This limit has existed for a long time, but I'm only describing it now because I didn't actually expect people to run into it.

Symptom
You'll get this rather non-descriptive error message when editing something:
The edit will not happen, but will be saved as a draft.

Cause

Your post's edit log is taking up too much space. The space it takes up is related to total_bytes_of_post * times_edited_per_week, though it's not quite a linear relationship due to compression. A maximum-sized post can be updated maybe 5-20 times per week before hitting this error.

Solutions

Solution 1:
- Wait up to a week for the system to archive your post's edit log. This currently starts every Saturday at 20:51 UTC and takes around an hour to complete.

Solution 2:
- PM me with a link to your post and I'll fix it manually.
- I'm probably not going to do this more than once per person per year or something.

In either case, you'll need to reduce either or both of the size of your post or the frequency at which you update it in order to prevent this from happening again.

Maybe in the future I'll try to eliminate this problem. It's caused by the kludgy way I implemented edit logging.

In summary, for people who previously had many positives and no negatives:
- The first negative rating defines a border between pre-controversy and post-controversy.
- Don't move this border unless you have a really good reason. If you must add more info, leave another negative or neutral rating.
- If you agree with the border-negative, leave a negative rating.
- If you disagree with the border-negative, leave a positive rating responding to the negative, even if you already have a positive rating for that person. Don't delete your old rating. You should also consider excluding the inaccurate-rater from your trust list.


It's not really simple... For performance reasons, I need to keep the trust algorithm fairly limited. It's computed ~20 times per topic page (and hundreds of times if you go to ;all), and this web-of-trust stuff is pretty slow already.

No, that's intentional.

- If a person has mostly negatives, then they should clearly have a negative score.
- If a person has only positives, then they should clearly have a non-negative score.
- If someone who previously had lots of positives gets a negative, this is interpreted by the system as "This person could very well be a con man! I can't be sure, though, since it's just one rating. Better show ??? just in case".
- If they then get several more negatives after the first negative, the ??? will turn into a negative score, as it should.
- If they get positives after the first negative, then this is interpreted as "Oh, it looks like that negative is probably wrong. I guess I can now mostly ignore it."

See the full algorithm here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1066857.0

It's entirely legitimate to give someone a new positive rating just to negate a negative rating. (In this case you should explicitly respond to the negative rating you're negating.) It is not legitimate to keep deleting and reposting negative ratings to put the system back into "this guy just turned scammer!" mode. People who do that shouldn't be trusted.

The deadline for me to give out tickets has passed, so you'll now need to buy a ticket if you want to go.

If you can't make it, the whole event will be livestreamed and everyone at the conference will have a computer in front of them connected to an IRC channel that the world will be able to join. (I will be participating via IRC.)


Yes.

(The logo they have on their sponsors page was just something they whipped up -- bitcointalk.org doesn't have a proper logo.)

If anyone wants the last ticket, you'll need to tell me really soon, probably in the next 8 hours.

Trust ratings aren't moderated. There are no hard rules, and you can't objectively say that someone is engaging in trust abuse. But if someone thinks that you are giving negative trust unreasonably, then they will remove you from their trust list.

This topic has been moved to Reputation. This isn't really a Meta thing.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1173007.0

Due to abuse, newbie-posted embedded images are now disabled on these pages:
- Topic display
- Recent posts / patrol
- Previews
They're not currently hidden in PMs or on some other pages (like a user's "show posts" page), though I might change that later if it seems necessary.

Disabled images get transformed into links automatically. When the poster becomes a Jr member, the images that he tried to post previously will automatically be re-enabled (though there might be a few minutes of delay).

This extends to all past posts as well as future ones.

The forum sells ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page. About 25% of ad income goes to the forum moderators as thanks for all of their work. (There are many moderators, so each moderator gets only a small amount -- moderators should be seen as volunteers, not employees.) The rest is stored in the forum's treasury (verifiably), where it sits until the forum needs it.

Ads are allowed to contain any non-annoying HTML/CSS style. No images, JavaScript, or animation. Ads must appear 3 or fewer lines tall in my browser (Firefox, 900px wide). 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, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Nine 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 usually get at least 8 days, and sometimes as many as 12, 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/Legendary 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 stats 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.

Designing ads

Make sure that your ads look good when you download and edit this test page:
https://bitcointalk.org/ad_test.html
Also read the comments in that file.

I will send you more detailed styling rules if you win slots in this auction (or upon request).

Auction rules

You must be at least a Jr Member to bid. If you are not a Jr Member and you really want to bid, you should PM me first. Tell me in the PM what you're going to advertise. You might be required to pay some amount in advance. Everyone else: Please quickly PM newbies who try to bid here to warn them against impersonation scammers.

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

So if someone bids for 9 slots @ 5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 4 BTC and 1 slot @ 5 BTC, then the first person will get 8 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 0.05.
- The bidding starts at 0.50.
- I will end the auction at an arbitrary time. Probably the end time will be 7-12 days from the time of this post, though it could be anywhere between 4 and 22 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 reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made.

You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else, and I might even give you a negative trust rating. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35) after announcing the auction results in this thread. You might receive false payment information from scammers pretending to be me. They might even have somewhat similar usernames. Be careful.

Your site seems very likely to be a Ponzi scheme in disguise, so I won't accept your bid. Sorry.

Auction ended. Final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
3 2.50 victorhing
5 2.30 Stars
1 2.20 PocketRocketsCasino

FYI: If you can make it to Montreal and you think that you can actually add something to the event, I'm giving away two conference tickets. See here.


You'll be able to participate without attending in person. The event will be livestreamed, and everyone there will be connected to an IRC channel that will be open to the public.

Part of the forum's mission is to support the Bitcoin ecosystem as a whole. To this end, I'm happy to announce that the forum is a sponsor of the Montreal Scaling Bitcoin Conference, which will discuss Bitcoin's max block size issues from an academic and technical point of view. The first conference is focused on requirements: what we want Bitcoin to do, what is necessary for Bitcoin to continue functioning, etc. Specific proposals will not be considered at this conference, but will be considered at the later Hong Kong conference. This event will not be a debate, no decisions will be made, and it will not be political: it'll be entirely technology-focused.

Since the forum is a sponsor, I received two free tickets. I can't attend, so I'll probably give these tickets away to forum users. You still have to pay for your own travel and lodging, so this is really just a $200 discount to a much larger expense. If you're interested in these tickets, please explain in this thread why you would be useful at the conference. (Don't PM me.) I might decide not to give these tickets to anyone in this thread, though.

If you have a relevant academic background, the Conference might cover your expenses partially or completely. You should contact them about that.

No, I support making a certain class of change (hard fork changes) very difficult. This the only correct position. If hard fork changes are not very difficult, then the hard, "mathematical" guarantees that we have about Bitcoin such as coin ownership and limited supply are pretty much worthless.

(Did you know that it's possible to increase the max block size with a soft fork using a proposal called extension blocks? This proposal isn't very popular because it's considered inelegant, but if consensus is impossible and you think that Bitcoin cannot survive without more transaction volume, then extension blocks would be better than splitting the economy up with a hostile hard fork. You don't need the same level of consensus for soft forks.)

My main motivation is for Bitcoin to succeed long-term (for ideological reasons). I have less potential conflict of interest than most people here, since I am self-employed.

Things I don't particularly care about:
- The value of bitcointalk.org, /r/Bitcoin, and bitcoin.org
- The short & medium-term market value of BTC
- My personal fame/power/reputation/wealth
- What random people who I don't know or respect think about what I'm doing

Things I do care about:
- Bitcoin's long-term decentralization
- The long-term ability of Bitcoin to provide anonymity
- The long-term price/usefulness of BTC
- Rational technical/economic arguments

To a large extent, the above is why have I have so much power in the community. I didn't create any of the important things that I now have some amount of control over -- in all cases I was given control by other people who trusted that I would do the right thing with them. Here's what /r/Bitcoin's creator recently said: "Theymos doesn't kneel, he doesn't sacrifice and is willing to stand up for what HE believes to be true, rather than some external authority."


No.


Right. I don't like BIP 100 or 101 because they are too fast, but maybe I could accept them if almost all of the other experts disagreed with me (since I might be wrong), and I'm personally open to a wide variety of block size increase proposals. Unlike some in the "conservative camp", I don't believe that it's necessary to artificially restrict block space. I even think that there's a fairly easy way that the global max block size could reasonably be entirely removed (each full node would have its own max block size calculated in a certain special way), though I think that a global max is better.

I don't think I said that.

There are two ways of doing a hardfork. The proper way is consensus:

• Create a proposal that has no significant opposition. A proposal has significant opposition if it is strongly opposed by any of: one Bitcoin Core committer, one large exchange or company (Coinbase, etc.), a few generally-recognized Bitcoin experts, several smaller but still economically-important companies, or a large group of ordinary users who have reasonable arguments and are willing and able to exert some real economic force. (The underlined groups are the ones with clearly-significant opposition as I currently see things.) This means that it's very difficult to do controversial hardforks. That's the point. You need to get consensus -- that is, make a hardfork non-controversial -- in order to do it.
• Put the change in the code set to take effect at some exact time 6-12 months in the future.
• Since the "flag day" is so far in the future, almost all of the economy will just naturally upgrade without any special effort. Since the change is non-controversial, no one of any economic significance will have reason to refuse to upgrade. The network will not split, since everyone will still have the same understanding of what Bitcoin is.

The way XT is attempting to push through a hard fork might be called "economic redefinition" (which is not consensus). For me to recognize an economic redefinition, both of these must be true:

• An absolutely overwhelming majority of the Bitcoin economy (99.9%, say) actively engages in the redefinition (ie. they actually exist only on the new network/currency). Verbal support is insufficient. Miners and nodes are irrelevant. Individual users have much less weight than big companies with more economic weight.
• The new currency must not break Bitcoin's absolute core principles. For example, it cannot create more bitcoins than are allowed. I currently believe that 8 MB blocks do not violate Bitcoin's absolute core principles.

(The above list where I even say "verbal support is insufficient" is a slightly modified version of this comment which I wrote 14 days ago. I am not being inconsistent about this.)


That was one hypothetical situation. I wasn't saying anything about other situations.


Agreed, but that doesn't make it Bitcoin. Many other altcoins could reach this point if they tried.

There are some important differences between XT and something like Litecoin, so it might be reasonable to call it something other than "altcoin". But it breaks Bitcoin's core rules without consensus, so it's not Bitcoin unless the economy overwhelmingly redefines Bitcoin to equal XT.

If we get into the habit of shattering the Bitcoin economy in order to adopt changes that most experts believe to be terrible, then Bitcoin will not survive long-term. The community needs to get used to fighting against this sort of thing very strongly.

Discussion of BIP 101 itself is on-topic, it definitely should happen, and can go in the main sections. But I will consider XT to be an altcoin (or "not-Bitcoin") for at least the foreseeable future.


Consensus about how to deal with the max block size going forward is necessary, though we're not as pressed for time as many people think. Blocks are only about 40% full on average right now, and this isn't growing very quickly, so we probably have at least a couple of years before this becomes any kind of pressing concern. Maybe/hopefully there will be a clear technical consensus as a result of the research/discussion at the Scaling Bitcoin Conferences (sponsored by bitcointalk.org!), which would help move things along.

Even if XT's change to the max block size was 100% objectively perfect, this sort of hostile hardfork is just amazingly, incredibly bad. Due to this, I condemn XT as strongly as possible.

Consensus in this case = no economically-significant opposition, not majority support or whatever. There is still significant opposition, so there is no consensus. (BIP 101 is very strongly opposed by many experts, so if consensus on BIP 101 is possible at all, it won't happen with any speed.)

As I've mentioned previously, Bitcoin would need to be redefined to equal XT before XT would be allowed on /r/Bitcoin, bitcointalk.org, and bitcoin.org. Without preexisting consensus, this'd require that some big chunk of the economy actually diverge from Bitcoin and that their altcoin succeed in overtaking the vast majority of the economy. Those companies are significant (and I am very disappointed that they are acting so irresponsibly), but their "votes" right now are not especially meaningful -- none of them are going to actually move to an altcoin that few of their customers and partners support, no matter what they say now. If I was sure that they would stick strongly to the XT "suicide pact" (perhaps due to a legally-binding agreement), or if they started pushing XT to their customers, then I would classify these companies as altcoin companies and treat them as such.

In other words, without consensus, XT needs to utterly defeat "old" Bitcoin (including bitcointalk.org, etc.) on the market before I could recognize it as Bitcoin. This is messy, but it's the only reasonable approach as far as I can tell. It's not reasonable to go along with what a handful of what are essentially banks say we should do -- that's the sort of thing that Bitcoin was designed to stop.

The forum sells ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page. About 25% of ad income goes to the forum moderators as thanks for all of their work. (There are many moderators, so each moderator gets only a small amount -- moderators should be seen as volunteers, not employees.) The rest is stored in the forum's treasury (verifiably), where it sits until the forum needs it.

Ads are allowed to contain any non-annoying HTML/CSS style. No images, JavaScript, or animation. Ads must appear 3 or fewer lines tall in my browser (Firefox, 900px wide). 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, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Nine 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 usually get at least 8 days, and sometimes as many as 12, 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/Legendary 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 stats 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.

Designing ads

Make sure that your ads look good when you download and edit this test page:
https://bitcointalk.org/ad_test.html
Also read the comments in that file.

I will send you more detailed styling rules if you win slots in this auction (or upon request).

Auction rules

You must be at least a Jr Member to bid. If you are not a Jr Member and you really want to bid, you should PM me first. Tell me in the PM what you're going to advertise. You might be required to pay some amount in advance. Everyone else: Please quickly PM newbies who try to bid here to warn them against impersonation scammers.

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

So if someone bids for 9 slots @ 5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 4 BTC and 1 slot @ 5 BTC, then the first person will get 8 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 0.05.
- 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 reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made.

You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else, and I might even give you a negative trust rating. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35) after announcing the auction results in this thread. You might receive false payment information from scammers pretending to be me. They might even have somewhat similar usernames. Be careful.

Auction ended. Final result:

Slots BTC/Slot Person
2 3.00 MariaQin
2 3.00 victorhing
5 2.95 FortuneJack

It was 502 errors and complete downtime for 30-60 minutes.

The downtime just now was due to a DDoS.

Fixed. This was actually a symptom of a larger hardware problem that I needed to fix, so thanks for posting about it.

The forum time (before custom timezones) should always be UTC.