Bitcoin Tip Bot - beta testers needed

[eevan]

Hi,

I'd like to present a project I've been working on few last days: Bitcoin Tip Bot available at bitcointipbot.com
If you visit Reddit you are probably already know about tipbot.

The goal of the project
Bitcoin Tip Bot is supposed to track current activity at bitcointalk.org and search for "+tip something" posts. Whenever such posts are found - tips (specifed amounts of Bitcoins) are transferred to the specified authors. I guess this might add some new quality posts or stimulate people to share their knowledge even more.
My goals are to bring a bit of additional value into Bitcoin economy by further developing and improving Bitcoin Tip Bot. Also, I will develop and test in the wild some underlying technologies that might be useful for other Bitcoin related projects.

How it works
Bitcoin Tip Bot scans forum for new messages with "+tip someamount" in different topics. For each tip - specified amount is transferred from the tip sender's account to quoted author's account. At least the one who tips is supposed to be registered at bitcointipbot.com with his profile linked to bitcointipbot.com account.

If you've been tipped but not registered - that's not a problem. Sign up, link your account and receive all the tips in a moment

Project status
Project is in alpha status. The following features are on the list and not working yet or disabled:
- autonomous forum scanning (right now you need to submit topic url with your tip manually)
- display of tips sent/received / account balance updates
- Bitcoin deposits and withdrawals

Testers/supporters needed
There are 3 stages where I might need your help.

Stage 1. Very simple - make 1-2 tips to each other in this topic and submit urls. Tips are virtual, no real Bitcoins at the moment.
This will give me some real data to work on (1-3 days).

Stage 2. After parser is 100% complete (~95% at the moment:) and tips are validated correctly - I'll finish the part with Bitcoin deposits/withdrawals/instant payouts. This will need some of additional time to work on - about a week I guess.

Stage 3. When Bitcoin Tip Bot is ready for deployment to masses - we'll need forum admins to allow periodical scanning of forum pages and give captchaless access for posting "Tip verified" messages.

Got questions?
Cool. Post 'em here I'm short on time but I'll make sure that everyone gets a reply.

Well... I'm a bit nervous about this start But nevertheless - good luck to you, Bitcoin Tip Bot!

Eevan Cool.

[eevan]

Hi,

I'd like to present a project I've been working on few last days: Bitcoin Tip Bot available at bitcointipbot.com

+tip 0.05 btc

This is an example of the tip.

[areebmajeed]

+tip 0.23 btc

[eevan]

+tip 0.23 btc

This won't work since noone is quoted. Or should it tip the original poster?

[rme]

I want to test 

[linuxer]

I also would like to become tester.

[Welsh]

I would be able to test this for you. It sounds very interesting.


For the should it be quoted, I think so. It would over complicate things if it was no quote = original poster.


So, wouldn't it be easier to have a username database, for example:


Having the program search for a username which has quoted someone with '+tip <amount>.

It would reduce the search results of random people without a account at you're website saying +tip. Because I have seen people say +tip before. (When giving them advise etc) I know this may seem like it's not needed but it's just a suggestion which I think is worth looking into.

[matt_boyd]

Willing to test

+tip 1btc

[Welsh]

If you need any help, send me a private message. I'm very interested in this project. I think it's a very good idea.

[eevan]

Great to see some interest in this project!

So, wouldn't it be easier to have a username database, for example:
Having the program search for a username which has quoted someone with '+tip <amount>.

Yes it would. Unfortunately there seems to be some kind of protection while using search function at bitcointalk.org. I just got "The last posting from your IP was less than 360 seconds ago. Please try again later." while trying to do several searches in a row.
That means that there are two other ways of building username database left: collecting from linked profiles (limited to registered at bitcointipbot.com only) and parsing the whole bitcointalk.org username list (takes a bunch of time and resources - seems like userbase is close to 100k users).
 Anyway, after several days of real-life use we'll see common patterns that I think should be taken as default.

For those willing to test - register at bitcointipbot.com and link your profile. Tell me if it is described well enough. Corrections are welcomed!
Also, please, make some quoted tips as in my example message. I need them to finish parser development.

[Welsh]

Great to see some interest in this project!

So, wouldn't it be easier to have a username database, for example:
Having the program search for a username which has quoted someone with '+tip <amount>.

Yes it would. Unfortunately there seems to be some kind of protection while using search function at bitcointalk.org. I just got "The last posting from your IP was less than 360 seconds ago. Please try again later." while trying to do several searches in a row.
That means that there are two other ways of building username database left: collecting from linked profiles (limited to registered at bitcointipbot.com only) and parsing the whole bitcointalk.org username list (takes a bunch of time and resources - seems like userbase is close to 100k users)
 Anyway, after several days of real-life use we'll see common patterns that I think should be taken as default.

For those willing to test - register at bitcointipbot.com and link your profile. Tell me if it is described well enough. Corrections are welcomed!
Also, please, make some quoted tips as in my example message. I need them to finish parser development.

Ah, that's right. I forgot about the cool down they have implemented.

[matt_boyd]

Registered and everything, just want to test and see if anything is working

+tip 0.01 BTC

[eevan]

Ah, that's right. I forgot about the cool down they have implemented.

Well, after some thinking I came to a conclusion that it is possible to implement tip sending by username. Typical case is when tip is sent to the other topic participant. So it won't be hard to parse nearest pages of the same topic and find the recipient

[eevan]

Brief progress report:
been busy doing some background stuff on wallet security and billing system. Hope to get back in a few days with bot updates.

[Factory]

Brief progress report:
been busy doing some background stuff on wallet security and billing system. Hope to get back in a few days with bot updates.

I'm very excited to see where this goes. Very cool.

[uk1]

It's not just you! http://bitcointipbot.com looks down from here.

[eevan]

It's not just you! http://bitcointipbot.com looks down from here.

Thanks for the info but it seems to be working fine.
I also checked at:
http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/bitcointipbot.com - it says up.
http://downforeveryoneorjustme.org/bitcointipbot.com - up.
several other locations - up.

[whydifficult]

Awesome stuff!

Instead of relying on the search engine, can't you just use this page per registered user? I would advice to talk to the forum before you start polling and scraping the forum by the way.

[eevan]

Awesome stuff!

Instead of relying on the search engine, can't you just use this page per registered user? I would advice to talk to the forum before you start polling and scraping the forum by the way.

+tip 0.1 BTC (for that glorious moment when bot actually starts working

That's a great hint with last posts page! I've missed it somehow. I already see that it will improve speed and reduce overload significantly.

As for talking - I don't have this thing 100% ready yet, so I don't know how much load it will generate. Not enough info for reasonable queries to admins yet. But you are probably right - I should start talking beforehand.

[whydifficult]

+tip 0.1 BTC (for that glorious moment when bot actually starts working

That's a great hint with last posts page! I've missed it somehow. I already see that it will improve speed and reduce overload significantly.

As for talking - I don't have this thing 100% ready yet, so I don't know how much load it will generate. Not enough info for reasonable queries to admins yet. But you are probably right - I should start talking beforehand.

Haha thanks for the gesture already !

Well I think you need to poll every registered user once every couple of minutes to check if the user has a new post, I don't even think you need the real thread as the single post contains info on the tip (for who is it and how much is it). But if you want to check once every 5 minutes and 1000 users are registered you are hammering the forum with more than 3 requests every second for 24/7. For 10k users that would be more than 30 requests per second.

If it scales you could try some tricks like trying to predict when which users will post new posts based on their stats page (and time settings).

Of course it will take some time before 1000 users have registered. But if you talk with the mods they can also let you know in advance when the forum layout changes so that your scraper / parser won't break when this happens all of a sudden (the bot cannot screw up with sending tips with wrong amounts / to wrong person imo).