[DVC]DevCoin - Official Thread - Moderated

[wiser]

All the business ideas that Fin and others have mentioned... to start them, people will probably have to sell some DVC to raise the funds if they are not using their own resources.  That's going to be true until those needed services such as web development/design, e-commerce setup (for those who aren't inclined to DIY) can be paid for using Devcoins.  Hopefully people will start offering such services for DVC, but for them to get started, they probably would have to sell a few to buy services they need that are not yet offered for DVC.  And they would probably have to sell some to pay themselves because no one's time is truly free.

I don't think there's any way around the need to sell some of the Devtome earnings at this time.  I also think it's disingenuous for people to accuse those who sell as merely dumping for selfish gain (and anyway, it's not like that's forbidden).  Sales on the exchange are anonymous.  You don't know why someone sold or what they're going to do with the proceeds unless they share about it here.

As for us writers being the fat cats...  That's awesome!  I've never ever been accused of being a fat cat at the top of the heap before, so I'm going to enjoy this moment  

But at this time pretty much anyone can be a writer, so it's not like it's some elite group or anything.  If you want to be a fat cat at the top of the heap, then just sign up as a writer and start writing.  And most importantly, keep writing.  The system favors writing?  Well, then write.

MarkM raises a good point about the absolute limit of 4000 per round and he suggests some ways around it which I'm sure the decision makers can consider.  Another possibility is that partial shares could be awarded.  So at some point when the number of writers (or the number of receiver lines) hits a certain number, everyone can start getting half-shares or fifth-shares and it would still work the same way.  You'd have a larger number to divide into like 8,000 or 20,000.  I personally am not worried about the unfairness from uneven divisibility because receiver lines are randomized.  If I write every round, some of the time I'll get "gypped" and some of the time I'll get extra, and over time it will all even out.  And even if it doesn't, I still have myself an awesome deal.

There's also merit to the idea of having groups of shares allocated to different parts of the Devcoin project, the Devtome being one of them.  I'm not necessarily advocating for it, but I wouldn't be against it if it seemed right for the overall direction of the project.

As I mentioned before I think there is a natural incentive to the authors to start thinking about what we can do to add value to Devcoin, if for no other reason than to keep this nice little cash cow flowing for us.  But this does take time, and you can't rush it by trying to add punitive "incentives" to get authors to hoard their DVCs.

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[markm]

I keep trying to make a (merged) mining p2pool that will pay out in devcoins (in addition to 100% of the bitcoins mined being paid out in bitcoins) but it is a very expensive thing to do, partly because I0Coin and GeistGeld both needed massive amounts of RAM. I had to get a third dedicated server to host GeistGeld because having I0Coin and GeistGeld on one server and all the other merged mined coins plus p2pool itself on another server was not working, p2pool kept getting "over 5 seconds to get work from geistgeld" errors.

Now that our soon to be newly tenured developer has developed code allowing merged mined coins not to need such massive amounts of RAM I maybe could move GeistGeld back onto the same dedicated server as I0Coin, but, I already paid up front for the third server for a year so might as well use it for something. So for now GeistGeld is still on the third server. (He only fixed up I0Coin so far, so I0Coin uses way the heck less RAM now but GeistGeld has not yet been updated to match so it still uses crazy amounts of RAM.)

Just keeping up with updates/fixes of all the coin daemons and maintaining those servers and mining rigs to mine on them eats up quite a bit of time, though maybe the part that eats up the most is having to keep up with these forums to discover what is going on with all the coins, especially when just trying "git pull" on each coin does not actually result in getting the latest code. (Some github repository maintainers do this annoying thing where they create a new branch for new code then fail to make that the master/main/default branch so git pull stops getting the latest code.)

All of this massive expense for servers though is all still failing to actually result in a publicly useable merged mining pool because the bounties offered for code/scripts that will figure out how much each miner contributed to the mining since the last time such code/script was run have not yet sufficiently incentive-ised any coders to actually come up with free open source scripts for doing such things. I have not yet had time to delve into the inner workings of p2pool far enough to even know yet whether it has a historic record of all payments it has ever made to miners. If it does have such records then one should be able, in principle, to add up for each miner all the bitcoins they got paid since last time the desired script/code was run and from that compute what fraction of the total work-that-worked they evidently contributed, in order to produce a list of what fraction of any extra awards each one deserves so that one could do things like divvy up all the devcoins among them or sell all the other coins for devcoins and divvy up those devcoins among them or whatever extra awards one might want to divvy up among them based on how much each contributed since last you decided to divvy up something extra among them.

EDIT: As long as people can make massively, insanely more coins writing for Devtome than writing code for bounties I suppose it is not surprising that bounties are not motivating people to get things done.

-MarkM-

[FinShaggy]

I keep trying to make a (merged) mining p2pool that will pay out in devcoins (in addition to 100% of the bitcoins mined being paid out in bitcoins) but it is a very expensive thing to do, partly because I0Coin and GeistGeld both needed massive amounts of RAM. I had to get a third dedicated server to host GeistGeld because having I0Coin and GeistGeld on one server and all the other merged mined coins plus p2pool itself on another server was not working, p2pool kept getting "over 5 seconds to get work from geistgeld" errors.

Now that our soon to be newly tenured developer has developed code allowing merged mined coins not to need such massive amounts of RAM I maybe could move GeistGeld back onto the same dedicated server as I0Coin, but, I already paid up front for the third server for a year so might as well use it for something. So for now GeistGeld is still on the third server.

Just keeping up with updates/fixes of all the coin daemons and maintaining those servers and mining rigs to mine on them eats up quite a bit of time, though maybe the part that eats up the most is having to keep up with these forums to discover what is going on with all the coins, especially when just trying "git pull" on each coin does not actually result in getting the latest code. (Some github repository maintainers do this annoying thing where they create a new branch for new code then fail to make that the master/main/default branch so git pull stops getting the latest code.)

All of this massive expense for servers though is all still failing to actually result in a publicly useable merged mining pool because the bounties offered for code/scripts that will figure out how much each miner contributed to the mining since the last time such code/script was run have not yet sufficiently incentive-ised any coders to actually come up with free open source scripts for doing such things. I have not yet had time to delve into the inner workings of p2pool far enough to even know yet whether it has a historic record of all payments it has ever made to miners. If it does have such records then one should be able, in principle, to add up for each miner all the bitcoins they got paid since last time the desired script/code was run and from that compute what fraction of the total work-that-worked they evidently contributed, in order to produce a list of what fraction of any extra awards each one deserves so that one could do things like divvy up all the devcoins among them or sell all the other coins for devcoins and divvy up those devcoins among them or whatever extra awards one might want to divvy up among them based on how much each contributed since last you decided to divvy up something extra among them.

-MarkM-

Maybe more shares for admins (2-5x what they get now), as well as like shares per person per round almost cut in half (50-60k instead of 80).

[sidhujag]

I keep trying to make a (merged) mining p2pool that will pay out in devcoins (in addition to 100% of the bitcoins mined being paid out in bitcoins) but it is a very expensive thing to do, partly because I0Coin and GeistGeld both needed massive amounts of RAM. I had to get a third dedicated server to host GeistGeld because having I0Coin and GeistGeld on one server and all the other merged mined coins plus p2pool itself on another server was not working, p2pool kept getting "over 5 seconds to get work from geistgeld" errors.

Now that our soon to be newly tenured developer has developed code allowing merged mined coins not to need such massive amounts of RAM I maybe could move GeistGeld back onto the same dedicated server as I0Coin, but, I already paid up front for the third server for a year so might as well use it for something. So for now GeistGeld is still on the third server.

Just keeping up with updates/fixes of all the coin daemons and maintaining those servers and mining rigs to mine on them eats up quite a bit of time, though maybe the part that eats up the most is having to keep up with these forums to discover what is going on with all the coins, especially when just trying "git pull" on each coin does not actually result in getting the latest code. (Some github repository maintainers do this annoying thing where they create a new branch for new code then fail to make that the master/main/default branch so git pull stops getting the latest code.)

All of this massive expense for servers though is all still failing to actually result in a publicly useable merged mining pool because the bounties offered for code/scripts that will figure out how much each miner contributed to the mining since the last time such code/script was run have not yet sufficiently incentive-ised any coders to actually come up with free open source scripts for doing such things. I have not yet had time to delve into the inner workings of p2pool far enough to even know yet whether it has a historic record of all payments it has ever made to miners. If it does have such records then one should be able, in principle, to add up for each miner all the bitcoins they got paid since last time the desired script/code was run and from that compute what fraction of the total work-that-worked they evidently contributed, in order to produce a list of what fraction of any extra awards each one deserves so that one could do things like divvy up all the devcoins among them or sell all the other coins for devcoins and divvy up those devcoins among them or whatever extra awards one might want to divvy up among them based on how much each contributed since last you decided to divvy up something extra among them.

-MarkM-

Maybe more shares for admins (2-5x what they get now), as well as like shares per person per round almost cut in half (50-60k instead of 80).

I read that we dont have enough admins but I think a bigger part of the problem is not enough focus on bounties so we should do something about that.

[sidhujag]

All the business ideas that Fin and others have mentioned... to start them, people will probably have to sell some DVC to raise the funds if they are not using their own resources.  That's going to be true until those needed services such as web development/design, e-commerce setup (for those who aren't inclined to DIY) can be paid for using Devcoins.  Hopefully people will start offering such services for DVC, but for them to get started, they probably would have to sell a few to buy services they need that are not yet offered for DVC.  And they would probably have to sell some to pay themselves because no one's time is truly free.

I don't think there's any way around the need to sell some of the Devtome earnings at this time.  I also think it's disingenuous for people to accuse those who sell as merely dumping for selfish gain (and anyway, it's not like that's forbidden).  Sales on the exchange are anonymous.  You don't know why someone sold or what they're going to do with the proceeds unless they share about it here.

As for us writers being the fat cats...  That's awesome!  I've never ever been accused of being a fat cat at the top of the heap before, so I'm going to enjoy this moment  

But at this time pretty much anyone can be a writer, so it's not like it's some elite group or anything.  If you want to be a fat cat at the top of the heap, then just sign up as a writer and start writing.  And most importantly, keep writing.  The system favors writing?  Well, then write.

MarkM raises a good point about the absolute limit of 4000 per round and he suggests some ways around it which I'm sure the decision makers can consider.  Another possibility is that partial shares could be awarded.  So at some point when the number of writers (or the number of receiver lines) hits a certain number, everyone can start getting half-shares or fifth-shares and it would still work the same way.  You'd have a larger number to divide into like 8,000 or 20,000.  I personally am not worried about the unfairness from uneven divisibility because receiver lines are randomized.  If I write every round, some of the time I'll get "gypped" and some of the time I'll get extra, and over time it will all even out.  And even if it doesn't, I still have myself an awesome deal.

There's also merit to the idea of having groups of shares allocated to different parts of the Devcoin project, the Devtome being one of them.  I'm not necessarily advocating for it, but I wouldn't be against it if it seemed right for the overall direction of the project.

As I mentioned before I think there is a natural incentive to the authors to start thinking about what we can do to add value to Devcoin, if for no other reason than to keep this nice little cash cow flowing for us.  But this does take time, and you can't rush it by trying to add punitive "incentives" to get authors to hoard their DVCs.

Haven't you been following the discussion? Isn't this what bounties are for? To pay for new services etc?

I did not mean to say to add punitive measures to reward hoarding over dumping but more "natural" incentives as you said to even things out so that people will naturally decide to keep coins based on the way things are going. If someone works on a bounty and succeeds after a few months do you think that person will turn around and dump all the coins they make onto the exchange for btc? I highly doubt it. The perceived value rises at that point... this is where I'm going with this.

[markm]

As long as people can make massively, insanely more coins writing for Devtome than writing code for bounties I suppose it is not surprising that bounties are not motivating people to get things done.

Maybe more shares for admins (2-5x what they get now), as well as like shares per person per round almost cut in half (50-60k instead of 80).

Not more shares, we want as few shares in total as possible, nicest would be no more than forty receiver-lines in total UNLESS we always make the number of receiver-lines an exact divisor of four thousand.

Right now we have had to put in an over-ride for admins because of the insanely high payments to authors, just to make sure admins do actually make some fraction of what authors do instead of beign crowded out entirely by authors.

Better would be to cap devtome at eighty shares total for the whole of devtome and let it share out the resulting coins among its authors.

(Though that would eat up eighty receiver-lines right away, twice the forty that would be a nice max number for fairness sake.)

Those shares would be worth a lot more coins per share than when a bunch of authors each get 80 shares all to themselves, each individually.

Lets remember again that a person who puts in ten hours a month OR MORE regularly and naturally on a lifestyle basis on directly important-to-devcoin projects of their own free will merely because they are going to do that anyway just because it is what they do gets one share. So basically any author who has a demonstrated history of putting in ten hours a month OR MORE writing articles for devtome freely without incentive/pay/bribe/bounty should be eligible to be nominated to become a recipient of devcoins.

Do we even have any such authors yet, or are all the ones we have found so far basically mercenaries who only write free open source articles for devtome (or even at all) when they are offered a direct bounty per thousand words for doing so? (If so maybe we have done enough bounties/paying now for getting articles written and should start offering bounties/pay for other things instead, watching authors to see if there do turn out to be any among them who do end up still writing for devtome ten hours a month or more as a lifestyle free open source writing person who would do that anyway even if there was no bounty / payment for it, and consider nominating some of them as deserving of getting put on the list of people who get a share of devcoins?)

Its not like we have any shortage of articles now. So maybe now we should start awarding bounties (payments) for promotion of the existing articles instead of for making yet more articles?

Haven't you been following the discussion? Isn't this what bounties are for? To pay for new services etc?

Actually bounties have historically been far from great for getting actual long term services, because opportunists tend to nip in, whip up something to get the bounty, then scrap the thing as soon as they have pocketed the bounty.

For example if you offer a bounty for settign up a pool, you are quite likely to have someone set up the pool, picket the bounty, then rip down the pool to free up their server for yet another different pool some other coin is offering a bounty for, then pocket that bounty, rip that pool down and put up yet another to pocket another bounty and so on.

That is why we are instead offering a bounty for free open source software for merged mining pools; once that exists people capable of operating such pools long term will be able to go ahead and do so, likely making decent money doing so due to pools are usually operated on a for-profit basis.

Similarly with block-explorers, offer a bounty for a block-explorer and someone whips one up, pockets the bounty, then rips it down again.

So again probably a bounty for free open source code would be the way to go; a bounty for getting your coin added to the standard distributions/repos of the standard free open source block-explorers.

-MarkM-

[wiser]

Isn't this what bounties are for? To pay for new services etc?

My understanding about bounties is that they are for specific projects that the Devcoin project people want done, and that's great.  And I know that if you have a project idea you can ask for a bounty and your request is considered.  In fact, sometimes bounties just fall into your lap because you did come up with a cool idea or little project and it was noticed...

However... that's not stopping people who have generated shares coming into their wallets from starting to think of things they can do on their own with funds that have already been earned.  In fact, you'll probably end up with more variety as people come up with stuff the bounty givers didn't themselves think about writing up a bounty for.

Oh wait, we're just the fat cats on the top of the heap keeping the little guys down   Stomp, stomp, stomp

[sidhujag]

As long as people can make massively, insanely more coins writing for Devtome than writing code for bounties I suppose it is not surprising that bounties are not motivating people to get things done.

Maybe more shares for admins (2-5x what they get now), as well as like shares per person per round almost cut in half (50-60k instead of 80).

Not more shares, we want as few shares in total as possible, nicest would be no more than forty receiver-lines in total UNLESS we always make the number of receiver-lines an exact divisor of four thousand.

Right now we have had to put in an over-ride for admins because of the insanely high payments to authors, just to make sure admins do actually make some fraction of what authors do instead of beign crowded out entirely by authors.

Better would be to cap devtome at eighty shares total for the whole of devtome and let it share out the resulting coins among its authors.

(Though that would eat up eighty receiver-lines right away, twice the forty that would be a nice max number for fairness sake.)

Those shares would be worth a lot more coins per share than when a bunch of authors each get 80 shares all to themselves, each individually.

Lets remember again that a person who puts in ten hours a month OR MORE regularly and naturally on a lifestyle basis on directly important-to-devcoin projects of their own free will merely because they are going to do that anyway just because it is what they do gets one share. So basically any author who has a demonstrated history of putting in ten hours a month OR MORE writing articles for devtome freely without incentive/pay/bribe/bounty should be eligible to be nominated to become a recipient of devcoins.

Do we even have any such authors yet, or are all the ones we have found so far basically mercenaries who only write free open source articles for devtome (or even at all) when they are offered a direct bounty per thousand words for doing so? (If so maybe we have done enough bounties/paying now for getting articles written and should start offering bounties/pay for other things instead, watching authors to see if there do turn out to be any among them who do end up still writing for devtome ten hours a month or more as a lifestyle free open source writing person who would do that anyway even if there was no bounty / payment for it, and consider nominating some of them as deserving of getting put on the list of people who get a share of devcoins?)

Its not like we have any shortage of articles now. So maybe now we should start awarding bounties (payments) for promotion of the existing articles instead of for making yet more articles?

Haven't you been following the discussion? Isn't this what bounties are for? To pay for new services etc?

Actually bounties have historically been far from great for getting actual long term services, because opportunists tend to nip in, whip up something to get the bounty, then scrap the thing as soon as they have pocketed the bounty.

-MarkM-

If they scrap the thing or there is a way to con the system to receive the bounty but not provide a real working service then there should be a way to fix this like recieve a deposit of devcoins when the work is done but it is just running live, and then receive the rest as it works for x number of days over a few rounds etc...I don't know but a way to avoid full payment so that they can just scrap everything or stop caring as soon as they receive their bounty.

I would think that each bounty is like a side project unto itself and would need some kind of management, some people who were willing to manage it and oversee the work. Once work is done, sustaining development is past to either a different developer who is being paid for sustaining work (less obviously but based on sustaining tickets) and the ownership gets transfered so that the transition between external developer and either external management of the bounty or internal devcoin team is more seamless and allows for us to actually have plans to use the idea or service that was created. The developer may or maynot be a good candidate for sustaining work as they may create bad code on purpose to achieve more coins via sustaining tickets. Dvc should be paid out to managing / sustaining / development and it should be factored into the bounty for the request.

[sidhujag]

Isn't this what bounties are for? To pay for new services etc?

My understanding about bounties is that they are for specific projects that the Devcoin project people want done, and that's great.  And I know that if you have a project idea you can ask for a bounty and your request is considered.  In fact, sometimes bounties just fall into your lap because you did come up with a cool idea or little project and it was noticed...

However... that's not stopping people who have generated shares coming into their wallets from starting to think of things they can do on their own with funds that have already been earned.  In fact, you'll probably end up with more variety as people come up with stuff the bounty givers didn't themselves think about writing up a bounty for.

Oh wait, we're just the fat cats on the top of the heap keeping the little guys down   Stomp, stomp, stomp

Yea I think there are probably 2 sets of bounties, one created by the team and one by external people who will pay for a system. Either way there should be a team of people assigned to each bounty and not just one person I believe. The managing of the bounty is just as important because it will allow for a more fluid transition between specification to test/release and sustaining work in case there are issues in the field. Each bountry will kick off progress once the team is assigned and the payments are agreed. I think this would provide a higher success rate for bounty programs.

[weisoq]

I think lowering the cap is a better idea than equally funding projects that don't work as hard for the good of Devcoin.

Devtome, at the very least, draws Google traffic and Bitcointalkers. How many new coders do we get a month from the coding projects? And how many new things do they add to Devcoin/Devtome?

There doesn’t have to be equal funding, I was just reiterating Mark’s point about valuing the most comprehensive, intensive, difficult endeavours and conceptually marking other projects (including devtome) against them.

If devtome draws traffic and revenue, that’s great – if it can generate its own financing mechanism that’s all the more reason to cut the subsidy paid by every other project (and it is a subsidy).

Perhaps I have completely missed the point but I thought Devcoin was established to support a wide array of open-source efforts, with devtome just one of the first realised projects underway. Instead it's just cannablising all other efforts for itself. I’m not a complete idiot - in that I appreciate that may encompass some element of appealing to those who aren’t just looking for a quick turn from an unsecured volatile pyramid - and that not everybody is going to pay up to support ideas before realisation - but the process does have the potential to build from that base into self-reinforcing value if reward is directed more broadly towards effort. But payment must be a reward for work. In this way Devcoin actually offers a mechanism and concept that could translate into a payment mechanism for a great deal of turning ideas into stuff and in my opinion offers an incredible long-term opportunity if it's done right.

Copying writings from an existing blog is not ‘working’. Copying writings from an existing book is not ‘working’. Nor is doing the same for long-ago filed essays or projects. If the blog isn’t popular or nobody bought the book it’s either a crappy blog or book or too nuanced for a wide audience. If the blog is popular or the book sold volumes then why is a double-dip at the payment well warranted? As with all writings, if they’re good people will be along to read them once you spread the word, if not you won’t and they won’t be either.

That doesn’t mean such efforts don’t have value, or that they shouldn’t or couldn’t be rewarded somehow through some Devcoin mechanism if establishing an open-source information respository is considered of value (social even, not necessarily monetary). But to make such efforts even commensurate with, let alone worth way more than all other prospective and ongoing developments combined (whether that’s open-transactions, mining pools, gaming developments, open-source applications, ecommerce endeavours, economic pass-through mechanisms, code updates, even specific writings pertaining to issues/topics of note to the broader aims, [add your own favoured area here]) is nonsense. Such issues can also be worked through without any necessary lack of appreciation for required maintaining and administering.

There's been little to zero effort to establish any element of passing-it-forward, where reward via devtome is used to establish further bounties or incentives to catalyse a network of other valued ideas into development. This means it’s just being gamed (no not by all, or even intentionally except insofar as making the most of a handy opportunity); an optimisation exercise in extracting reward for little-self-valued (let alone mutually valued) efforts until and before the last benevolent or interested buyer looking out longer term to impressive yet incomplete projects pulls their bid.

If something isn’t working it should be changed. Everybody holding Devcoins or considering the value-mechanism it could offer pays for a misaligned incentive structure. Just because something is a nice idea - and devtome is a nice idea - doesn't necessarily mean it's sustainable as a means unto itself, and without a reappraisal of the greater workings that nice idea won't persist, dragging the whole venture down with it.

[FinShaggy]

I read that we dont have enough admins but I think a bigger part of the problem is not enough focus on bounties so we should do something about that.

We should make threads for each bounty, like how Smeagol announced the bounty for a mining pool. Then there was a mining pool the next day.

[FinShaggy]

Smeagol is basically like the model of "What to do right now". And I kinda have a feeling he is the one that dumped the 60 mil, so that we could have a Amazon DVC business. No hate coming from me, I think it was a great idea. Not sure if it was him, but it makes sense.

[markm]

I think lowering the cap is a better idea than equally funding projects that don't work as hard for the good of Devcoin.

Devtome, at the very least, draws Google traffic and Bitcointalkers. How many new coders do we get a month from the coding projects? And how many new things do they add to Devcoin/Devtome?

If Devtome draws traffic then its ads should make money so it should be able to pay its own way.

In fact it should even start to churn, with authors paying other authors to wikify (make into links) keywords in the other author's articles to point at the paying authors articles, or to write entire new relevant articles linking to their articles to increase their page-rank and stuff like that.

For example if my page about Martians was making money, for me, it might be worth my while to seek out all articles that mention our solar system, or the planet mars, or war, or gods of war (mars as in martial), or to write such articles, in order to have them link from such articles to my article about Martians, so I will earn even more money due to even higher relevance / page-rank of my page.

Why would any coder join the project when they can make as much coin pasting one thousand words they already wrote about anything to devtome as they would get if they regularly as a lifestyle freely spent ten hours OR MORE without pay working on some code project directly relevant to devcoin's mission for so long and so well that someone picked them out to nominate to receive a share of devcoins?

They'd make a lot more coin just pasting a few kilowords of man pages or issues/bugs/fixes/changes logs of an existing project entirely useless to devcoin to devtome than they would being a devoted lifestyle free open source contributor of code to devcoin-critical missions...

An investor would probably advise them in fact that it is stupid to code because of the opportunity cost of wasting time coding that could instead earn more coin "collating" free open source content such as wikipedia pages and pasting them to devtome. They'd advise don't even consider coding until you have pasted 240k of collated material or 80k of crap you have lying around from when you took a mandatory course in English in college or whatever.

-MarkM-

[sidhujag]

I think lowering the cap is a better idea than equally funding projects that don't work as hard for the good of Devcoin.

Devtome, at the very least, draws Google traffic and Bitcointalkers. How many new coders do we get a month from the coding projects? And how many new things do they add to Devcoin/Devtome?

There doesn’t have to be equal funding, I was just reiterating Mark’s point about valuing the most comprehensive, intensive, difficult endeavours and conceptually marking other projects (including devtome) against them.

If devtome draws traffic and revenue, that’s great – if it can generate its own financing mechanism that’s all the more reason to cut the subsidy paid by every other project (and it is a subsidy).

Perhaps I have completely missed the point but I thought Devcoin was established to support a wide array of open-source efforts, with devtome just one of the first realised projects underway. Instead it's just cannablising all other efforts for itself. I’m not a complete idiot - in that I appreciate that may encompass some element of appealing to those who aren’t just looking for a quick turn from an unsecured volatile pyramid - and that not everybody is going to pay up to support ideas before realisation - but the process does have the potential to build from that base into self-reinforcing value if reward is directed more broadly towards effort. But payment must be a reward for work. In this way Devcoin actually offers a mechanism and concept that could translate into a payment mechanism for a great deal of turning ideas into stuff and in my opinion offers an incredible long-term opportunity if it's done right.

Copying writings from an existing blog is not ‘working’. Copying writings from an existing book is not ‘working’. Nor is doing the same for long-ago filed essays or projects. If the blog isn’t popular or nobody bought the book it’s either a crappy blog or book or too nuanced for a wide audience. If the blog is popular or the book sold volumes then why is a double-dip at the payment well warranted? As with all writings, if they’re good people will be along to read them once you spread the word, if not you won’t and they won’t be either.

That doesn’t mean such efforts don’t have value, or that they shouldn’t or couldn’t be rewarded somehow through some Devcoin mechanism if establishing an open-source information respository is considered of value (social even, not necessarily monetary). But to make such efforts even commensurate with, let alone worth way more than all other prospective and ongoing developments combined (whether that’s open-transactions, mining pools, gaming developments, open-source applications, ecommerce endeavours, economic pass-through mechanisms, code updates, even specific writings pertaining to issues/topics of note to the broader aims, [add your own favoured area here]) is nonsense. Such issues can also be worked through without any necessary lack of appreciation for required maintaining and administering.

There's been little to zero effort to establish any element of passing-it-forward, where reward via devtome is used to establish further bounties or incentives to catalyse a network of other valued ideas into development. This means it’s just being gamed (no not by all, or even intentionally except insofar as making the most of a handy opportunity); an optimisation exercise in extracting reward for little-self-valued (let alone mutually valued) efforts until and before the last benevolent or interested buyer looking out longer term to impressive yet incomplete projects pulls their bid.

If something isn’t working it should be changed. Everybody holding Devcoins or considering the value-mechanism it could offer pays for a misaligned incentive structure. Just because something is a nice idea - and devtome is a nice idea - doesn't necessarily mean it's sustainable as a means unto itself, and without a reappraisal of the greater workings that nice idea won't persist, dragging the whole venture down with it.

Well said, I couldn't agree more.

[ranlo]

Smeagol is basically like the model of "What to do right now". And I kinda have a feeling he is the one that dumped the 60 mil, so that we could have a Amazon DVC business. No hate coming from me, I think it was a great idea. Not sure if it was him, but it makes sense.

It wasn't him...

[wiser]

So the bounties are to support open sourced projects where it might be harder to make it profitable from it being proprietary.  That makes sense.

Because they are unconditional, the Devtome earnings could be used to start regular businesses that take payment in Devcoins.  There's no bounty tied to it, so therefore no strings on what kind of business you can start and how you run it and whether or not you share your secrets.  But of course you can't force writers to turn their earnings in that direction.  I've just noticed that some are, and I think the motivation is that it would do the Devcoin some good and it also has the potential to make them a profit.  The earnings provide a ready source of seed capital if you write enough.

Is writing for the Devtome a great opportunity?  Absolutely.  That's why I jumped on it.  Am I benefiting from it?  Yes.  It's not "gaming the system" to take advantage of a great opportunity, and I'm glad Weisoq pointed that out.

I don't understand the resentment against paying authors as it was explained when we signed up.  Why are we being called mercenaries just because we won't do it for free?  While I'm happy to write on my own blogs when I feel so inclined, I'm not going to take the time to publish it on another site without some benefit to me.  Why?  Because I have a family to support and bills to pay.  Only the independently wealthy can work for free without sacrificing something.  As for saying that it's not working if you republish content from your own blog, that's not so simple.  My writing for the Devtome actually caused me to start a blog, and it's being able to get paid by the Devtome which gives me the motivation to keep it up and republish the content on the Devtome.  So... which came first?  The licensing agreement allows me to both publish the content on the Devtome and use it on my own sites, so I do.  These days usually I publish to my blog and to the Devtome within the same ten minutes.  It's fresh content published in two places (and in many cases the *other* place carries a link to the Devtome).

If the Devtome changes in a major way because it's determined that it's not beneficial to the project and vision of Devcoin to continue as it is, that is totally fine by me.  The Devtome is the paying client and as such has the right to make whatever decision seems right to it.  So I would say if the current set up is not working, then by all means, let the Devtome decision makers come up with a better set up.  But in the mean time, the authors who are making the very rational choice of jumping on what's to us an amazing opportunity, are getting insulted, called fat cats and mercenaries, and all we've done was see an opportunity and run with it.  I'm not personally offended or anything; it's just weird taking this kind of heat for this, when it's not like it's up to us to change it or anything.  If I'm not being paid generation shares for writing someone else will be, so why shouldn't it be me?

Edit:  MarkM and others who work hard coding, some of you have written quite a lot on this thread in the past day or so.  Why not repurpose your thoughts into an article?  You probably could mostly copy/paste and put in some transition paragraphs and you'd have a pretty decent article that's worth at least one share.  You've already written the bulk of it for free.  Why not take that extra little step to get something out of it?  Then that could supplement your coding income.  That's what I'd do if I were in your shoes.

[sidhujag]

I think lowering the cap is a better idea than equally funding projects that don't work as hard for the good of Devcoin.

Devtome, at the very least, draws Google traffic and Bitcointalkers. How many new coders do we get a month from the coding projects? And how many new things do they add to Devcoin/Devtome?

If Devtome draws traffic then its ads should make money so it should be able to pay its own way.

In fact it should even start to churn, with authors paying other authors to wikify (make into links) keywords in the other author's articles to point at the paying authors articles, or to write entire new relevant articles linking to their articles to increase their page-rank and stuff like that.

For example if my page about Martians was making money, for me, it might be worth my while to seek out all articles that mention our solar system, or the planet mars, or war, or gods of war (mars as in martial), or to write such articles, in order to have them link from such articles to my article about Martians, so I will earn even more money due to even higher relevance / page-rank of my page.

Why would any coder join the project when they can make as much coin pasting one thousand words they already wrote about anything to devtome as they would get if they regularly as a lifestyle freely spent ten hours OR MORE without pay working on some code project directly relevant to devcoin's mission for so long and so well that someone picked them out to nominate to receive a share of devcoins?

They'd make a lot more coin just pasting a few kilowords of man pages or issues/bugs/fixes/changes logs of an existing project entirely useless to devcoin to devtome than they would beign a devoted lifestyle free open source contributor of code to devcoin-critical missions...

-MarkM-

Just curious, how do those ads pay out, do they payout in cash or btc? It would be ideal if those ads were paid out via purchasing dvc on the open market(since theres always sellers thers no probs getting a good rate on purchasing dvc in the open market as a market order). If these ads can support devtome this would be the most ideal situation as you wouldn't have to worry about any dumping at all! It would be 0 sum from the get go. Actually if sufficient revenue was coming out of the ads you can actually say that you can earn as much as the revenue is being generated. So by writing you have access to x amount of dollars converted to dvc in the pool from the generated revenue of ad clicks and views/page ranks etc. A self sustaining wiki which supports writers would be fantastic!

[FinShaggy]

Copying writings from an existing blog is not ‘working’. Copying writings from an existing book is not ‘working’.

So basically you are picking me out, and completely making assumptions and getting mad.

1st, I don't copy from blogs. Sure, I copied a few of my things from my blog, but I extended all of it, or compiled it to make a more informative piece for Devtome.

2nd, I was asked to post my books here. That is the SOLE reason they came to me in the first place.

3rd, If you are implying that I bought 30+ books to copy the writing out of them, you are completely wrong. I have been taking hundreds of pages, and compiling them into about 5,000 words each. My words.

[FinShaggy]

If Devtome draws traffic then its ads should make money so it should be able to pay its own way.

My point was that Devtome brings traffic to DEVCOIN, while the other things we are talking about don't even have threads inviting more people to earn shares for doing it.

[sidhujag]

Copying writings from an existing blog is not ‘working’. Copying writings from an existing book is not ‘working’.

So basically you are picking me out, and completely making assumptions and getting mad.

1st, I don't copy from blogs. Sure, I copied a few of my things from my blog, but I extended all of it, or compiled it to make a more informative piece for Devtome.

2nd, I was asked to post my books here. That is the SOLE reason they came to me in the first place.

3rd, If you are implying that I bought 30+ books to copy the writing out of them, you are completely wrong. I have been taking hundreds of pages, and compiling them into about 5,000 words each. My words.

Uhh I didn't write that... but whoever said that was right, the intent was to say that work should be rewarded and not rework.

Who's trolling now? You can't even seem to get the right person to quote, your misquoting other people and putting words in my mouth lol

Please reread Weisoq's post again until you  "get it" because at this point you're not getting it. I think everyone should read it and understand what he is saying because it is exactly what me and MarkM are talking about aswell.