There will probably be an opportunity this week to get an ad slot for cheap by testing the new ad system. I'll post here when this becomes possible. (The ad slot will be one of the reserved slots, so it won't affect the probabilities for other ads.)

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 (no marquee or blinking). Ads must appear 3 or fewer lines tall in my browser (Firefox, 700px 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. Eight 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 10, 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 eight slots are filled.

I reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made. In particular, bids from people with less than 15 activity points are likely to be rejected. I recommend not getting into a bidding war with someone who has less than 15 activity points, as their bids might not be accepted, but your latest bids will still stand. If you need to know right away whether someone's bids will be accepted, PM me.

So if someone bids for 8 slots @ 5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 8 slots. If the two highest bids are 8 slots @ 4 BTC and 1 slot @ 5 BTC, then the first person will get 7 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.

You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35). 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
1 3.05 coin.princess
1 3.05 1987xgm
2 3.05 super3
1 3.00 bobsag3
1 3.00 flyonwall
2 2.95 CEX


You're too new. PM me first next time.

This was the problem. The image proxy has a whitelist of allowed content-types. image/jpg is invalid and was therefore not allowed. I allowed it. (Photobucket should really fix this, though.)

The image proxy didn't send an Accept header, so that was not part of the problem.

Thanks for looking into it.

What do you think is wrong with the altcoin section, and why do you think that you can fix it?

You should report all posts that you think need to be moderated unless a moderator has told you that your reports are wrong. Even if they're not handled, I'll see them on your reporting record if I consider you as a mod.

If adding a specific cookie will fix it, tell me what the cookie is and I'll add it. It'd be too difficult to have the image proxy do something like stay logged into photobucket, though.

I didn't investigate enough to know exactly what causes the page to behave differently. But when I visit some of those thumbnail images in my main browser, I get an image, and when I open a new browser and visit the same URL directly, I get an HTML page.

It's not a problem with the image proxy. The pages behave differently depending on whether you have a photobucket cookie or not. Maybe the referrer also matters. In any case, photobucket gives you an image, but it gives the forum an HTML page.

Try going directly to the URL of one of those thumnails in a separate browser.

If a new transaction appeared a ways down in the transaction list so that you'd have to scroll down to see it, then you might not notice it. More likely to cause problems is the fact that automated scripts often poll listtransactions and go back only until they see a transaction that they've already seen before.

Bitcoin Core used to use the most accurate time available for each transaction, but the reordering caused problems, so it was changed to the current behavior.

If you start from scratch, the client will use the timestamp of the block that contains the transaction. At best, this is accurate to within a few hours, and it can in some cases be off by days from when the transaction was actually sent.

This is expected behavior. Bitcoin Core won't ever reorder your transactions, as this could cause you to miss some transactions (especially for automated usage of bitcoind). Therefore, if any transaction apparently occurs before your latest transaction, then its time will instead be set equal to your latest transaction.

Stuffing your altcoin's transaction data into the Bitcoin blockchain doesn't make it not-an-altcoin. The main sections are for the Bitcoin currency and things that you can directly do with bitcoins. If I can take my bitcoins, deposit them into your site, and then do something interesting without explicitly converting to a different currency, then your site can go in the main sections. For example, a casino could use a Counterparty currency as "chips", and this would be OK for the main sections as long as the casino could automatically convert deposited BTC into these chips. Similarly, if someone was selling Overstock shares for BTC, then this trade would be OK for the main Marketplace regardless of the technology used to handle the Overstock shares. (But don't try any nonsense like saying that every unit of an altcoin is a share in a company...)


Mastercoin is a normal scamcoin (more scammy than usual, in fact). Apparently it's common to transact in BTC using Counterparty, but Counterparty also has its own currency. I suspect that Counterparty has no really useful technology, but all I can find about their technology via Google is marketing fluff (bad sign), so I can't be sure. They both use the Bitcoin block chain for timestamping instead of doing their own mining. I think that this is often a good idea, but it doesn't mean that they're not altcoins (or that they're actually useful).

By the way, if you're already using the Bitcoin block chain, then why are you even creating a currency? Just use BTC. From what little I've read about Counterparty, it looks to me like their XCP was included just to enable pump-and-dump. (The BitDNS proposal that I co-authored in 2010 was probably the first to propose using the blockchain like this, but it just used BTC.)

Unless you're flooding the forum with tons of traffic, you will not be banned from connecting to the web server and reading the forum.

The source is also included in the .zip/.tar.gz downloads.

Agreed.

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 (no marquee or blinking). Ads must appear 3 or fewer lines tall in my browser (Firefox, 700px 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. Eight 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 10, 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 eight slots are filled.

I reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made. In particular, bids from people with less than 15 activity points are likely to be rejected. I recommend not getting into a bidding war with someone who has less than 15 activity points, as their bids might not be accepted, but your latest bids will still stand. If you need to know right away whether someone's bids will be accepted, PM me.

So if someone bids for 8 slots @ 5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 8 slots. If the two highest bids are 8 slots @ 4 BTC and 1 slot @ 5 BTC, then the first person will get 7 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.

You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35). 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 3.40 coinwin
2 3.35 Indacoin
4 3.35 BITMAIN

I've noticed that as well. It seems to work sometimes, but not always. I don't know why.

He prepaid, so I will accept his bids.

I haven't found his family's contact info yet, though I have some leads. (It doesn't help that I don't speak Spanish...) If anyone has any info, let me know. His account has been logged into a few times since his death, but I don't know who this is.

The BTC hasn't moved.