[DVC]DevCoin - Official Thread - Moderated

[dalamar96]

Well in that case, I am sure there are much better artists here than me!  I will leave that to them!

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[robcop]

im trying to send devcoins to somebody but they wont send  0.0
when I check the client it says status: 0/offline ?   the coins left my wallet.

Been waiting for 2 hours and it's still the same.

[jdlrexy]

...
Devcoin Bounty Engine
...

Looking good!  Should we assign a bounty to this to help kick things off?  e.g. 12 shares or so, depending on the difficulty

You are more then welcome to for someone else to start one, the one I am working on I figure there wasn't a bounty for (out of love of the community I guess )  

ps. Prolly more just to see if I could do it

pps. Wow, I didn't see the proposal till I wrote this one! That is nice! I can incorporate some into it, but iti s mostly just a prototype site so nothing is open source so to speak (PHP and not ready for prime time) Love that proposal! Ok, back to work...

Glad you guys liked the idea! Hope some of these ideas can actually be incorporated into a functional site.

[novacadian]

The idea of the Bounty cgi/site sounds like a great idea; however it may be a bit of the cart before the horse. In my opinion, how bounties are handled should be the first order of the debate. My experience with a current Bounty has been overall a positive experience, so far, yet it has shown many weaknesses in the Bounty system from the perspective of one seeking the Bounty.

These weaknesses are at a very minimum at the moment, yet with a more public system as is being suggested and the potential of a growth of the number of Bounties, those weaknesses should be made more evident.

Here are some points that should be discussed in my opinion....

Creating Bounties

One weakness seems to be the process of creating an official bounty.

It is one thing to come up with a great idea for something that seems to have a need, yet that idea should be looked at by an individual or group of individuals that could probably do the Bounty themselves, if they so desired, so as to come up with an educated estimates of what the project/bounty will entail in terms of hours and know how. My suggestion would be that the same person or group of persons would also use some ranking system which would clearly state the required skills to complete the task.

If such a person or group of persons were not available for a particular project/Bounty then it should fall into a bidding system whereby those that do know what it would take say how many shares they would want to do it.

A Bounty should also be broken down into as small a group of sub-bounties as possible so that different people can work on the overall project in a collaborate fashion without walking on one another's toes; nor dealing with an overly ambitious project/Bounty that would have to be fully completed before being eligible for the working parts that have been completed.  As the proposed cgi/site brings the Bounty concept to a wider audience competition would make them less and less attractive, because of the first across the line approach, and probably make the finished product(s) less well done as coders scramble to be the first to release. My approach would probably be to complete an idea and then post it as a potential Bounty. If it was excepted then step forward to take the prize. This is obviously not the intention of the Bounty Site; yet would be one of it's fatal weaknesses.

There has to be some means that a person is given rope enough to complete a bounty without having to look over their shoulder along the way. This could be more easily done with an educated review of proposed bounties, as mentioned above, with expected lead time. Breaking the projects/Bounties into their smallest parts would better allow this without delaying the overall project.

Pricing Bounties

It is also my contention that the entire pricing of Bounties is out of whack at the moment. That discussion is not new to this thread. It would have been just as profitable to write in the DevTome about the different aspects of the project, without typing a line of code, to get shares that could easily approach the Bounty payout itself. Pages on procmail, SMF, about my days admining a yaBB SE forum, about the fork to SMF and all the versions that have followed with minute details of mods along the way. We are talking thousands of words. Why bother to program when such payouts are being given to simply write about it? For me the choice is obvious; coding is an rewarding activity. Writing spam for DevCoins is not.

Arbitration of Bounty Claims

Then there is the inevitable disagreements over who the Bounty rightfully goes to. Some arbitration body would be needed if Bounties are being handed out to the public at large and not the small and friendly community of this thread.

In my opinion the present Bounty System is not ready for prime time.

- Nova


 

[dalamar96]

im trying to send devcoins to somebody but they wont send  0.0
when I check the client it says status: 0/offline ?   the coins left my wallet.

Been waiting for 2 hours and it's still the same.

It sounds like you aren't connecting to any servers. So the request has been created, but not sent. Has your client downloaded the whole blockchain? Has it ever connected to the servers? If not it could be that the ports are blocked on your connection. Which client are you using?

[dalamar96]

Novacadian,
   I see your point. Maybe that is why I was having trouble figuring out how it worked. Some of my ideas for the system fit with yours. I wanted to make it clearer than the forums for people to see what bounties have been proposed, accepted, closed etc. I think it is above my paygrade for how to price them (in shares I mean). If you login on the site you can propose bounties, vote on them or comment on them. Otherwise you can just see the bounties and the details for them. I figured if each of the proposed bounties were able to be voted on and commented on, everything would work itself out as far as shares for the bounty, what it would entail, and exactly how to implement the bounty. I also figured they would change from the original proposal to a more detailed bounty as well as something that more people were looking for etc. The sub bounties would be awesome. I will see what I can do to implement that as well on the site. Not sure that I would let anyone do it, just the admins, but still it is a good idea. I will have to think harder on the arbitration part of things, didn't think about that.

[dalamar96]

Another thought on the bounty thing.

If there were problems with a number of people working on the same bounty and we have the problem with who finishes first and getting crappy results etc. we could implement it where people could sign up for the bounty. If a single bounty has a number of people signing up for it, it could be broken up or they could work together or what not. (Haven' thought that through completely) Still just a thought I guess

[novacadian]

I may have a first rev up today, not sure yet   Will be at http://madrabbitproductions.com/devcoin/

Tried logging in yet novacadian was not recognized. That could explain why my test 1000 word entry in DevTome never received a share. That whole issue is another area that does not seem user friendly enough for prime time. At least DevTome seems to have attracted the People Power to take things to that next level though.
 
- Nova

[ranlo]

I may have a first rev up today, not sure yet   Will be at http://madrabbitproductions.com/devcoin/

Tried logging in yet novacadian was not recognized. That could explain why my test 1000 word entry in DevTome never received a share. That whole issue is another area that does not seem user friendly enough for prime time. At least DevTome seems to have attracted the People Power to take things to that next level though.
 
- Nova

If you started writing for this round, you probably aren't on the earning list yet. We deal with this a couple days prior to (or after) the round ends, vetting new writers to see who meets the criteria and who doesn't.

[dalamar96]

Tried logging in yet novacadian was not recognized. That could explain why my test 1000 word entry in DevTome never received a share. That whole issue is another area that does not seem user friendly enough for prime time. At least DevTome seems to have attracted the People Power to take things to that next level though.
 
- Nova

Yeah I couldn't find your name in the account files yet. It isn't ready for prime time and never was meant to be, it is a prototype, and probably will never be anything but a prototype. It is just for messing around with ideas. I didn't want to set up the site where people had to sign up (create an account on the site). I figured I would just use the account files so people could see their shares on the main page, and it just spread when I decided to add the bounty section. If we decide to use the bounty section more than it is right now then maybe I will set it up where people have to sign up and create an account (then have to link it to their devtome account if they want to see their shares etc...)

[tenthirtyone]

Hello everyone,

The forum @ http://162.243.37.115 now bans users from viewing your topics if they are on your ignore list.

[Hunterbunter]

Another thought on the bounty thing.

If there were problems with a number of people working on the same bounty and we have the problem with who finishes first and getting crappy results etc. we could implement it where people could sign up for the bounty. If a single bounty has a number of people signing up for it, it could be broken up or they could work together or what not. (Haven' thought that through completely) Still just a thought I guess

That's an option, but it does devalue the "true value" of devcoins imho. It reduces the competitive spirit, which will increase the time to market overall. I think collaborative pools are a better solution for projects just too difficult by themselves (just like with mining bitcoins), and even being part of a pool doesn't guarantee winning a bounty. It's this risk of loss (not winning a bounty) which gets people working faster, because they're more motivated when they decide to go for it. Having runner-up bounties is another way around it - eg 12 for the first one or two, 6 for the next two, and so on, because then it's not a completely wasted effort for the fastest workers, and there is built-in redundancy - lots of different ways of solving the same problem, which is a boon for open source (the real winner here). I think we should definitely have a collaboration subforum or something where people can find others to work on a bounty with them more easily. A website collaboration connector thing would be great too, where people list their skills and can search for others with skills they need, and I imagine that would make for a good bounty in the future. Bounties should be about seeding ideas that we want the open source community to grow.

Sanctioned bounties are also a way around it - actually giving work to specific people, but that opens the door for abuse (just like banks bribing politicians to make people need banks more)...while there are benefits, the potential abuse is a big turn off. For massive projects (like blender.org), which are managed it's a bit different, and those would get maintenance pay rather than bounties - I believe this was the original intention of devcoins.

The other thing about signing up for bounties is that it can be intimidating for someone who may actually have provided the fastest/simplest implementation, but never tried, which can be avoided by it being blind.

If you're worried that at some point there will be 10 awesome developers always getting all the bounties and others work on them but never get the chance, I understand the worry (being a relatively crappy programmer), but at the very least, open source will win. The other crappy programmers and I can study what they did, while its still fresh, learn from them, and even apply it to our own projects. That's the great thing about open source. The other thing is that there will always be tons more bounties than there is the manpower to do. The demand for software (all software) is essentially infinite, so I can't imagine a time when someone can't find something to do. Heck, I could probably list 5 improvement bounties off the top of my head for the last 2-3 that I did...and the best thing with open source is that I don't have to be the one to do it. If someone looked at my code and improved it so I could use it on my website, we could even have a deal where they give me a portion in collaboration instead of going through the hassle of creating a page/domain/server specifically for it, etc, and still get the lions share of the bounty.

It doesn't have to work the way that I'm describing here; I just believe that if it does, devcoins and http://devtome.com in particular will become much more valuable much more quickly. It's a more capitalist way of doing things. Crappy results should be filtered out by the administrators, and if someone wins a bounty but has crappy code/skills, it's probably because the criteria for it weren't specific or clear enough. If the administrators are satisfied with the results matching the criteria, then the bounties are complete - keep in mind all bounties are open for a few days after claiming, and objections are encouraged/noted. After the fact, it's just wasting time.

Of course, all of this is only applicable if you consider devcoins from the perspective of a bitcoin competitive mining analogy, which I don't believe was the original intention. I'm still waiting to hear the original devcoiner's thoughts on this, on whether that has changed. Even if it wasn't the original intention, I believe this perspective still fits the devcoin motto perfectly: "From the many, one. From one, the source".

[Bittzy78]

I know that I am very new to this forum but I thought that I would go ahead and throw this out there to anyone who might be interested...

I bought the domain http://www.DevcoinStore.com and have been using my very limited website building skills over the last couple of days to put a website together. It is never going to look very good but it will be more about the products and customer service than a polished website.

I plan on offering products in the following categories..

1. Gift cards - Digital cards sent by email and also physical cards sent in the mail

2. Jewelry - It will mainly be items purchased from other websites and/or made by my wife

3. Computer Stuff - Small easy to ship computer related items such as games, flash drives and small components for computers.

4. Everything else - This section will be everything else that doesn't fit into the other three.

All transactions will be in Devcoins and handled through Coin Payments.

All physical items will be sent with tracking and usually in a bubble mailer. The items to big for a bubble mailer will probably be sent in a small box. I will also only ship physical items with a tracking number.

I only have two gift cards for sale at this time but plan on putting more items up during the next two days that I am off of work. I have attempted to offer some level of transparency by putting my IDs from this forum, Devtome and ebay on the site.

Once again, I have almost no website building skills whatsoever so the site will never look that good. However, I have been on ebay for many years and have a feedback score of over 1200.

I am not looking for a bounty or anything...more like trying to fill a void of where people can spend Devcoins.

 

http://www.devcoinstore.com

[norti]

It is good to see people putting time and effort into DVC projects.
I've just found out about https://cryptostocks.com/ while I was thinking "it would be cool if Devcoin would be supported at kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites".
Has anybody used cryptostocks already and can share some insights how it is working?

What other projects do you know that involve DVC?

[dalamar96]

Sanctioned bounties are also a way around it - actually giving work to specific people, but that opens the door for abuse (just like banks bribing politicians to make people need banks more)...while there are benefits, the potential abuse is a big turn off. For massive projects (like blender.org), which are managed it's a bit different, and those would get maintenance pay rather than bounties - I believe this was the original intention of devcoins.

The other thing about signing up for bounties is that it can be intimidating for someone who may actually have provided the fastest/simplest implementation, but never tried, which can be avoided by it being blind.

If you're worried that at some point there will be 10 awesome developers always getting all the bounties and others work on them but never get the chance, I understand the worry (being a relatively crappy programmer), but at the very least, open source will win. The other crappy programmers and I can study what they did, while its still fresh, learn from them, and even apply it to our own projects. That's the great thing about open source. The other thing is that there will always be tons more bounties than there is the manpower to do. The demand for software (all software) is essentially infinite, so I can't imagine a time when someone can't find something to do. Heck, I could probably list 5 improvement bounties off the top of my head for the last 2-3 that I did...and the best thing with open source is that I don't have to be the one to do it. If someone looked at my code and improved it so I could use it on my website, we could even have a deal where they give me a portion in collaboration instead of going through the hassle of creating a page/domain/server specifically for it, etc, and still get the lions share of the bounty.

Yeah I agree with the Sanctioned bounties. I don't think they should be assigned for the reasons that you said. The intimidation portion I am not completely on board with, but I could see how that would be a problem possibly. It is early (in the day) and I can't think straight yet (need more coffee). I do like the option of having runner up bounties on some projects, others it doesn't make sense. I think there is a lot of improvement room, but we just have to keep hashing out ideas like we are here

[Papacrusher]

Good morning all!  I woke up to an unexpected surprise of a large DVC deposit that I have no idea who its from nor what its for.  If it was an accidental transaction, the sender can PM me with the exact amount sent so that I know they are the rightful owner and I will return it.  Thanks.  It was sent to the address in my signature.

[giftculturewriting]

Good morning all!  I woke up to an unexpected surprise of a large DVC deposit that I have no idea who its from nor what its for.  If it was an accidental transaction, the sender can PM me with the exact amount sent so that I know they are the rightful owner and I will return it.  Thanks.  It was sent to the address in my signature.

I got one, too. I suspect it's about the issue below.

About a week ago, plagiarism was found in the articles of Notabot (Fheenix on devtome). It was just after the receiver files were made, so it was too late to regenerate the files. I talked with Notabot, and it turned out he hired a writer who was copying text. He was really sorry about it and wanted to quit. It was many articles, about 220,000 words worth, at an average of 300,000 devcoins per share, it's about 66 million devcoins. Notabot then deleted all those articles from devtome. Notabot was also selling his devcoins, so he has few left and full restitution is impossible. I judged that his repentance was sincere, and so I suggested a way to atone, following in spirit:
http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=conditional_forgiveness

Notabot would stop selling his devcoins, and send all but 5 million back to people at the end of December, and then send all but 5 million back at the end of the round 30 payment at the end of January. For a year, round 31 to round 42 inclusive, a third of his earnings would be sent back.

This might seem like an easy way off, because this will not pay back all the devcoins. However, it is much harder and more expensive than simply quitting.

I think this a reasonable atonement, however if a majority of admins don't want this then it's off.

Also, Matt2838, who started altcoincards.com, says the reason the site is down is because of a hosting merger.

[Hunterbunter]

Yeah I agree with the Sanctioned bounties. I don't think they should be assigned for the reasons that you said. The intimidation portion I am not completely on board with, but I could see how that would be a problem possibly. It is early (in the day) and I can't think straight yet (need more coffee). I do like the option of having runner up bounties on some projects, others it doesn't make sense. I think there is a lot of improvement room, but we just have to keep hashing out ideas like we are here

Yeah runner-up bounties wouldn't make sense for all of them. There's definitely room for improvement, as novacadian mentioned above too. I think once the new forum is set up it will be much easier to discuss stuff and flesh out ideas more.

On another note, anyone who wants to explore their devtome ratings and earning amounts and all that can look it up here:

http://dvccountdown.blisteringdevelopers.com/devtome

As usual, it's searchable by name, key, or blank for everything in the file. Earliest available data is round 22, and 31 (current) hasn't been created yet.

The file it's reading is devtome.csv, which only gets updated once a month or so, but it contains all the word details and weights and everything to do with devtome writing. You can always look at the file directly, as I haven't done anything to the data, it's just for the non-technical types to be able to see it in a slightly more digestible table format without having to download the file etc. Enjoy!

[dalamar96]

Hunterbunter:
   Nice, it is easier to read that way than in the CSV. Question I have is what data in that file do most people look for when they are reading it? There is a lot in there that does nothing for most people I would think (at least for me).

Next thought:
  What is the status of any Android applications pertaining to DevCoin? Any at all?

Chad

[dalamar96]

Since there was a little discussion on the Bounties, I figured I would actually write up what I was planning on doing with the site I was working on yesterday.

DevCoin Bounty Site Flow

== Main Bounty Page ==
  Show Open Bounties
  Show Proposed (but not accepted) Bounties
  Show Closed (paid or set to pay) Bounties
  If the user is logged in Show a button to allow them to Propose a New Bounty
  All Bounty Titles are Clickable to a Bounty Detail Page

== Bounty Detail Page ==
  Show all users:
    Title
    Description
    Proposed or Paid Shares (Shares can be changed by an admin based on comments etc)
    Date Proposed
    Date Accepted
    Date Closed (Paid or Set to Pay) 
    Who Proposed the Bounty
    Who collected the Bounty
  Logged In Users:
    Can Vote Up or Down for Proposed Bounties
    Can Comment on Any Bounty

== Propose New Bounty Page ==
  (Only Logged in Users)
  Enter a Title
  Enter a Proposed Share Amount
  Enter a Description

== Admin Page ==
  (Bounty Admins or Full Admins)
  Edit Any Part of a Bounty
  Set as Accepted (Open)
  Set as Closed (Paid or Set to Pay)
  Can also Close without Accepting which is like Killing a Proposal
    In this case a Bounty will have a Proposed Date and a Closed Date, No Collection User and No Accepted Date


This is my current thinking for the site in progress right now at http://madrabbitproductions.com/devcoin. If there are any ideas or what not on how to make it better or if you want to use the ideas to create your own site, feel free!

Chad