I completely agree. I want to make moderation as easy as possible with status levels to show prominence of their posts. This will encourage users post useful content.

As for noscript, there are a lot of noscript people around so supporting that is a priority with 2 user interfaces for the forum just for the web -- Noscript and >= Class A Browser.

As far as Node.js, and we can commit to scalability with a fault tolerant backend geared for replication, and introduce realtime functionality in creative ways in the future. We will also begin to accept contributors once the alpha version is out.

Thanks to Theymos, we have a completely new area to talk about the forum software that is being developed. Keep in mind that the code will be created for bitcointalk.org first but will serve as general purpose forum software under the MIT license once we have it delivered and in Alpha/Beta status. Let's start off with a temperature check...

Here are a bunch of questions and topics for everyone to discuss. Please keep the conversation going, keep trolling to a minimum and before you post, please ask yourself if your post contributes to the overall goal of creating this new forum software.

1. What are the existing problems (for you) with SMF and the current state of the forum? Please list as many as you can and feel free to elaborate on the issue.
2. What are the existing features that you would want to keep? Please do not be concerned about how petty it may seem as your opinion is valuable no matter what the feature is.
3. What would you like to see added that's currently not implemented in the forum?
4. Compare and contrast vs other platforms and their features. Would they work well with these forums? Take a look at Reddit, Discourse, Hacker News, Slashdot, Disqus, Facebook, Twitter, etc etc...

The goal is to create a compelling platform that can be used for notable/historical events while keeping useless content out of the way for the consumer.

-Slickage

We should all send our own screenshots of the client watching over the same addresses! LOL

I feel the same about Node as well and I spent a long time a little over 2 years ago getting into Node and had great success with the technology in many situations. I'd like to add that I've never done NDA government work and security is very high priority in what we're doing.

Oh yeah... I'm not John K and I haven't been given access to the database yet but will need it very soon. We will follow standard ethics for private data and not transmit information to the public. This will indeed be the highest of priorities.

We will do our best. I've completely surrendered my public presence and dedicate immense efforts toward this project. For clarification, I use Twitter for thoughts that encompass our maker/hacker community here. The comment about security was about messing with Yubikeys. Assuming I'm a newbie at anything is a valid concern which is why I need everyone to survey our work in the future. This is definitely a test that most software companies probably don't need or want to do. But I'm very excited to be closely work with this community in the future to develop this product. Like SaltySpitoon mentions, let's stay positive about things everyone.

Within the first 3 months, I'd like to have an initial version up of the new forum software. Migration will happen afterwards. I'm not sure about how long this will take yet.

Auction system is a detail. The forum is the main project.

On top of that, the ads generate revenue for the site so that's very important.

Yes and we talked about the technical pieces regarding this implementation for a while now. We were approached and connected via other parties so I wasn't aware of the other thread on this forum. Like I said, we'll do our best and everything will be open source for public eyes to see. I am a community leader and there is a lot of information about me on the Internet if you want to dig. I actually don't update my public resume anymore, but please add me on LinkedIn if you guys would like more information. I've been focusing solely on my company.

Extremely sorry for the lack of exposure but you guys can add me on LinkedIn or talk to me directly if you would like to see my resume. The project will be developed in open source but will not be accepting contributions until we're ready.

Your concern is understandable and I'd like to be as transparent as possible with development.

EDIT: LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/wangbus

Sorry about my unprofessional name. Everyone seems to get a kick out of it so I stuck with it. Transparency right?

From my understanding, no... this will be completely open source.

Sorry dude, you'll have to ask the remaining questions to Theymos. I'm being as upfront as possible and I don't think the amount is out of hand. Startups in the valley get 1M for a year with a small team very easily for a project and scale wise, this is probably much harder than a lot of things out there.

EDIT: Sorry I misread. I will have it open sourced from the very start once we are past the design phase.

Community involvement do not contribute at a pace and/or contribute without much accountability. I'd like to push this project past its initial workings then allow involvement. Forum software in general sucks as Theymos stated. For those who know me understand that I am in love with the idea of improving communication. I'd like to improve that and this is a good opportunity to do so.

All negativity aside...

We will do our best with this project and hope the community responds with support. All source will be open source once we're ready for contributions.

Theymos has done enough work to work with us to know our competency through our mutual networks. We are doing the community a favor by building this and also for the open source community because a forum of this sort isn't exactly high priority on the "hipster" Silicon Valley list of important things to do. However there is a lot to be done in terms of making the technology more up to date. I hope we can all agree on that note.

I already said the work for our company is NDA or on a need to know basis. We don't do marketing because we are already fully booked with customers and projects. If you would like more validity, throw me some developers that know what they're doing and they can tell you if I'm legit.

Cmon man ask me anything on this forum pls. No need to do any hunting. What do you guys want to know?

Our company employs very capable and highly skilled software engineers that have worked closely with other companies in the past, everything from server side ops and scalability up to mobile applications - iOS and Android. Our design repertoire includes a lot of NDA work and is on a need to know basis so I'd like to reveal only to certain individuals. Please contact me if you have any questions.

In regards to engaging the community with the new forum development, the idea is to start a sub-section or series of threads and take information from the community about feature requests, discussions, bugs, etc.

Design work has started on the forum, but the first delivery to this community is an auction system for the ad spaces app that will integrate with the current forum. We'll be revealing that in the upcoming weeks.

I'd like to add that one of the major concerns for the future forum implementation is security and we'll be getting it checked with a professional security agency and hopefully get some public input on security checks (since it will be completely open source software).

As for the migration, users can volunteer to be migrated over to the new service, while still keeping their old account on the old system (SMF) with their user data intact. Back links and track backs should all work as expected to make sure links don't break from other sites.

As Theymos pointed out: The goal of this software project is to create new, open source forum software which will compete with SMF, phpBB, etc.


This is my crash introduction to the community and it's very exciting to be fully engaged on an open source system that will be used for this forum. You'll see more of my posts in the future regarding forum development.