AFAICT, BitMessage is seriously flawed in several ways, so I don't expect it to exist in the long-term (in its current form, at least). So I don't want to promote its use.

Fixing compromised accounts is pretty much my lowest priority. It's very time-consuming to do the necessary identity verification, and it's not time-sensitive once the account is banned.

Very long unbroken words have spaces inserted into them so that they don't make your post too wide. You can avoid this by putting the text into [code] or, if you're OK with having your entire post scroll horizontally, [nobbc].

Elizabeth won. Congratulations to her, and thanks to everyone who voted! This isn't a particularly important position IMO, but the election sure was a lot of fun. I expected this to be a drama-filled popularity contest, but it was actually more like a real political race with some actual debate and campaigning. The second debate was especially interesting: it's great that we have so many intelligent and enthusiastic bitcoiners! Ben Davenport stuck out as a particularly good candidate -- I hope he runs for the next Foundation election or becomes involved in some other big Bitcoin organization. Elizabeth was the best person for this job at this time, though, and I'm happy that she won.

Elizabeth won:
https://electionbuddy.com/elections/9787/results/pqdyb3n39



Great election, everyone!

I don't like using SI prefixes with the Bitcoin unit -- they don't work naturally with Bitcoin's 8 decimals of precision. How about 1.23456789? Read as: "One bitcoin, 2345 bitgrains (or whatever), 6789 satoshi."

It'd also be OK to use SI prefixes with the satoshi unit. So 1 BTC would be equal to 100 Msat.

CEX prepaid.

Current state:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
1 9 blackarrow
1 8.75 CEX
5 8.75 TradeFortress

Because you are new, I will not accept your bids unless you pay in advance.

Current state:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
7 8.5 betcointm

Bookmark a link to the post. (Click the # in the top right of a post to get its link.)

Probably.

I think I know what causes the database errors, but it's difficult to fix. (It happens only rarely, but it affects everyone when it happens.)

Yes.

That is the default for new accounts.

Previously you couldn't, but I think that I fixed this several months ago. (I actually first tried to fix it over a year ago, but at the time this didn't stick for some reason.)

They're not referred to by any special name in the code that Satoshi wrote. Satoshi never used the term.

In order to collect more money for the creation of good forum software and for other useful purposes, the forum is selling ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page.

Ads are allowed to contain any non-annoying HTML/CSS style. No images, JavaScript, or animation (no marquee or blinking). Ads must appear 3 or fewer lines tall in my browser. Ads will be prefixed with "Advertisement:". Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. Ads may be rejected for other reasons.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Seven of the slots are for sale here. Ads appear only on topic pages with more than one post, and only for people using the default theme.

The ad lasts at least 7 days starting from when I put it up. (However, if you look at the ad history you'll see that ads frequently get 1-2 extra days, but this is random and definitely not guaranteed.)

Stats

Exact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Ad blocking

Hero members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads. I don't expect many people to use this option. These people don't increase the impression counts for your ads.

I try to bypass Adblock Plus filters as much as possible, though this is not guaranteed. It is difficult or impossible for ABP filters to block the ad space itself without blocking posts. However, filters can match against the URLs in your links, your CSS classes and style attributes, and the HTML structure of your ads.

To prevent matches against URLs: I have some JavaScript which fixes links blocked by ABP. You must tell me if you want this for your ads. When someone with ABP and JavaScript enabled views your ads, your links are changed to a special randomized bitcointalk.org URL which redirects to your site when visited. People without ABP are unaffected, even if they don't have JavaScript enabled. The downsides are:
- ABP users will see the redirection link when they hover over the link, even if they disable ABP for the forum.
- Getting referral stats might become even more difficult.
- Some users might get a warning when redirecting from https to http.

To prevent matching on CSS classes/styles: Don't use inline CSS. I can give your ad a CSS class that is randomized on each pageload, but you must request this.

To prevent matching against your HTML structure: Use only one <a> and no other tags if possible. If your ads get blocked because of matching done on something inside of your ad, you are responsible for noticing this and giving me new ad HTML.

Auction rules

Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in BTC per slot. You must state the max number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all seven slots are filled.

So if someone bids for 7 slots @ 5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 7 slots. If the two highest bids are 7 slots @ 4 BTC and 1 slot @ 5 BTC, then the first person will get 6 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 5" means 2 slots for 5 BTC each. Not 2 slots for 5 BTC total.

- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however.
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.25.
- The bidding starts at 0.50.
- I will end the auction at an arbitrary time no more than 12 days from now. (I will probably end the auction 1-3 days before the ads are scheduled to go up.)
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.
- Bids are considered invalid and will be ignored if they do not specify both a price and a max quantity, or if they could not possibly win any slots

If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done. I also post periodic status updates which should help make things clear.

You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else.

Auction ended. Final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
7 27 betcointm


This auction is for only 7 slots.

It's been years since you could delete your own topic...

I think that you can report your own posts.

On topic pages, every signature now has a class like "sig35" (in my case) containing the user's ID. This should make it easy to block a particular user's signature. For example, to block the signature of pedrog (user ID 112476) using Adblock Plus, add this filter:
bitcointalk.org##.sig112476

Someone could create an ABP filter subscription to block annoying signatures.

The Foundation doesn't have any control over bitcoin.org or Bitcoin development, so that's somewhat irrelevant here. In any case, I don't see a problem in trying to help people without asking them first as long as property rights, etc. are respected. That's what many charitable organizations do.