Bitcoin needs to be simplified for the stupid.

[Loozik]

When a developer feels like implementing it and has time to do it. There is not really a timeline as we're working on this on our spare time. All help is appreciated.

I write song lyrics, movie dialogues, etc. Using Excel overwhelms my circuits. I can't help

Maybe we could have an auction of feature requests in which Bitcoin-Qt user would commit to pay and pay the developers for speeding up certain features? - Just an idea. The feature requests that get the most funding would be considered the most desired. Market decides.

[Loozik]

... yeah I'm pretty sure a surgeon doesn't need to know about rawtransactions unless he's had a change of heart and is looking for a career change ... what's your real point here?

My point is: not everybody who doesn't understand intricacies of Bitcoin and / or is unwilling to learn this not-easy-stuff should be labelled ''stupid''.

[wumpus]

I write song lyrics, movie dialogues, etc. Using Excel overwhelms my circuits. I can't help

Maybe we could have an auction of feature requests in which Bitcoin-Qt user would commit to pay and pay the developers for speeding up certain features? - Just an idea. The feature requests that get the most funding would be considered the most desired. Market decides.

Sounds like a good idea. In any case, we can't rely on the Bitcoin Foundation to fund GUIs and user-friendly features. That's not their ballpark.

If somehow the community could fund active development in features and improvements that *they* want that'd be great.

There is: http://bitcoinbounties.com/  which can attach bounties to github issies. I'm not sure how well it works and/or how trustable it is though. But we have one data point: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/2480 .

In any case, if we could get some community-funded initiative going I (and other devs) would be much more motivated to work on the bitcoin project, maybe even full time.

[marcus_of_augustus]

... yeah I'm pretty sure a surgeon doesn't need to know about rawtransactions unless he's had a change of heart and is looking for a career change ... what's your real point here?

My point is: not everybody who doesn't understand intricacies of Bitcoin and / or is unwilling to learn this not-easy-stuff should be labelled ''stupid''.

... quite right ... some guy posted something about his circle of friends giving him blank stares whenever he mentioned bitcoin and looked up at the title of the OP ... 2+2= ??

[Loozik]

WHY would they want to understand that? Either they are very interested and put some of their brain capacity into learning it (geek out), or they don't. Either way, they're not hurt right?

Specialization is a good thing in this complex world. I wouldn't know where to start implanting organs, and if I spent my time learning that (if I could at all) then I cannot spend that time into learning to write better software. So we have this thing called trade... and hey, we're on the bitcoin forums, our aim is to make that easier

John, reading through the wiki is not easy. You read an article which mentions say 30 geeky terms like ''JSON-RPC API''. Shit, then you spend 2 hours understanding these terms. But to understand these terms you have to dig deeper.

I can understand wiki should work this way, but at least there should be an easy to understand Bitcoin-Qt documentation for grandmas / surgeons / movie makers / non-geeks written in easy English.

[Loozik]

... quite right ... some guy posted something about his circle of friends giving him blank stares whenever he mentioned bitcoin and looked up at the title of the OP ... 2+2= ??

Marcus, Bitcoin is a disruptive technology. I feel it. But understanding the mechanics (change addresses, algorithims of calculating the fees, e.g. why should older coins be better rewarded than new ones? - I still don't get this logic, but accept the way it works, etc.) are a novelty in the whole world. Please do not get surprised people give blank stares.

One day you too might give a blank stare in a field you do not know.

The OP's intentions were clear: to ease the learning proccess for ''the stupid'' thus allowing Bitcoin to go mainstream.

[wumpus]

I can understand wiki should work this way, but at least there should be an easy to understand Bitcoin-Qt documentation for grandmas / surgeons / movie makers / non-geeks written in easy English.

Another community funding idea. Maybe for an artistic tool which people really love someone will write a nice documentation out of love, but that's not going to happen for something as abstract as Bitcoin.
We'd need to find a technical writer with a track record of writing good software documentation, and employ that person to write a manual for Bitcoin-Qt (with community input).

Maybe something like the pypy donation drive could work, let people donate to certain subprojects and execute them when they are funded: http://pypy.org/ (and return the funds if something isn't funded by a certain deadline, or doesn't pan out).

[Loozik]

Another community funding idea.

It could work like this:

1. People submit their feature requests like in this project management site http://www.multicharts.com/pm/ (loads slowly).
2. Then developers put a price tag for requests they can handle + specify time they agree to complete the task.
3. Then people commit to pay the whole price (it will take a week or two if the feature is desired or years if the feature is unwanted)
4. When 100% of the price from the price tag is paid to a particular developer's address, the developer starts coding.
5. The feature is added to Bitcoin-Qt (e.g. documentation) after reviewing by other developers in context of safety.

Thanks

[wumpus]

Another community funding idea.

It could work like this:

1. People submit their feature requests like in this project management site http://www.multicharts.com/pm/ (loads slowly).
2. Then developers put a price tag for requests they can handle + specify time they agree to complete the task.
3. Then people commit to pay the whole price (it will take a week or two if the feature is desired or years if the feature is unwanted)
4. When 100% of the price from the price tag is paid to a particular developer's address, the developer starts coding.
5. The feature is added to Bitcoin-Qt (e.g. documentation) after reviewing by other developers in context of safety.

Thanks

Yes, the basic idea sounds fair.

Before embarking on a project the requirements should be really clear to the developer and everyone contributing money to it should agree on them (to prevent disagreements later on). I also think an important requirement is to perform the work in the open, so that people can see what is happening and keep true to the open source spirit.

A % of the money should probably be held in escrow until the feature is fully integrated and reviewed in the context of safety. Payout schedule should at least be discussed beforehand.

[Lethn]

I don't know about making things simple but whatever you do could be explained a lot better, there have been years or months I've spent arguing with people to give better explanations from all professions not just people using cryptographic currencies. Someone just needs to get off their arses and write a very simple tutorial for mining the alternate currencies for example, then there's the fucking programming tutorials where they leave bits out and don't explain why they've told you to do something and so on.

Like I said, I'm not asking you guys to simplify anything, I think Bitcoin has actually been explained quite well which I suspect is why most people use it but good luck with the other stuff, it amazes me that people went and made stuff like Litecoin and didn't think about how the average person was going to use it. Just make sure that when you do something or you ask them to change a setting etc. you explain why, or for example you can give absolute beginner explanations for people just starting out rather than assuming everyone knows how to code already.

As embarrassing as it is I must have spent a good few months trying to figure out why my photoshop paintings were so damn blurry then I discovered it was just the brush hardness because none of the painting tutorials I followed mentioned that's what you need to get nice clear images. That and a high enough resolution that wouldn't break your computer and cause photoshop to freeze, all just because people forgot to mention things like that to beginners.

[Loozik]

Yes, the basic idea sounds fair.

Good.

Before embarking on a project the requirements should be really clear to the developer and everyone contributing money to it should agree on them (to prevent disagreements later on). I also think an important requirement is to perform the work in the open, so that people can see what is happening and keep true to the open source spirit.

I agree + the major devs (prior to putting a price tag by a given developer) should have an internal discussion and decide (i) whether the requested feature makes sense, (ii) whether the requested feature is safe, etc. It wouldn't be sensible to pay for the feature, then get it done and not being able to incorporate into Bitcoin-Qt because other developers object.

A % of the money should probably be held in escrow until the feature is fully integrated and reviewed in the context of safety. Payout schedule should at least be discussed beforehand.

I agree.

[wumpus]

I agree + the major devs (prior to putting a price tag by a given developer) should have an internal discussion and decide (i) whether the requested feature makes sense, (ii) whether the requested feature is safe, etc. It wouldn't be sensible to pay for the feature, then get it done and not being able to incorporate into Bitcoin-Qt because other developers object.

Agreed. We certainly don't want to accept every wild-eyed request, but focus on some important projects that have community and developer consensus.

[Loozik]

Agreed. We certainly don't want to accept every wild-eyed request, but focus on some important projects that have community and developer consensus.

1. Very well then 

2. We need a technology (website, a sub-forum) that allows submitting feature requests, describing them, putting a price tag, etc.

3. There is of course the risk of this idea to fail:
a) the users might not be interested in paying for the features they think are absolutely essential to be implemented (people are greedy), and / or
b) developers might not be interested in giving some power over how Bitcoin-Qt develops to non-geeks,
c) others ...

[wumpus]

2. We need a technology (website, a sub-forum) that allows submitting feature requests, describing them, putting a price tag, etc.

Yes, indeed. We need something that's not a lot of work to set up, otherwise it kind of defeats its purpose and detracts from development on bitcoin-qt itself

3. There is of course the risk of this idea to fail:
a) the users might not be interested in paying for the features they think are absolutely essential to be implemented (people are greedy), and / or

Indeed. We'll see if they're willing to put their money where their mouth is. It'd be a kind of social experiment I guess. In an "anarchistic" community you cannot levy taxes, so people have to look out for themselves to make sure infrastructure happens, too.

b) developers might not be interested in giving some power over how Bitcoin-Qt develops to non-geeks,

I don't think this is about power. More about motivation. It's a nuisance if people request things and expect that you're going to do it in your spare time, but if they pay for it it's different.

And of course it should be clear that any economic change to the system is strictly off limits (ie, raising the amount of coins, change the mining algorithm). This would be meant to fund the "unsexy" changes that do require a sizeable amount of work, such as front-end changes, back-end optimizations, bug fixes that require a lot of diagnostics and debugging work, and so on.

[FreddyFender]

It's obviously going to take a right-brained artistic approach, a la Steve Jobs. Get out of the way people. It is like watching the geek follies. Solutions are client-based, not Bitcoin-based.
Try thinking about what other systems require features of WoT, such as voting.

[johnyj]

Look at how banks made it for today's normal user, currently I have seen 2 different implementation:

1.
The user get a smartcard which hold their private key, and a card reader which should holds bank's public key (not sure). There are four functions on the card reader: "login", "buy", "code", "sign"

When you do a login or a purchase, you first input your user name on website, and you get a control string from the bank,  and press the corresponding function button and input the control string into the cardreader, then you need to input your pin code (like bitcoin client's wallet password), then the card reader will generate a signature string and you input that string into the page of the website to confirm the login or purchase

2.
The user get a signature generating device which contains exactly the same algorithm the bank's software is using. User need to input 2 control strings in sequence to generate the signature, there is also a pin code challenge for that device

In both case, users have the key stored in a hardware, and the security for that key is 3 levels: 1. physically 2. the pin code to the key 3. The account that is connected to the key

If someone successfully steal the hardware key, he still need to have the pin code (the device automatically locked after 3 failed attempts), and even if he get the pin code, he still need to know which account this key is related to at the bank

And if the user lose the key, he will call the bank and block the key immediately, bank will generate a new hardware key and send it to user

[SgtSpike]

I'll just say that I am a decent technical writer, and have written many internal software user guides for various companies I have worked for.  I'm also a writer for Bitcoin Magazine.  I would be willing to write a step-by-step user guide on Bitcoin-QT if a bounty is put together.  I would want to cover every feature that the Bitcoin-QT client is capable of, which I am certain includes features I haven't even used yet, and gear it towards the layman.

[Jakewell]

Its not complicated, the masses just need to know how to send and receive money and thats is quite easy, who knows the algorith ussed at visa or mastercard datacenters? nobody..
when someone ask again what is bitcoin just respond.. "is a new currency, and its value is this" thats all.

[nwbitcoin]

some of these threads could be used as plot ideas for the Big Bang Theory!

[CanadianGuy]

Its not complicated, the masses just need to know how to send and receive money and thats is quite easy, who knows the algorith ussed at visa or mastercard datacenters? nobody..
when someone ask again what is bitcoin just respond.. "is a new currency, and its value is this" thats all.

I think it would grab peoples attention if you call it the "global currency".  Or is that too far fetched