Looks like MySQL was refusing connections for some reason. MySQL sucks.

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
1 6 BitcoinLiveBets.com
4 6 kncminer
2 5.75 Inaba

Bids must be evenly divisible by 0.25

More money is never bad. It may be useful someday. Having it sit around is good for the Bitcoin economy, actually: it represents the fact that the forum has provided a service but hasn't yet demanded much from the economy in return.

You can verify that the money is in fact sitting around and not being used arbitrarily. The cold storage addresses are public. A lot of the money isn't even held by me.


1 in 570 chance of a particular factoid showing. Some factoid is shown with a 1 in 10 chance.

An unrelated micropayment company owned bitcoin.com before Bitcoin was released. They never actually managed to develop a product, AFAIK.

I'd eventually like to eliminate most moderation and replace it with web of trust rating/ignore systems so you can choose whether you want to see trolling, profanity, etc. by modifying your trust lists. This is the sort of thing that pretty much requires a forum rewrite, though: it's totally against SMF's nature.

Global ratings like Bitcointalk++ aren't usefully scalable. It's too difficult to prevent (and even define) abuse as the number of users increases. Some sort of WoT is needed.

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
1 15 minerr
3 14 kncminer
3 14 Inaba

HashFast prepaid. Current state:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
1 15 minerr
3 13.5 Inaba
3 13.25 HashFast

Ratings aren't viewable by non-members, and other members of the forum are likely to understand that untrusted ratings are often incorrect.

Due to the very large size of this bid, and because you haven't purchased ad slots before, I will not accept this bid until you pay in advance. I PMed you.

Current state:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
1 13 minerr
6 13 kncminer

Wow...

Current state:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
1 13 minerr
3 12 HashFast
3 11 Inaba

Anyway, I can't usually guess at how safe advertised services are. I would reject a really obvious Ponzi scheme, but this isn't so obvious IMO. Will BFL ever ship? Will KnCMiner? Even a service like MtGox might never enable USD withdrawals... I'm not going to reject every ad that might possibly be a scam.

A reporting scheme wouldn't tell me anything that I don't already know. There are only 7 available ad slots. I review every ad.

The three-year timespan makes it seem possible IMO. If you think that the value of bitcoins will go down a lot at some point in the next three years, making this kind of offer is a sort-of-reasonable way of selling short without actually selling (for example). Could he get a long-term loan much cheaper?

AFAIK, browsers do send referrers from https sites to other https sites, though.

1. Why do we care about this?
2. Browsers usually don't send referral info from https sites to http sites, anyway.

It does. Also: margaritahuyan, michaelburger, guoweang, BitNit, NumberFive, goldwyn, BitcoinPicks, BitcoinPick, amiller, amiller2, BitStopp, 1011001, Deanoo.

Do you have any peer-reviewed studies showing that having people fight your movement is actually predictive of future success? Or are you just relying on a (probably misattributed) quote from a guy who lived 100 years ago?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=41996.0