That sounds fine.

No.

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
3 5 Garr255
4 4.25 TradeFortress


Maybe for round 100. It's a lot of work to process so many ads.

No, I forgot to reset the secret question/answer thing. That's a problem unique to this case.

I've added phantastisch as a moderator. Thanks for all of your input.

The pastebin code is mine and public domain. That bitcoin-php library is a separate thing that I wasn't involved with.

What happens when you visit https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=post;board=24.0 ?

bitcointalk.is is the official alternative domain name. In the future I might make it actually work and not just redirect to bitcointalk.org.

There are currently no arrangements in case of a DoS attack, but something could be set up if need be.

No one person can permanently take down the forum, and even if every staff member and critical resource located in the US was compromised, the forum could recover.

Wenn ein Beitrag bearbeitet wurde, wird der Beitrag der Zeit eine gestrichelte Unterstreichung. Bewegen Sie die Maus über dass, um den Bearbeitungsmodus Zeit zu sehen.

OPs einer selbst moderierten Thread kannst keine Beiträge editieren.

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If a post has been edited, the post time will have a dotted underline. Hover your mouse over that to see the edit time.

OPs of a self-moderated thread can't edit posts.

OK, I fixed that.

I think they are allowed. You must select the option when creating a new topic. You can't add it after the topic is created.

I deleted them.

phantastisch has a somewhat better reporting record than molecular or Akka.


That's what threads like this are for. I'll see what the community thinks of the candidates.


Google Translate übersetzt Deutsch recht gut, also nicht darum kümmern.

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Google Translate translates German fairly well, so don't worry about it.

Was ist mit dir? Würden Sie haben kein Interesse an der Moderation der deutschen Sektion?

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What about you? Would you have any interest in moderating the German section?

You can't send PMs to someone who is ignoring you.

I doubt I'll fix it soon. Someday it might be nice to let people choose which BBCode tags they want to see in posts, signatures, and PMs.

People have had addresses in their signatures since the forum first started. Almost no one uses them for donations. Donations are popular on Reddit only because:
- Being able to send money quickly and easily is a novelty to the people there.
- People use donations as a tool to advertise Bitcoin.

Here, people are used to Bitcoin and there's no need to advertise. If a donation system was added, I predict only a small increase in donations compared to the current situation with bare addresses.


Could be, but it doesn't really matter. They can be used as a medium of exchange as long as they have some value.

I had an idea about that, though I'm not sure whether I'll do it. The forum could accept BTC and in return give "forum credit", which could not ever be withdrawn for BTC, but which could be used for ads and donations. Since forum credit has value, a market would develop with an exchange rate somewhat less than 1 BTC per BTC of forum credit. A micropayment system could be based on forum credit; receiving 1 BTC of forum credit would be just a less convenient and more centralized way of receiving ~0.95 BTC.

Micropayments are a very low priority in any case, though.

Reports are an important part of maintaining a clean forum.  You'd need a huge moderation team to get by without reports, and then there'd probably be over-moderation. It looks like people aren't reporting posts very much in the Russian sections. The top reporters are:
dobriy (7 reports)
OTtAn (5)
ZPK (4) (Nevermind, this isn't accurate.)