Bitcointalk Beta

[shield132]

I think it won't be a bad idea if someone creates a website with epochtalk and implement scrap the data that's given on bitcointalk. I.E. Bitcointalk with current posts, etc but on epochtalk (with epochtalk design) but with disabled login function. I think it won't be a bad idea cause as it seems we don't have access to beta.bitcointalk.org and won't even have in a near future (was there anything said about that by theymos?). At some point, some people may visit new beta and it will help us to get used to epochtalk version of bitcointalk

[TryNinja]

It looks like the first one is down, but:

www.cryptos-currencies.com Ann > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5115500.0
https://coinbistro.com Ann > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5158825.0

Posts aren't currently being scraped, though. But that sounds like an interesting idea.

Does anyone think there would be any problem with that? Would you consider it plagiarism because I'm copying the posts to another forum? (even though it's a test forum). I already scrape every post, so I could try to set it up.

[shield132]

It looks like the first one is down, but:

www.cryptos-currencies.com Ann > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5115500.0
https://coinbistro.com Ann > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5158825.0

Posts aren't currently being scraped, though. But that sounds like an interesting idea.

Does anyone think there would be any problem with that? Would you consider it plagiarism because I'm copying the posts to another forum? (even though it's a test forum). I already scrape every post, so I could try to set it up.

Why would it be plagiarism? I think everything is okay once theymos will give us the right to do so. I hope we will move on epochtalk in near future. It won't be easy for everyone to wake up one day and adjust to changes but at the same time new design and trends are coming, updates are always important. So, to my mind, it won't be bad if we create bitcointalk's clone but on epochtalk. It will give us enough time to adjust to changes and slowly start using a new version of bitcointalk.

Would love to see Theymos's opinion about this idea )

[suchmoon]

I tried this (privately, on a small scale). Not worth the effort IMO. Scraped posts are in HTML format so you would have to "backport" them to bbcode, and bbcode parser is still quite broken in Epochtalk, so you'd end up with a lot of work and a huge mess. Actual data migration - if we live to see the day - will likely happen at the database level (raw bbcode) so we wouldn't be testing anything useful with such a scraped migration.

If anyone has time and nothing else to do - fixing/rewriting the aforementioned bbcode parser might be a good place to start.

[d5000]

I think the idea is not bad. It would allow us to test the typical usage of Bitcointalk, e.g. if the typical post structure breaks something. So I would use it not so much as a showcase for new users, but to progressively eliminate the problems mentioned by suchmoon. And yes, it would be nice to simply see the forum in a new layout.

But there are two challenges with a Bitcointalk clone:

1) Duplicate content. If the site is allowed to appear in search engines, it could affect the ranking of the original Bitcointalk, as well if create confusion - for example, some threads could be indexed for "Original BTCtalk", and some for "Beta Bitcointalk". This can of course be solved with the "noindex" tag or directly disallowing crawlers in robots.txt. This would however prevent people finding the site. But for the usage I mentioned first it would be the best solution.

2) Copyrights. In theory, every forum user is an author who can decide where their posts should appear. I'm not an expert but this probably would't be a problem if the "Beta Bitcointalk" appears on the bitcointalk.org domain. Otherwise, maybe something similar to the Internet Archive regulation could also apply. If this was a problem anyway, then the current staff could update the Terms of Use accordingly, so people writing in the forum would also give automatically permission for its posts to be published on Beta.

So I think both challenges can be solved, however it remains to be evaluated if the effort is worth it. Maybe also a part of the forum and not all could be scraped, e.g. the "important" sections like Development & Technical Discussion (I'm mentioning this also because of possible challenges with inline code) and some Local boards, while the "heavy" sections with hundreds of thousands of lower quality posts could be left out.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…> it seems we don't have access to beta.bitcointalk.org and won't even have in a near future (was there anything said about that by theymos?). <…>

There’s this to go by when I inquired about it:

<…>

Wouldn’t it be better if Bitcointalk provided a common test environment that was open for anybody to use, without people having to download the software and setting up their own environments?

beta.bitcointalk.org was run for a couple of years, but virtually nobody used it. It was too boring. I'd ideally like people to actually try using Epochtalk for various things that they find fun/interesting. Maybe try a more restrictive moderation style, maybe make it more niche-focused, maybe try adding some crazy features, etc. If people actually try to use it for real things, then the real deficiencies will be found. <…>

I still believe that it would be better to have an official Beta on Epochtalk back, with as much Bitcointalk content as possible (a recent migrated content snapshot would suffice, no need to make side-by-side running content updates), run by the development team. They’d be the first to see/hear the issues people would be encountering during the Beta test with Bitcointalk content, which is really our main focus, let’s face it.

We know that the scope of the project surpasses Bitcointalk in principle, but most of us really are likely to be rather more Bitcointalk centered, than striving to test Epochtalk’s forum capabilities in a general sense.

[shield132]

1) Duplicate content. If the site is allowed to appear in search engines, it could affect the ranking of the original Bitcointalk, as well if create confusion - for example, some threads could be indexed for "Original BTCtalk", and some for "Beta Bitcointalk". This can of course be solved with the "noindex" tag or directly disallowing crawlers in robots.txt. This would however prevent people finding the site. But for the usage I mentioned first it would be the best solution.

Bitcointalk has high rank in search engines, there is no way any new website will be able to beat it in any result, so if someone clones bitcointalk, this still shouldn't be a real problem. Otherwise, yeah, that's a good solution.

2) Copyrights. In theory, every forum user is an author who can decide where their posts should appear. I'm not an expert but this probably would't be a problem if the "Beta Bitcointalk" appears on the bitcointalk.org domain. Otherwise, maybe something similar to the Internet Archive regulation could also apply. If this was a problem anyway, then the current staff could update the Terms of Use accordingly, so people writing in the forum would also give automatically permission for its posts to be published on Beta.

Loycev has a website that scrapes and saves our posts. And there wasn't any problem about it, right? Personally I think that shouldn't be an issue, I hugely doubt anyone will seriously complain it or has exclusive rights and ownership on posts here

I still believe that it would be better to have an official Beta on Epochtalk back, with as much Bitcointalk content as possible (a recent migrated content snapshot would suffice, no need to make side-by-side running content updates), run by the development team. They’d be the first to see/hear the issues people would be encountering during the Beta test with Bitcointalk content, which is really our main focus, let’s face it.

We know that the scope of the project surpasses Bitcointalk in principle, but most of us really are likely to be rather more Bitcointalk centered, than striving to test Epochtalk’s forum capabilities in a general sense.

Thanks for that quote. It would be better to have official epochtalk beta but seems theymos doesn't plan to run it. Epochtalk is an innovative product and should be too, so I think we need some time to adapt on it. He could find some place on this forum to place beta.bitcointalk.org advertisement, this way a lot of people would know about it.

To be fair, I don't even know what to say. Will this CMS ever be finally finished? What are we waiting for so many years? Should epochtalk make revolution? I think yes but in reality it won't happen and sorry but it looks like a failed dream.

[Stalker22]

To be fair, I don't even know what to say. Will this CMS ever be finally finished? What are we waiting for so many years? Should epochtalk make revolution? I think yes but in reality it won't happen and sorry but it looks like a failed dream.

In part, I share the same opinion.
I believe theymos want new software for the forum but the more I read about it the more I doubt it will ever happen. What I want to say is that I understand the scope of the work, but after so much time and money invested no one can convince me that it was an impossible mission.