Bitcoin Forum

So I was reading a interesting thread yesterday about theymos spending 1.5 million dollars on the new forum.

Please tell me what your expectations are. Are you excited nervous what new features are you looking for ?

My opinion is this forum is a huge part of bitcoin in general and I really cant wait for this new software.

Can't imagine spending $1.5 million for the new forum? But it worth it! There are almost all of bitcoin users who are joining this forum! No matter newbie or expert, they are getting a lot of info from here!

I agree with you 100 percent this forum was the stepping stone for me. There is a wealth of information on here for newbies and experts.

a new one at a new url or a replacement for this one?

My expectation for a mill and a half is that the forum sucks my dick everytime I log on and after I make a log it wipes my ass too.

http://www.intertech.com/Blog/13-expensive-software-products/

I'll believe it when I see it...    I know it's been a long time coming and surrounded by a lot of controversy after theymos spent $1.5 million of forum donations on it. Not to mention all the secrecy and the fact that it was supposed to be done by now (if I remember correctly).

You haven't given any links towards any announcement, so shall we expect one???
Also, is there any ETA for the release of the new $1.5m BTCTalk forum???

Seems like a lot of money to spend on a forum but I'm still looking forward to the change over and more functionality (avatars etc). Be good if satoshi came back to bless the new forum :)

They said in the development google doc that they would have the old urls match the new forum (automatically redirect and link) at least for a while, probably after a year they will disable this as google is finished the indexing and people are fully used to the new forum. Hopefully there will be better features like a redeveloped trust system and maybe built in escrow, address signing login, 2fa... the list goes on and on

There is already a long thread about the new forum software, search and ye shall find. I remember coming across that thread while checking out bitcointa.lk (https://bitcointa.lk) one time.

EDIT: Here you go- https://bitcointa.lk/threads/questions-to-theymos-about-the-1-000-000-forum-software-project.256309/ (https://bitcointa.lk/threads/questions-to-theymos-about-the-1-000-000-forum-software-project.256309/)

it would be nice to see the new forum sooner. does the 1.5 million dollar which is spent on the new forum came from the forum advertisements or donations?

there is something wrong with the https secure connection for these links

$1.5 million?!  Holy cow, I had now idea 1) forum software could be so expensive and 2) this forum was capable of raising that kind of funding.  Looking forward to the unveiling!

Mostly donations. I think advertisements were mainly used to pay moderators but blance maybe there.


Bitcointa.lk is good site and IMHO, is secure. Go at your own risk!

   -MZ

It better have the greatest DDoS protection ever. I also hope that all this information will be transferred to the new website and hopefully no one will have to restart as newbies again.

Password won't be moved to new forum AFAIK. You will get an email to reset your password. Password log will be full of resets when new forum come. ;D

   -MZ

Did i really read that 1.5 million dollars?
A freaking forum worth $1.5 mil ?
Wow!
That would be amazing

That's a weird exception expectation for forum software dude.  Makes me wonder what you'd expect a sexbot to do.   Facilitate intelligent conversation?  ;)

Well I certainly wouldn't expect Bitcointalk to "facilitate intelligent conversation". That hasn't happened here since early 2011. With $1.5 mil spent they should buy 50 great computers and give them away as a promotion. They would still have enough money left to hire 12 of the most talented software engineers from Google, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ebay and Bloomberg L.P. to work exclusively on the forum for a year. Um yeah,  I expect some pretty fucking amazing things from this software.

It's been posted there are only four full time coders working on the project.  So I guess each of them is three times better than the best from the software companies you listed.  :)

If they were paid $187,500 a year for two years ($1.5m) that's $50k a year more than the highest paid software engineer at the best paying companies that I listed. I hope he's getting full rights to the software and it's closed source so he can recoup some of that overpriced talent through software sales.

https://github.com/epochtalk. Published under MIT license.

Even if the software turns out to be amazing, who's going to maintain it? Proprietary forum software developed by a temporary association of overpriced devs is a security disaster waiting to happen. Im pretty sure this will also prove why companies usually dont put inexperienced ~18 year olds in charge of large software development projects

I give it 3 to 6 months before this 1.5M software is dumped in favor of some standard platform.

Well then I truly don't understand the expense. That makes vBulletin 5 Connect + Mobile Suite Bundle seem like a bargain.

Normally I do not like new upgrades but for this one, I'm actually excited. It will take time to learn about everything but to be honest I don't like change. I'm used to this one and I don't think 1.5million dollars to make a new forum is necessary.

It's a general purpose forum that's intended to compete with others. Once the theme engine is in place, we'll be able to get more involvement from the public. For now, you can check out the source. On top of that a beta is being evaluated with the staff at this point so please sit tight.

That's exactly what happens in even the biggest companies (including Google). You make something proprietry, it works okay for a year or two, then the off the shelf systems start overtaking it. Then - because you didn't learn last time - you start planning the next proprietry system.

Actually, it's not proprietary. It's open source and built on open standards. Any issues with that can go on our github: https://github.com/epochtalk/epochtalk

Hey wangbus, any screenshots of the software in action?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bHlm4NQkSzaBTT5tLIqQBmV92wSsbdOX5r-dRR9Dgg0/edit?usp=sharing (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bHlm4NQkSzaBTT5tLIqQBmV92wSsbdOX5r-dRR9Dgg0/edit?usp=sharing)Yup

There were a few posted in this forum a few weeks back. Looks wise it hasn't changed that much. As far as theme design, there will be one for this forum done at some point. Please be patient as a lot of data migration and import issues are taken care of.

Fuck... no shit here. This is a disaster from every single aspect you could look at it. I'm glad we paid so much for something that, years later, doesn't even have basic working features. Then the ongoing maintenance, bug fixing, etc... is going to be non-existent. Unless it's so amazing and so much better than everything else out there, the open source community isn't going to keep it updated worth a shit, in favor of other existing companies products, so it will languish and eventually be so security bug ridden that only insane people will use it.

What a fucking waste of 1,500,000 dollars.

Personally, I hope the new forum software is delayed for some time...

It's nice having the only avatar in most threads.  :)  Makes it easier to locate my post.

What?  Me selfish????   :P

For 1.5 million dollars it better be good. Think that most large companies don't even have websites that cost 1.5 million to make. So I am pretty excited for what is to come with the changes!

I disagree.

i think it wont happen. easy money. classic.

... And it is passed another month (from their deadline February 2015). What do you think guys, will the new forum software be finished before the end of April? I think yes and you?

Why are you thinking that ? This is not a game or a guess...
Looking at current development status (github etc..), it's unlikely that epochtalk will be finished before the end of April !

NB : Don't ask me when, I don't have any ETA or other infos

It was just my personal opinion and I don't care much if the forum will not be released by the end of April or end of 2015, and I will not ask you when it will be released (don't worry).

If you think it will be done before the end of 2015, you are crazy. 2016 isn't looking too hot, either.

I'm not sure why people care so much about a missed guestimate from 8 months ago. Its done when its done. Why does it matter? This probably isn't one of those things that you want rushed, so theres no point in getting butthurt over a missed expected finish date. Or would you rather we use a shoddy not complete forum software full of bugs and security holes.


What makes you think that? Have you been beta testing it and seen the progress being made? What are you basing your guess on?

Looking forward to the new forum and there seems to be people testing it now so shouldn't be too long hopefully. I normally expect a project of this size should be available within the next 6 months the beta stage is nice to see is it only selected members who can test it?

I've just read two threads regarding the "$1.5 million forum software" that has yet to be released and we, as Bitcointalkg users, are the ones who's gonna be using it. Can't wait what's in store for us bitcoiners! :D


Well we don't need to be in a hurry though. The developers might as well do their best to fix the bugs and other security issues rather than to rush the work and deliver it to the deadline. You don't want the $1.5m to be spent on rubbish, do you?  ;D

I don't care about the deadline, I am happy with how the forum is currently, but the upgrade would be nice to get earlier, needs a change of design quick. I'd rather have it released 100% completed and bug tested instead of some buggy forum which can get hacked.

I've been away from the forums for a while. I take it the deadline hasn't been changed since? Has anything been announced yet, even?

My assumption is it will be released in 1-3 months. Slickage staff said beta for staff will be in near future.

"assumption" ?!?
It won't be released in 1-3 months...
-> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=984554.msg10939134#msg10939134

You maybe right. I read somewhere that they have spread the source code to multiple repositories, not just one and also I got such "assumption" when I saw few updates.

Will it come this month ?? I'm not really ready for it  ;D i think it will be build from diamonds or something equal to 1.5 M $
we can still wait for another month  ::) .

Kind Of Respect ,
Bitcoin Boy .

Matthew is that you? ::)  lol

Well, I think spending 1,5 million $ on an online forum is too much... Honestly
You could shoot a super professional hollywood movie (well, nothing like Harry Potter, Transformers etc)
You could hire a game developer team and develop an AAA game
You could buy an office to let the staff work togheter
But spending 1,5 mil $ on a forum? What can you get? It will probably just be a hardware upgrade and/or a whole new forum script, but that doesnt cost over a million $?
The forum is great as it is, its perfect! Its one lf the biggest forums in the internet. People are enganging in the forum like crazy. The whole system works perfectly toghether.
Much money doesnt mean good quality. Look at google, it didnt take the developers a cent to spend on the development, however its the best site on earth.

I think the forum should stay how it is right now, maybe changing/fixing some small things on the forum (adding more features, some small design implements, MORE EMOJIS!)

It is hard in SMF(current forum software) and that's why we need new forum software. Epochtalk is it's name.

Wooo, that means a lot, it seems that we probably need a detail list about funding if we have the right to ask.

Some of your estimated are quite far off, but in my opinion, your point is kind of right. A million and a half dollars seems like way too much, but this has been discussed plenty before already and there is nothing we can do about it. I am also quite sure that it did take Google money to get to where it is now :P. I also would not call it the best site on Earth. A forum is also not that easy to make. As to if it is perfect in its current state.... meh, that is up for debate.

The state now is perfect, at least for me. My internet connection isnt the fastest on earth, so it would take me ages to load a forum with tons of images/design on every page. Honestly, signature campaigns are one of the most important factors to bring people to post here on the forum - thats what actually keeps the forum alive. There other bitcoin forums out there that look much better than this forum, but still hasnt got nearly as much users as this one.
The signature thing is great, it lets users make money while posting and lets companies/website advertise on the forum. New users register ln this forum because of this advantage

This concerns me a lot.

so there are $100k left for the new forum. that is a realistic amount for new software ;)

Why is everyone in such a rush for this new forum anyways? No matter what a chunk of users will be complaining either way I guess. Personally I am fine with just using the forums as-is  ;)

Its not about the rush, its about being fooled over and over with this forum's special 2weeks^TM politics.

I couldnt care less about the new forum now that avatars are back up tho.

PS: but i want Gggiiiifffssss! :'(

The amount spent for the new forum software is not too much (in my honest opinion).




If with Gggiiiifffssss you are meaning .gif files (as avatar) I do not think it will be enabled in the new forum software. However what do you think guys ... will be created (for first) the new forum software or will 'arrive' the block reward halving (always for first)?

Signature deals is one thing that can get people interested in bitcoin, and will often be the only way that many bitcoin small businesses can afford to advertise their business. The forum benefits because it gets additional impressions for the advertisements that it sells so the forum ads are worth more.

Any software project should be expected to have delays, especially one that is going to be used for hundreds of thousands of users.

No-one without an ad-sig would ever back this statement up (apart from sock-puppet accounts created by ad-sig posters of course).

Ad-sigs have *ruined* this forum and if used in the new forum will ruin it to.

People should note the sigs of long-time forum members such as @DannyHamilton.

Well I would hope you would agree that Bitcoin is based on free market economics. I believe that the reason Bitcoin was created was to allow commerce to take place more freely without relying on the banking system (which is very centralized).

Without signature advertising then I don't see any cost efficient way for a small business to advertise. The last time that the forum auctioned forum ads (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1011790.msg11130360#msg11130360) each spot cost 2.9 BTC for (at most) a 10 day period. That works out to roughly $1,900 per month at the very minimum. Do you think that many small businesses can afford that large of marketing costs?

My response to my above question is that they cannot. The result of this is that without paid signatures, small businesses would have difficulty advertising their goods and services, and as a result would not be able to grow. If small businesses are unable to grow, then larger businesses will be able to command a larger share of their market and will become more centralized which is not what Bitcoin is all about.

I can say that forum ads was one major thing that got me involved and interested in/with bitcoin (I have had mild interest in both bitcoin and Bitcoin over the years, however never really took the time to buy any or to really understand hot it works until I joined the forum), and once I started posting (with a paid signature ad), I was able to learn more about Bitcoin (notice the little/big "b" in this paragraph and throughout), although I admit that I would probably be considered who is far from an expert regarding most of the technicalities behind Bitcoin.

Has paid signature advertising done some harm to the forum? Yes, absolutely. Paid signatures create the incentives to spam the forum with useless posts. This however is being dealt with by BadBear who is being aggressive in banning people who make insubstantial posts; it is a work in progress. People will also post "fluffed" up posts that have very little contributory value, if they do it enough then they will likely also get banned. The fact that a lot of people have been banned for making insubstantial posts with a paid advertisement has been very public and I suspect that as a result others are going to be more hesitant to go around making useless posts, and will either abandon their account(s), sell their account(s), or put more effort into their posts.

Does the good outweigh the bad for paid signatures? I think so. Any community that has grown to be as large as the bitcointalk community has grown to be is bound to have a spam problem. I would speculate that we would still have a small amount (maybe ~10-20%) of the shitposts that we have today even if paid signatures were banned.

I disagree.
I am maybe just a bit biased considering I have a signature.
But look at how large primedice got, and how large bit-x is getting. This is the free market, so on the forum, the best companies will be able to afford advertising and push out all the scams from the mass advertising. Companies and most users will probably support the sig campaigns.

There are a lot of proposals about how to handle paid signature advertising that are being worked on, the issue doesn't really pertain to the new forum software, but more to forum policy. Sure something in the new forum software might help limit the damage done by people abusing paid advertising signatures, but for the most part, its going to come down to making feasible and reasonable changes. I have no stake in paid advertising signatures, but most can agree that if spam isn't a factor, then paid advertising signatures are a neat idea that gives some people a bit of coin to spend.

There are a lot of interesting spam reducing measures bouncing around. By the time the new forum software comes, I'd hope that we have implemented some new policies to cut down on spam. Its getting out of hand.

Paid signatures suck and are designed to create spammers. The worst ones are the mining companies. Not only are the ads spamming the forum but the companies are stealing from people. Are there any mining companies left that have not robbed their customers? I don't know of one.

On the other hand, if you completely stop advert spammers this forum might not have many regular members left. The number of regular, long time, members posting daily compared to 2012 is greatly reduced. I don't just mean the Clipse, PatrickHarnett, Goat types either. I expect them to be gone. Members that I've talked to for years have either vaporized or post very infrequently.

That's the way most online forums are.  Rarely do you see users who maintain a high level of involvement year after year after year; either they tire of the forum or of whatever hobby that forum is supporting.  This is hardly the fault of signature campaigns.

I would say my opinion is biased as well, since I participate in a sig campaign, but it's no more biased that those who don't participate and don't like it.  I actually see more spammy posts/posts that make no sense/bad google translation posts from people without ad signatures than those with.

Support the little guy, both advertiser and avertisee, keep paid signature campaigns around.

When a forum is properly curated and moderated, you see people sticking around for a long time. When you have a free-for-all like you have here, the trolls and other anti-social people are allowed to run rampant and it chases away the intelligent people that are here for proper discourse. It's not a surprise and happens all the time with unmoderated or lightly moderated forums. Without moderation, a forum will decend to the lowest common denominator, which is that of the trolls and anti-social element and that's exactly what we've seen here.

The problem is keeping a good moderator staff that has the ability to fairly and more importantly CONSITENTLY moderate a forum. Right now, this forum lacks any sort of real moderation and the moderation staff are inconsistent in their applications of what few rules there actually are. So if you want a forum that's useful and maintains users for a length of time, you need to a) start moderating heavily and properly and b) get a good moderation staff. Both of those things are incredibly difficult to do, unfortunately and even money can't buy a good, consistent staff. That takes time to build.

I have to wonder if the sheer volume of posts this forum receives has something to do with the level of moderation.  There's like 20+ pages of new posts every 30 minutes, it must be difficult to review every thread, not to mention every individual post.

The posts you're talking about are all in altcoins, mining, marketplace and gambling. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=unread

Those sections are almost not moderated at all. The altcoin section is a little better now than it used to be. A couple of years ago there were death threats and all kinds of shit happening in altcoins.

No need to wonder, Mikestang, I'll tell you.
Accounts are being farmed by budding bitcoin entrepreneurs. These accounts have to make a certain number of posts, over a certain period of time, before they become "Full Member Accounts."
Needles to say, account farmers generate some volume.

Once these accounts are ready for the market, they are sold, right on this forum, in Auctions or Digital Goods sections, to their proud new owners.
"Why would anyone buy an account, when they could make one for free?" you must be asking right about now. Lolno, you're not. You know why it's done - to make money from ad campaigns. Yeah, those farmed accounts just keep on giving.

So now you don't have to wonder about where all the spam comes from - it's bought and paid for :)

Then it seems to me the obvious solution is to ban account sales, not advertising campaigns.

I have wondered why accounts are permitted to be sold since I joined here, especially ones with trust.  Trust must be earned, not purchased.  I would support banning account sales 100%, I do not see how that contributes to our community at all.

Speaking of trust, as of this post I do not see trust ratings displayed any more.  New change?

TerminatorXL and I discussed this in length, I'd recommend reading: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1038547.0

the last couple pages especially, some misunderstandings made the first couple pages a bit confrontational.

Trust is only shown in some of the subs (where trading between members happens, I think). As far as account sales, yeah, that's a jaw-dropper, but not likely to change. I started a thread about it in the Meta section, and quickly got some red trust (later removed) from an account dealer who happens to be on default trust. <- obligatory dig.

Bitcointalk is a forum about money and anonymity, without an official set of rules. A recipe for banana republic-style corruption, and the reason why law became a thing in the first place.

Oh, don't talk about the rule of law here. These people like to imagine a world of anarchy where they can run naked in the streets smoking a joint (Until they get ripped off, of course. Then they run to the SEC, FTC or police like a bunch of conservative republicans at a country club.)

I wouldn't mind if the signature campaigns are banned in the new upcoming forum. Though i've one in my profile too but it's because it's good earning something than nothing . But some people really go overboard with these. I think if new forum has it , there should be a limit of like 100 posts maximum allowed to be paid by a campaign manager or so . IT will decrease the spam rate .

Better to enforce rules on campaign managers.

It's better to have signatures turned off by default and the user would have to explicitly turn them on if they wanted to see all that junk.

First thing I do when I sign up for a forum is turn off signatures.

I disagree. People put useful things in their signatures too like PGP key, Bitcoin address etc... Signature should be enabled by default. If you don't like specific signatures, hopefully, what BadBear suggested will be added.

I'm not denying that people put useful things in their signatures. But there's no need to enable them by default. You can view a persons signature from their profile page. There's absolutely no information in a signature that is needed to be displayed every post. It's purely a vanity move (or advertising). Any information that is important in a signature can be viewed from the profile page when it's needed.

For those people that like to see signatures, they could enable them. There's no reason to have signatures enabled by default and it would solve the divide between those who don't want advertising in signatures and those who do... that way, you can have whatever you want in a signature and only those people that decide they want to be subjected to them will be.

It would be much easier to just make a rule that forum signatures cannot include trade or promotion, or something like that.

Now people are starting to spam using their avatars as well.   :-\

But how many advertisers are going to pay for signature space on a forum that defaults to not displaying signatures?  I think that would effectively kill signature ads.

1.5 million is overkill. You could spend maybe 200k and fully upgrade an existing open source forum software.

So what? It's not the forums job to subject every single person to annoying signature ads. It's the difference between opt-in and opt-out advertising. If you are for opt-out advertising, you are likely a spammer or just an asshole. All advertising should be opt-in, which is what making signatures default to off would be.

I don't want to constantly be advertised to, which is why I turn off signatures. I shouldn't have to turn off signatures to prevent that. I should have to turn ON signatures if I want to receive that kind of junk mail. Otherwise, any important information that might be found in the signature, I can find on the users profile page just as easily, when and if I need it.

I don't get it, didn't someone say that the demo/beta version of the new forum was going to be released "very very soon" in February?  Has there any updates since then?  I'm pretty bad at searching so I would appreciate it if someone could send me a direct link if there is a topic specifically for updates.

You could always build the source.

https://github.com/epochtalk (https://github.com/epochtalk)

Hello , I think its still not well designed , and some links are not working , they still developing it
and will prefer not to install it , its very complicated and take a lot of time , but I will be ready to
help anyone installing it .

Bitcoin Boy .

I'm excited to see it fully developed, it should be a game-changer once released.

Excited yes , but patient not really  :'( It's being two months now since I was out the forums , I thought when I will comeback I will find new security and new design and all of the new cool stuff . but when I came back , forum went down and now it's ON again  :-\ any decisions has been made about this new forum on the last couple of months ?

I had some inner feeling, that this thread will be active little bit again after recent hack. really looking forward for new forum..

I don't really see this excitement among members.
Unfortunately, those coins could have been spent in a better way i think.

Disclaimer: i really like SMF. I don't want to change this.

Note:only thing i'd change is, the hashing of secret answers, maybe a bit more won't be bad for the security.

I lie SMF, I am really used to it, and I am very used to it. I have been on this account for 40 days, which is 960 hours. I do admit the forum is looking very old and in my opinion not the prettiest. I would definitely have to get used to it, but I would rather spend a couple hours getting uesd to it then having to still use the current version.

We should also think about the security (in the first place)... the 'design' is a secondary thing. I also like SMF but (why not) I will continue to use the forum (with the new *software) but they should improve the security and use a secure inter. service provider , or host the forum on an 'home-made' strong build server.

Security is definitely a top priority with the forum. Probably ahead of the design for me as well. Since this forum is about bitcoin, and if any accounts related to bitcoin are compromised, money could be stolen, and due to the irreversible nature of bitcoin, any stolen money is completely gone with no chance of recovery.

I would third that.  In fact, I would much rather prefer this forum goes through a big security upgrade (hello, we need 2FA???) instead of upgrading the design and features.  With the new forum, the security might even be worse...

Security is first priority, features are second priority, and design is third. Security has to be top notch, because we transfer money here and we do high value irreversible transactions. 2FA should definitely be here by now, its a bit late for that.

This, a 2FA will improve the forum 100 times... I do not know why they don't integrate it. I think the admin should add it absolutely in the new forum software (epochtalk).




Security is the unique importan thing in my opinion, if there is a good security the design is really easy to do...

I know it's old, but l like using this forum software more than the more up to date cryptocointalk software. This software is easier on the eyes and I like the layout better.

I am sure the new forum will have custom themes or layouts. I would be very surprised to find that it doesn't considering how much this is costing.  ::)

Pure bullshit. No way some 20 YO dude, who owes nothing to nobody here spent all that money on the forum.
What he did was funnel the money from his left pocket to his right. :D
Lets not be stupid here. 1.5M for a forum is absurd and extremely unlikely, dare I say, impossible. Unless of course you're a fool and got taken for that money by a con-man forum building company! :D :) :D

Anyway...

The new forum cost a few k, maybe 10-100k and even at that it better be gold plated and come with blowjobs like an earlier poster mentioned.

For real though, get real.. most of that money ended up in the pocket of one young rich dude who was in the right place at the right time.

While 1.5M seems like quite a bit, when you have a team of 10 people employed for 2 years (or however long it takes) + years of future support, it doesn't seem like very much. Theymos is a pretty bright guy, I have a hard time thinking Slickage tricked him. I fail to see how people who haven't seen the work done behind the scenes can even speculate as to the costs. I don't know if the forum software is going to be worth $1.5M, but how could anyone possibly speculate without seeing a finished product? Bust Theymos' balls and start burning things when and if we see an inferior end product. I will be happy to join you  :)

Something that people fail to realize, is that Theymos wouldn't have to funnel forum funds. With the exception of donator funds which were explicitly said to be going towards new forum software, Theymos could probably legally just take Bitcointalk's funds if he wanted them. Why sneak around and slowly steal forum funds when you could just do it all at once without any repercussions?

Regarding the UI discussion, UI work hasn't started yet. If you see any nasty looking screenshots of epochtalk, thats because its just placeholders at this point. There are UI guys who will be working with everyone to design aesthetically pleasing theme(s). The backend work is very complicated, vast improvements are being added, and some pivotal features that aren't available in any current forum software.

I dont think Im failing to realize anything bud. I mean, sure it could have cost 1.5M with 10 people full time for a year or two but im sure even I who has zero experience in building sites, or forums could have hired a team to build it and it would have cost a fraction of the price. I mean seriously.. I know people who have built websites before, ma of them and I never heard about any costing crazy amounts.

Anyway. I guess only time will tell, but Im betting on most of that money going into his pockets and not into the forum.

Again, $1.5m may sound like a lot, but split amongst a team of people over years, it really isn't. Building epochtalk is really a colossal task. Its not like designing a website, its building a multifaceted and interactive software to compete and surpass other forum softwares in terms of usability. The reason Bitcointalk hasn't updated its SMF version in forever, is because so many custom add ons are already in place just to make this forum usable, updating and then fixing compatibility would take thousands of hours. SMF is so broken, without Theymos' custom patches, Bitcointalk wouldn't be able to handle nearly as many people as it has right now. Stop thinking about the cost to build something like SMF, Epochtalk will be on a different level.

The backend of Bitcointalk is pathetic. The moderator tools are patched together, the admin tools are patched together, user functionality is at a minimum, there isn't integrated PGP, there isn't integrated Bitcoin message signing, there aren't integrated market tools, you can't delete anything because SMF is single threaded, the entire system is archaic and slow, indexing is slow, banning users is hugely time consuming and complicated, usergroup permissions are messed up. And thats just what I could think of off the top of my head. It would probably cost $100k to have a team of people build everything we need on top of SMF, but again we would face the issue of what to do when its time to upgrade something. The goal is to have a new software that can easily be upgraded and expanded upon whenever we need.

As a member here, this forum seems fine enough. People are happy to complain about avatars or the trust system or whatever minor changes they would like, but the forums is in dire need of a complete overhaul. Is $1.5m too much, perhaps, but if we get $1.5m worth of forum then its money well spent.

I tend to agree with this. theymos is probably already quite well off from being an early adopter anyway but if he wanted more money he could just start paying himself a bigger wage out of the forum funds and ad revenue (and theymos actually gets much less than many of the other mods from the monthly mod payments). People just like the most sexiest or controversial conspiracies as they're always more exciting for the outside accusers but often completely wrong or based on half-truths and circumstantial evidence at best.

The closed beta went down due to the server issues in the past weeks. Things are moving along though. Again, look at our repo's on the Githubs if you want to see our progress. Make some issues, etc etc.

I wonder that, is the new forum software installed or not? Today I found that there are few minutes of downtime (for me) but I then able to access.
BTW, 1.5 million dollars is no longer just 5067 bitcoin as stated in the subject. It is about 6485 bitcoins now! That is, we need ~130 VIP donors to get the new forum!

There is private beta going on but I don't think downtime(you got) was because of it. BTW, if you are getting 503 error, it is probably due to your fast browsing.


Forum money also depend on ads. So your statement is wrong.