this post and the one linked from it by jason. he used a lot of unnecessarily large words to say that the average person here is too stupid for his mighty brain, and grammar you use on internet forums=intelligence.

i am new here, but seriously, why is the loss of this member a bad thing? he seemed like a total dick from that post i read.

n00b here too, but perhaps it is a trend. Read further to see he was working on a public mining asic chip.

The banning of Matthew:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=273066.0

(Comments on that topic belong in that censorship thread).

I didn't read through the whole thread yet.

- No sockpuppets, yes!

- not only Bitcoin. "Cryptocoin", maybe. Lets re-check the several "favorite slogan" threads for this, maybe?

- Some simple mechanism for trust is needed:
     - "+1" "I like that post"
     - Invite only, and/or vouching required, with inviter visible in invited person's profile
     - "web of trust" - something
     - and/or tipping

- A transparent "democracy", maybe with members voting for a "board of decision makers", who then elect mods, decide finances and so on
  - I believe direct democracy often does not work, and such a forum is exactly where it will go all wrong

- "Person has xy ignores": default ignored for others, with easy "unignore" and "show post". Which applies to quotes, too

- I, personally, use my watchlist a lot. Matthew suggested, and I believe bountied, a function to notify of "these posts quote me"

- Invite-only: This would have huge implications of all sorts. But with the current state of bitcointalk, I believe this would be better. 10k users, ever declining level.. Bitcointalk would still be there, for everyone (else). "Vouching" needed as an alternative.
Alternatively: "High costs" for registering: "Pay xy BTC or solve this riddle or write an application or provide real and verificable ID".
All of this with a "newbie"-like subforum, free for anyone!

I think it is time for a new beginning.

edit:
Reading and thinking about it..
Make it "fluid tiers". Everyone is in a tier, or level, or has points, whatever you call it. Membership time gives you points, posts give you points, but most importantly, ratings from others give you points. Or remove points. You need X points to start a thread. Y points to read the VIP subforum. Z points to post in VIP subforum.
You can only get XY points from posting alone.
You can vote mods once you have XY points.
Mods will be revoked when they have less than XY points.
Spend your points for an ad-free forum.

See, you can build almost everything around "points". Sockpuppets would have little points and little influence. Everyone has the same chance to gain points, but they need to add to the community. Trolls and spammers will quickly have negative points, thus be limited to "troll country" subforum.
And it doesn't involve bitcoins (which is highly unfair to many people) and isn't too harsh on newbies.

Ente

Hi,
I love tor and whole idea, of course I understand the problems that arouse with it. But would it be possible, in order to prevent sock puppets and so on, to show at each post if the user used tor or not? A little green or red lamp on the side would be fine... Also the same for proxies... Cuz you know you can still register at this forum using tor simply by using a web proxy + tor. I guess this would prevent a lot of scamming, sockpuppets and whatsoever. Also I love the idea of a tip function. Please don´t ban users using tor, I still want to be able to communicate anonymously on the new forum. And yes I agree, a new forum is more than due.

P.S.: I would also sign up to do security test on the new forum... I got references as a whitehat in the btc community...

Maybe link to this in the OP?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=280190

Today Viceroy was banned from the forums because he challenged the forums largest advertiser, BFL.

The admins clearly favor ad dollars over free speech.

Yes! *1000. This would be great, I will post more tomorrow, I am on my phone.

You can also discuss this @ the Bitcoin test forum. http://www.freebitcoins.pw/

 ;)

today "BFL - CEO" was banned because he offered to pay 1.1 btc for each of 7 ads in this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=284843.0

For offering a bid in the auction, without warning, the user was permanently banned.

Fwiw I think it's pathetic that the site admin treats the community with such disrespect. 


Now I know why:


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=255136.msg2719425#msg2719425


Theymos is king of the bitcoin forums and if you don't like it you can be banned too.

I dare you to challenge him.  You too will be banned.  Not by vote of a council.  Not because of a broken rule.  Only because Theymos has the ego and the ability. 


The narcissism is weighing him down.  For all our sake I hope he drowns soon.








 

I've been lurking around the bitcoin scene for some time already and feel you completely that we need something better than this forum. I decided to build a Discourse installation with some servers and try to make it the home for more serious bitcoin talk. Developer help is more than welcome and I suggest you come to http://dbtng.com, register and make yourself heard at the General forum.

I think that Discourse is and WILL be the best possible option for the second generation bitcointalk. It is currently still under heavy development but is stable and secure already. We will need more features and bitcoin-features for Dbtng for sure. We will set up a Github for plugin development as soon as we have the time. If you feel like participating, register on Dbtng.

http://dbtng.com/assets/dbtng.png

Citing your competitor in your logo is not exactly the best way to promote your service

dont like domain name.

Its distasteful as well.

We do not feel like competitors to bitcointalk. It is more like better bitcoin talk but also to remind from the roots of it all - bitcointalk.org. We acknowledge all the good things bitcointalk has made to Bitcoin community in general but as have been said on this forum a billion times, the community needs something different.
Bitcointalk will surely exist, I believe, for years to come because of its enormous user base. What we are trying to build is better discussion, maybe in more detailed topics. Surely we are not building marketplace etc - which are IMPORTANT but not good talk, I'd say.

LOL

Yea that image makes the site sound super desperate.

I don't think that Discourse is going to be the best for bitcointalk in general. Maybe for coders and such, but only for that.

DiscussBitcoin is up, but SMF is a bitch and I'm currently trying to fix a ton of bugs, including one reoccurring bug which hates the forum.

How can I help? ;D

Aren't SimpleMachines, MyBB, PhpBB, Discourse, etc... open source already?

I think I see where you are going but you do not have to join their teams, while they don't use Git per se you can "fork" them and have a BSMF (bitcoin simple machines forums) so the base is established and you don't have all the leg work of starting from scratch.  Although that throws in the issue of familiarizing yourself with a foreign codebase which could almost be written again by the time you learn what they already have. In any case it is a can of worms whatever direction the project heads in, someone needs to choose a direction and start digging the rest will fall into place.

(ramblings of a tired mind ;))

How goes 2.0?

I don't know, we haven't started it yet.  Are we ready to begin?

I'm interested in seeing where this goes and have 1 dire request for BitcoinTalk 2.0:

Please implement an open API for developers!

So much action in the community occurs right here on the site and the only API I could find was this one:
http://bitcointalkapi.appspot.com/
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=154131.0

While I appreciate the work Logik put into this solution, it never seems to be synchronized with the actual content on the forums.
This would make it easier for us (the development community) to incorporate trending news in apps and automate the posting of important information to the site.

Is this like NXT or Mastercoin where we put coins into an "exodus" address so that in the genesis block we have our share? If so, let me know if you think I qualify to be a mod or staff or whatever in the new forum. (But I don't have coins, hhehehehe.)

Ugh, Develop something new based on PHP? Ok nothing to see here.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SqsTu1kXgNg/TDIC60szv2I/AAAAAAAAC7o/0qZQgYjIHeo/s1600/nothing_to_see_here.jpg

Bump

Hey Viceroy.

Do you mean open-sourcing the development of the forum, allowing for multiple people to create the forum (using MyBB/SMF/etc...) and then closing the source once production begins; or actually creating a new forum software?


Why would you want to reinvent the wheel when you can use MyBB or SMF... forum software that has proven to be stable and powers huge communities including BitcoinTalk?

I am asking not out of sarcasm, but out of questioning...

Is there something that the newly developed forum would do better than current solutions?
What would the forum do greater, or focus on a larger scale, that would make the forum software better in general or for certain niches?

Maybe if we developed it with Python it wouldn't be such a bad idea, but there are so many PHP forums out and there have been for many. I'm sincerely wondering what the point is.

A new forum is definitely needed.  This place is a dump, IMO (no offense to legit, honest members, no seriously, i mean no offense.  You legit, honest, professional members should not be offended by this post, and will probably agree) and the fact that this was one of the very first forums I came across when I was introduced to bitcoin, means that this forum should be representing bitcoin better and instead is representing bitcoin as a whole very poorly.  It definitely lacks professionalism on a massive scale. Scammers and hackers everywhere apparently, there is clearly illegal activity going on here, and the poll suggests it even more.  If this forum is allowing illegal activities I'm pretty much done coming here effective immediately.  While there is a lot of positive going on here, there's a lot of dirt.  Definitely not intending to offend anyone, but the truth is the truth, and that is the vibe I got from this forum pretty much as soon as I joined it.  I've made a few posts here, and I regret it quite honestly.  Not because I didn't get a positive outcome from my posts, but mostly due to the amount of dishonesty going on around here.  At first glance, coming to this forum tells an average user that bitcoin is a complete waste of time.  As for the demeanor of certain members of this community... well, there's nothing to say.  Pick a post, and read it.  These members are everywhere.  The more I read some of the conversations that go on here, the less I want to visit this forum.  Silk Road had non-illegal activity going on there, and the innocent legit members of silk road got severely screwed by the illegal activity involved around silk road.  This concept, IMO, is no different for this website, whether the website is directly involved in such activities or not.  It shows a major flaw in the system, and if the mods/owners of this site don't care about the illegal activities that its members are taking part in, then this site is going to either go down quick, or be tainted for any positive bitcoin development in the future.  The new silk road of bitcoin?  Yeah I'm out of here.

If I get any sort of response like "Stop visiting if you dont like it GTFO noob, why are u here if u dont want to visit"  etc etc is only proving my point.

Thank you and have a great day.

Check this post out... this is EXACTLY the asshole problem we have.  Here's a perfectly legitimate request by a member who asks that a developer stop posting in an 800 page 4 year old thread and make a new thread.  The response?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.msg8036572#msg8036572

What ever happened to common courtesy.  Is politeness asking too much?

Whatever it was, the post was deleted.

Ente