Where's the new forum Theymos?

[Stunna]

Realistically it will cost 10k Max to make a new great forum, a lot of users of this forum are willing to help out. If Theymos sees this he should post a thread where he will list all updates and seek assistance.

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[Matthew N. Wright]

Realistically it will cost 10k Max to make a new great forum, a lot of users of this forum are willing to help out. If Theymos sees this he should post a thread where he will list all updates and seek assistance.

Oh he already saw it I'm sure, but as with all things involing Theymos it's like pulling teeth.

[infested999]

Realistically it will cost 10k Max to make a new great forum, a lot of users of this forum are willing to help out. If Theymos sees this he should post a thread where he will list all updates and seek assistance.

Oh he already saw it I'm sure, but as with all things involing Theymos it's like pulling teeth.

He saw it, he already replied.

I think the response is uniform, whoever donated cannot expect any great return. They are a little bit disappointed they donated $600,000 and kind of regret donating, but not enough to post about it here. Everyone who can't afford it easily wont donate unless it's necessary.

[Raoul Duke]

I noticed that if you buy Bitcoins from Bitinstant you have agreed not to use your Bitcoins:

http://getsomecoin.com/bitinstant/

to pay for, support or otherwise engage in any illegal gambling activities; illegally acquired music, movies or other content; sexually-oriented materials or services; fraud; money-laundering; terrorist organizations; or the purchase or sale of tobacco, firearms, prescription drugs, or other controlled substances.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH

So, how do they check for compliance and what will they do in case of non compliance by one of their costumers?

[Rassah]

There a big gap between over-regulation and doing stuff that is ridiculous.  It is not my forum so they can take suggestions or leave them.  As for being a nanny you may notice that Bitpay screens their merchants and I don't think they would allow many of the advertisers on here to be merchants.  I am also setting up a site about where to buy Bitcoin.  I noticed that if you buy Bitcoins from Bitinstant you have agreed not to use your Bitcoins:

http://getsomecoin.com/bitinstant/

to pay for, support or otherwise engage in any illegal gambling activities; illegally acquired music, movies or other content; sexually-oriented materials or services; fraud; money-laundering; terrorist organizations; or the purchase or sale of tobacco, firearms, prescription drugs, or other controlled substances.

I wasn't aware that BitPay bans merchants from advertising or soliciting on this forum. Where did you get that information? As for Bitinstant's terms, what does any of that have to do with this forum?

[Rassah]

I was pointing out Bitinstant's terms because I am being accused of being a "nanny."  I am pointing out that that the most successful Bitcoin businesses do indeed restrict how they do business.

Oooh, I see. Yeah, I'm sorry, calling you a nanny was harsh, but it was kinda directed at everyone wanting to limit things here. I was thinking of "the nanny state" idea. I guess the difference is that BitPay chose to do what they do for their reasons - public image, regulatory issues -  and bitcointalk chose to do what they do for their different reasons - no need to attract customers, have a place for open discourse about Bitcoin and its economy and politics. Not censoring anyone allows for a place where we can truly experiment with ideas to see where they take us. For example
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=108778.msg1181838#msg1181838

Each has its own purpose. Besides, I like that with this forum's open nature, I can actually see who is who, and what people are truly made of, instead of only seeing the nice parts, and having someone trying to convince me that all is well and everyone is trustworthy.

[Rassah]

Honestly, I'm still very much divided between

"We need as many people as possible nao!"

and

"Bitcoin is still in such early development, with it being so easy to lose bitcoins to hacks and forgotten passwords, and so many untested issues related to scalability, that maybe it's best to keep growth low. People will come eventually."

But back on topic, Forum! Theymos! Rabble rabble rabble!

[dillpicklechips]

For the new forum-

Has there been any thought to just using mailing lists that are custom tailored for us and a web gui for those who like to log into a forum site. A mailing list for each sub-category. The software would then parse the emails and format it for easy reading with all the data we are used to here. Then we could build identities into it first using Bitcoin signed messages for those who don't want to sign in and slowly adding features. It could also run parallel to this forum until it took on a life on it's own. An advantage is that it can be extended easily and doesn't depend on any particular software.

[QuestionAuthority]

Honestly, I'm still very much divided between

"We need as many people as possible nao!"

and

"Bitcoin is still in such early development, with it being so easy to lose bitcoins to hacks and forgotten passwords, and so many untested issues related to scalability, that maybe it's best to keep growth low. People will come eventually."

But back on topic, Forum! Theymos! Rabble rabble rabble!

A tiny portion of that could be used to develop tipping functionality for forums (in general, not just this forum).

Let's put this in perspective, shall we. A tiny portion of that money could be used to buy this beautiful 2,176 Sq Ft home in Florida.

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/3207-Pheasant-Trl_Mims_FL_32754_M58251-67114?row=1&source=web%2cweb#modal_PhotoGallery

[infested999]

Honestly, I'm still very much divided between

"We need as many people as possible nao!"

and

"Bitcoin is still in such early development, with it being so easy to lose bitcoins to hacks and forgotten passwords, and so many untested issues related to scalability, that maybe it's best to keep growth low. People will come eventually."

But back on topic, Forum! Theymos! Rabble rabble rabble!

A tiny portion of that could be used to develop tipping functionality for forums (in general, not just this forum).

Let's put this in perspective, shall we. A tiny portion of that money could be used to buy this beautiful 2,176 Sq Ft home in Florida.

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/3207-Pheasant-Trl_Mims_FL_32754_M58251-67114?row=1&source=web%2cweb#modal_PhotoGallery

Buy that house and rent it out to people for BTC. 1 renter per room in the house. Also all Florida Bitcoin meetups have to happen in that house.

[jeannie]

How about changing the forum software to Xenforo/VB4?

[Luckybit]

- More money is better than less money. I'm not going to turn down donations when people want to donate. (Though when asked, I often recommend that people not donate.) I'm not going to stop selling ads even though the forum probably has "enough" money. It's not bad for the forum to have extra money. It will be used on something useful at some point. If you don't like this, don't donate.
- More than half of the forum's money is from ads, not donations.
- During the school year, I am a full time student. I barely have time to administrate the forum.
- When I do have time, there are many interesting/important/fun things that compete for my attention. I don't spend all day working on the forum. I've certainly not been working full-time for 12 months on vaporware forum software...

I am still very interested in creating new forum software, and we probably now have enough money to do it. SMF works alright (definitely not perfectly), but there are two main problems with it that require more than just some modifications. Firstly, the coding style is generally insecure. It's very easy to introduce new security flaws, and it's likely that SMF has unknown security flaws. Secondly, modifications to SMF are somewhat difficult, and some types of modifications are so difficult that they will almost certainly never be done here. (Other forum software isn't significantly better, from what I've seen.)

There is unfortunately no magical machine which takes money and creates excellent software or hires a team of competent people. I'm not quite sure how best to turn the money into a good software product. I originally intended to give someone a bunch of money and have them handle the whole thing. I talked with dozens of people interested in doing this, but none of them made me totally confident. A while ago I decided that I will probably never be confident in any one person/company handling the entire project because I've thought about it much longer than they have (2 years), and I have many details about how it should work in my mind. So I probably need to get closer to the development process. My current plan is to write some detailed up-to-date specifications and do some of the high-level architectural work (DB tables, primarily) and then lead a team to do the rest.

I have a little more time now, but the forum software project is a somewhat low priority. I have several high-priority things to fix with the current software. If you want to help, I could use a very security-conscious PHP programmer to help me maintain/improve the current SMF installation.

I hoped you considered some of my ideas. I do think we need a completely redesigned forum designed for cryptocurrencies. SMF is not designed for making trades, or for tipping, or for microtransactions, all which could provide security and monetize the forum. Microtransactions would discourage spamming for instance. Lotteries could be built into threads for instance. Trades could be built into threads with escrow.

There is a lot which would be possible with a forum which is designed to handle cryptocurrencies. My suggestion is you should hire some contractors who have world class skill and put them to work on building a new forum. If you get this right you'll probably become a millionaire from the new forum technology. You have thousands of Bitcoins to work with so why not a contest to see who can come up with the best new forum design and reward 1 Bitcoin to the winner, then take it from there?

Or if you have the idea yourself why not just give us a white paper or specs and let us peer review it? If it has any weaknesses the community will certainly find it.

Frankly, this forum software seems perfectly fine for the job it is doing right now  

It has strengths and weaknesses. For debate and conversation it's nice, but for anything  business related or for cryptocurrencies it's not so great. People are having to use Google docs to trade and group buys aren't even efficiently handled.

Why don't you use that CIYAMOpen site from the guy here (Ian Knowles) to have task based bounties Theymos? You could easily add any small features and fix bugs that way. There is plenty of money on the site for it.

There are a lot of big brains in this forum and it would be nice see some cooperation to bring a new forum to the table, especially if that can offer all the crypto kung fu, ratings, top security, and all. Descentralize the tasks, Theymos!

I don't know how many hits this forum gets but it's big, big like MtGox is big. I think certain features would be in so much demand that people would pay for the development of the desired features. I know if you add trading functionality to this place it would be worth it to pay for it. When a new coin launches and people are mining it we should be able to have people buying and selling it on the forum, why not?

But this would make the forum an exchange so I can understand the legal implications.

[Rassah]

Why don't you invest the bitcoins into asicminer shares?

I'm fairly confident that Bitcoin returns will beat asicminer returns. But it's his money to invest as he wants I guess.

[Rassah]

Why don't you invest the bitcoins into asicminer shares?

I'm fairly confident that Bitcoin returns will beat asicminer returns. But it's his money to invest as he wants I guess.

Yeah, it looks like he is just going to keep the whole thing.  How does that compare to that pirate guy?  Did he get over $600K?

By A LOT! Also, all the money that pirateat40 was holding wasn't actually his, unlike all the money that theymos is holding.

[Rassah]

I don't know what was said or what promises were made or who owns what funds.  But, look at this:

http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=33E6kJ46

This is a non-legal agreement between The Bitcoin Forum ("Forum") and John K. ("Treasurer"). This agreement is intended to be enforced in a non-violent, non-legal way by the community.


What is a "non-legal agreement"?  How do you "enforce" an agreement in a "non-violent, non-legal" way?  Has anyone, anywhere, ever seen such an agreement in the history of the World outside of Bitcoin?

Yes I have. Non-legal just means you agree not to get government or the legal system involved. Non-legal agreements is how the vast underground black market has worked for thousands of years, be it drugs or counterfeit goods or whatever. It is also how the globalized business economy is just starting to work, where companies that don't work in any specific country can no longer pick which legal system to work with/within. You can enforce such agreements violently, or you can enforce them by letting everyone know that the person broke the agreement, and have others decide to never do any more deals with that person (no one would loan you anything, sell you anything, or do any business with you). Or you can resolve them in private arbitrage, and publish the results of the decision, letting everyone else make up their own opinion as to the outcome.

[JordanL]

A thought popped in to my head earlier regarding all the complaints about theymos having not spent the vast majority of the ~BTC6000 from donations to improve the forum yet... where are all the people patting him on the back and thanking him for accepting (the vast majority) of donations when Bitcoins were trading at between nothing and $13... and waiting to spend the vast majority of it until after they have become steady at over $100?

Shouldn't we be praising him for making ~$550,000 for this community???!!!

He now has unlimited money to do any imaginable improvement as well as a large reserve to negate the risk of a sharp drop in the exchange rate, because he didn't spend it in haste last year when the bulk of it was given. Not to mention the fact that this forum is already wildly successful and extremely integral to a billion dollar market, directly facilitating millions of dollars worth of trades every month... perhaps changing things quickly and without extended analysis, discussion, and planning is not the best idea.   

Three cheers for our wise forum leader. I imagine that this is quite an unprecedented situation in online forum history... and people are bitching? Only in Bitcoin... similar to the people who thought ASICMINER shares were overpriced because the dividend fell one week for obvious reasons.   

[an0nymous]

Theymos, where do you study at summer time?

I have advice for you:

Do you hear about i2p project?
http://www.i2p2.de/bounties.html

They use "system of bounties". It looks great and looks work.

For example:
make I2P IPv6 native - €100 EUR and 50BTC
I2P package in Debian and Ubuntu mirrors - €113 EUR
Bitcoin client for I2P - €30 EUR and 118,34BTC

I2p is opensource, like bitcoin, that way this bounties for all of us.

Simple Machines Forum (SMF) - too opensource.

How do you feel this way?

[crumbs]

I don't know what was said or what promises were made or who owns what funds.  But, look at this:

http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=33E6kJ46

This is a non-legal agreement between The Bitcoin Forum ("Forum") and John K. ("Treasurer"). This agreement is intended to be enforced in a non-violent, non-legal way by the community.


What is a "non-legal agreement"?  How do you "enforce" an agreement in a "non-violent, non-legal" way?  Has anyone, anywhere, ever seen such an agreement in the history of the World outside of Bitcoin?

Yes I have. Non-legal just means you agree not to get government or the legal system involved. Non-legal agreements is how the vast underground black market has worked for thousands of years, be it drugs or counterfeit goods or whatever. It is also how the globalized business economy is just starting to work, where companies that don't work in any specific country can no longer pick which legal system to work with/within. You can enforce such agreements violently, or you can enforce them by letting everyone know that the person broke the agreement, and have others decide to never do any more deals with that person (no one would loan you anything, sell you anything, or do any business with you). Or you can resolve them in private arbitrage, and publish the results of the decision, letting everyone else make up their own opinion as to the outcome.

Lolz.  I suppose that's why mafias, drug cartels & the rest of the real underworld are known for strict non-violence & peer arbitration through rational discourse & transparency. 
And that's why Pirateat40 never happened -- 'coz non-violent, non-legal agreements work great and never fail. 
And that's a fact, 'coz i'm always right & never lie 4realz.

[crumbs]

I suppose that's why mafias, drug cartels & the rest of the real underworld are known for strict non-violence & peer arbitration through rational discourse & transparency.  

I suppose you're right
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Italy#Violent_crime
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosa_Nostra#Protection_rackets

Well, you ain't getting a ride 'coz you're brainy, that's for sure  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosa_Nostra#Protection_rackets ?? -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosa_Nostra#Violence_and_reputation  
Yes dorothy, organised crime does use violence. Surprised?  Now GTF in the van, will ya?  
Edit:  And don't forget

And that's why Pirateat40 never happened -- 'coz non-violent, non-legal agreements work great and never fail. 
And that's a fact, 'coz i'm always right & never lie 4realz.

[crumbs]

I suppose that's why mafias, drug cartels & the rest of the real underworld are known for strict non-violence & peer arbitration through rational discourse & transparency.  

I suppose you're right
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Italy#Violent_crime
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosa_Nostra#Protection_rackets

Well, you ain't getting a ride 'coz you're brainy, that's for sure  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosa_Nostra#Protection_rackets ?? -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosa_Nostra#Violence_and_reputation  
Yes dorothy, organised crime does use violence. Surprised?  Now GTF in the van, will ya?  

For those too lazy to click on and read those links, and to show that crumbs is a liar who tries to win argumentsby mischaracterizing other people's statements, here are a few quotes from those links:

From Italy's crime statistics:

• At 0.013 per 1,000 people, Italy has the 47th highest murder rate in the world. This makes the murder rate in Italy less than 1/3 that of the United States.
• Italy is also a country with lower rates of rape than most other nations of the Western world. It has the 46th highest per-capita rate of rape in the world
• According to Police authorities data, the percentage of rapes per 100.000 inhabitants is significantly higher in the regions of the North than in the South ones. (south ones being the ones under mafia control)

From info on Cosa Nostra, Italy's biggest mafia:

• "These rules are not to touch the women of other men of honour; not to steal from other men of honour or, in general, from anyone; not to exploit prostitution; not to kill other men of honour unless strictly necessary; ... not to quarrel with other men of honour; to maintain proper behavior; ..." (redacted about keeping quiet w/ regards to police)
• Gambetta describes the Mafia as a cartel of "private protection firms" who act as guarantors of trust and security in areas of the economy where such things are scarce and fragile. In exchange for money or favors, mafiosi use the credible threat of violence to protect their clients from fraudsters, thieves, and competitors.
• by and large there are many clients who actively seek and benefit from mafioso protection. ...  This is one of the main reasons why the Mafia has resisted more than a century of government efforts to destroy it: the people who willingly solicit these services protect the Mafia from the authorities.
• Mafiosi approach potential clients in an aggressive but friendly manner, like a door-to-door salesman. ... Physical assault is rare
• The Mafia's power comes from its reputation to commit violence, particularly murder, against virtually anyone and get away with it. Through reputation, mafiosi deter their enemies and enemies of their clients. It allows mafiosi to protect a client without being physically present (e.g. as bodyguards or watchmen), which in turn allows them to protect many clients at once.

In other words, they use as little violence as possible, but establish a strong reputation that say that if anyone else commits violence, they will be met with stronger violence. As a result, areas under mafia control have much less violence and crime than areas without it. Not because the mafia is extremely violent, but because it has an extremely overwhelming reputation.

Edit:  And don't forget

And that's why Pirateat40 never happened -- 'coz non-violent, non-legal agreements work great and never fail.  

You bring up one failure out of the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of examples of trades that happened on this form alone that haven't failed, and use that as an example to prove that non-violent trades can't happen? Or to prove that trades reqire violence to happen? GTFO.

TL;DR but color me convinced -- the world run by organized crime is paradise.  I guess libertarian capitalism is ... what, close second?  

Edit:  Just skimmed through.  Something about Pirateat40 being 1 in whatever?  LOOOOL!!11!  Learn to history!  This forum is an excellent record of failure!  To this day, PMB are being sold & bought by people unwilling to do basic math.  Shilling is approved.  Sockpuppetry is the norm. Wake up & smell the frikin' coffee!