Bitcoin Forum

Yea there are a bunch of telegram bots for this but why forum itself cannot have this feature? ^{please provide me with a link to the thread if this was discussed before}

1) You receive a notification into your messages page first
https://i.imgur.com/uK8DuMt.png

2) "Alerts" section on my messages page
https://i.imgur.com/WzYaqCu.png

3) And something like this
https://i.imgur.com/vn02WWJ.png

Wouldn't that be helpful?

There are lots of discussion related to this.

Due to some of these features cannot be implemented on the current forum software or not that prioritize, idk. Some members made their very own contribution (telegram bots notifications, etc. which you mentioned) just to deliver this lacking features.

Btw there's a message alert when you receive a pm, just check the "show pop up when you receive new messages"

There used to be a bot (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5023605.0) that would automatically send PMs to people when criteria was met, including options to notify you when you were quoted, or when you were mentioned. The bot hasn't been online since the end of 2019, and hasn't posted any notifications since May 2019, presumably because the VPS bill stopped getting paid.

The person who created the bot, Piggy (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=188198) hasn't posted since July 2019, and was last online about a year ago. I am guessing he either lost interest in the forum, or is taking an extended break.

Perhaps this forum software is too old to support such features?

I am still a little comfortable with the telegram bots. The suggested feature would definitely make me forget or skip important PMs thinking they are just notifications  :D
Another advantage about the bots is that the updates are real time unlike the forum where you first have to refresh in order to see a new message notification.

Yes, there is. I meant that the notification alerts would also come to the same page.

Yeah, but who needs a bot when you can implement it onto the forum. Looks like there is a reason why the forum can't have it.

This one makes sense :D But anyways better than missing it.

I would rather prefer a direct link to alert page in blue bar than going through 'My messages'. But I get the gist.

Theymos appears to prefer that forum members release their own userscripts to implement additional forum features. Implementing additional features directly on the forum means there is the potential for additional security risks.

I just click or tap the [new] on the topics that I have previously replied and just check if I get quoted by other users, it is much faster to do that because if you are not quoted then you can just go back and search for another or click another [new].

Maybe it's because of the software that the forum used that feature like that can't be implemented on this forum. I also prefer forum user to make their own userscripts. Due to the software used in the forum that it may cause security risk. Yes, it would be good to have feature like thay but I would like it to be a notification rather than message as you may think that a DM would be a notification message when you are quoted.

I think it's not appropriate if we put this notification into a message tab its better if we create additional notifications right there side by my messages also it might be spam on your messages too if you put it there. Just my recommendation too. I guess sometimes mostly us didn't watch too many notifications because it's just about the quote. Also, email notification on the forum is enough for me I guess.

Yes, I totally agree with that. Most forums have a similar system and I am surprised that this one does not have one. I'm surprised it's for a security issue as @Quickseller comments but I suppose there is some reason like that.

Good feature to have but it is impossible to implement with the existing software and we already have lot of telegram and notification bot then why we need to use resources from the forum?

Even myself subscribed to 3 telegram bots and one notification feature.

This thread can be considered similar to yours so I'm mentioning it for you.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5264374.0

Basically, the thread is about not using telegram anymore and the OP there resulted in using the LoyceV notification bot, which is ideal as well.
Maybe after every notification, use a bot to message you directly using a bot account in the forum or something? To let you see a Message.

Can't you afford high-end software security engineers when you hold hundreds of bitcoins :/

Hopefully, Epoch talk will have it. I will go for LoyceV's creation in this case. Thanks for the feedbacks and suggestions ya'll.

Yeah, it would be helpful, though I believe it was one of the features being worked on for the new forum software.

Any idea when the new software will be implemented? I don't go almost for that section but I see that the threads there started 7 years ago.

It's not that I'm too expectant about the new software either as some things could be improved, like what is talked about in this thread, but I've seen software changes in other forums that I didn't like.

Thanks for reminding me that I was planning on activating LoyceV's bot a long time ago but forgot to bookmark the thread so I forgot about it. I don't use Telegram and ever since Piggy's bot stopped working I have been without a notification service. 

Are you happy with how LoyceV's bot works?
Do all quotes and mentions get recorded or does it miss the occasional one or two? 

I don't think anyone will work on this old forum software with making any changes like notifications and alerts, but we may see this in new Epochtalk forum if it ever comes out.

Meanwhile you can use only one telegram bot for all notifications Yet Another BitcoinTalk Notification BOT (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5248878.0), made by TryNinja, and you will get all notifications about mentions, merits, topics, etc.
@BTTSuperNotifier_bot (https://t.me/BTTSuperNotifier_bot)

I checked 10,000 posts yesterday, and I missed 1 (0.01%). I'm troubleshooting :)

Anytime you introduce new functionality, there is the possibility it will be exploited. Years ago, the ability to upload an avatar was exploited and said exploit was used to hack the forum. There are many forum members who have the ability to and are willing to create user scripts that will give the functionality that forum users want, and these user scripts will not present the same potential security risks.

See my above comment.

I signed up for it yesterday to see how it works. I am just glad I don't have to mess with Telegram just to get notified when someone quotes or mentions me on the forum.

You mean a manual quote like the one above without pressing the quote button? I removed your name from the quoted text to not trigger the scrapper. I assume a quote like that wont be picked up. Very few people quote posts like that, so I don't consider it an issue. 

Nope. I have no idea what stage it's at but I'm sure theymos is busy working on it. I guess it's been a bit of a running joke that it's 'coming soon' though haha. Probably not a good idea releasing it until it's watertight though. To be honest, I kinda like this board as dated as it is. Change is always jarring when you've been used to something for so long.

Me too, I'd hate to see all user-scripts (my own and from other users) broken because of a forum upgrade. If would probably take me months to update everything, and I'd probably abandon several of my old projects.

If all the IDs in the HTML remain constant, moving to the new forum software shouldn’t break most scrapers.

If your code is structured in a way such that each function does a single task, it shouldn’t be terribly difficult to update scripts based on the new forum software.

Except new forum software rarely keeps IDs constant because each forum engine has a completely different way of rendering things.

Imagine if this forum moves to some JavaScript based framework like Invision, where the pages and content is loaded dynamically. Then we (yes we, I also have scripts) have to somehow patch our scripts to call the JS functions that return the items we want to scrape and it's too much legwork when all you had to do before was search for HTML tags.

I don’t know if these things still stand, as last time I took a quick-peak into it was a couple of years ago, but at the time, at least on Cryptos-Currencies test site, I seemed to encounter the following:


I know there are a set of intended APIs for those that want to retrieve information from the site. Wondering if that will be the mandatory path, as opposed to scraping, due to things as the above.

I haven't looked at the new forum software in depth, but I can assure you that it does not use JS based frameworks on the front end. The new forum software ultimately will have a div that displays the post content, just as the current SMF forum software does.

The API allows someone to query posts by user (https://github.com/epochtalk/epochtalk/wiki/Epochtalk-API-Documentation#page-by-user) and by thread (https://github.com/epochtalk/epochtalk/wiki/Epochtalk-API-Documentation#page-by-thread). The API documentation is somewhat confusing, but it appears both the username and thread are strings, as opposed to both being ints currently. I haven't looked deeply at the code to see how a thread ID is created.

False. It does not render shit without client-side JS.

That is surprising. I guess that means those who want to avoid using JS will have to use the API, or a framework that leverages the API.

All of your scripts are useful, it may take a long time for you, but I'm sure you will get a lot of help if you speak up on this forum. Your idea is there and updating will be easier, right?

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I am quite surprised that most of you have knowledge of this field.

I just have a dumb question, will all the data on this forum be stored and used on the new forum? And more importantly, the current domain?

When you migrate a DB from one environment to another, the objective is normally to preserve all the historical data. There may be issues with some of the datatypes stored, or the actual exploitation of that data through the new interface, but generally, especially of the software is custom tailored software, one will be aiming at keeping it all. The domain should remain in place, unless someone decides to simply use it to redirect to a new branding domain.

I hadn’t bothered to look for the API before, and It should probably be accompanied with an explanation on how identifiers are created/interpreted to get a clearer picture. The API’s documentation is from 2016 (last update), so I wonder just how up-to-date it is with all the evolutionary changed made since then.

That's a very big if :P It's not :(
I usually copy/paste/edit something into something else. A modular approach (with a database!) from the start would have been much better, but it's slightly late for that now.

An API instead of "manually" checking HTML would make my life easier again :)