Bitcointalk's important historic changes

[notocactus]

Local rules:
- It is not a self-moderated thread, because Meta board does not allow self-moderated ones; but if one spams here, I will report spam posts to moderators.


Table of contents

• Forum name
• Domain name
• Forum administrators
• New forum software
• Rank system
• Merit system
• Trust system
• Bump rules
• Copper membership
• Username change policy
• Image display
• Captcha
• Restrictions on Newbies' PMs
• Restrictions on signature in some boards
• General statistics
• Altcoin give aways are not allowed
• Retention/ Privacy info
• Seclog changes
• Account recovery changes
• Thread ownership can be changed
• Links no longer open in a new window/tab
• Avatar changes
• Vote changes
• Badge changes
• Newbie jail
• Self-moderated threads
• Forum servers
• Signature changes
• Forum data dumps
• Suspend ad sales
• 2FA added
• Mixers banned
• Second chances
• Security Bounty
• Miscellaneous
• Reference

Contents


Forum name
It was invented by Jeff Garzik who bought the domain. ^{read more}

Domain name(s)

• Welcome to the new Bitcoin forum (by satoshi)
• Domain name update on 17 April 2020 (by theymos)

Forum administrators

• Founder and first admin: satoshi. Created this forum on Nov 22, 2009
• theymos was promoted as one of admins in 2011 together with Gavin Andersen and sirius
• sirius become the head admin since 2012 since the disappearance of satoshi until 2012
• Since 2012, theymos was the head admin
• theymos did not have any special access to Bitcointalk.org and its DNS until around 2013 ^{not sure. It seems theymos mistakenly remembered something with time in 2012 and 2013.}
• Since ^{still searching}, forum has a second head admin, Cyrus

New forum software

• Beta of new forum software now officially open
• Epochtalk installation readme
• Where is your new Bitcointalk? #RaiseYourVoice
• There are at least 3 trial forums that use Epochtalk's source codes (use them at your own risks)
  
  • www.cryptos-currencies
  • https://coinbistro.com (by Cryptios team)
  • https://blog.mocacinno.com/
• Live-data demo. (January 2025)
• No longer pursuing Epochtalk (February 2025)

Rank system
The bitcointalk.org forum created in 2019, on 22^th November 2009, by now it has had three significant changes (listed below) in its rank system.
For more details, please see: History of bitcointalk.org's rank system

• November 22, 2009 - January 22, 2018: Without activity requirements
  Welcome to the new Bitcoin forum!
• June 18, 2013 - January 23, 2018: Activity requirements
  Activity & new membergroup limits
• January 24, 2018 - September 16, 2018: Activity requirements + Merit requirements
  Merit & new rank requirements
• September 17, 2018 - by now: Users have to earn at least one merit to become Junior Members (if enough activities)
  Enhanced newbie restrictions & requirements

Merit system
1. Merit & new rank requirements
2. Enhanced newbie restrictions & requirements
For more, please see:

• One year anniversary of merit system
• One year anniversary of enhanced merit system
• Merit source observations

Trust system
1. Original Trust system

• Trust improvements
• Trust vocabulary
• Minor trust score algorithm change

2. Default Trust change;
3. Trust flags (from which we have flags that have separate and different functions than Trust, feedback, to avoid misusing)
I highly recommend the guide from LoyceV: LoyceV's Beginners guide to correct use of the Trust system
4. 5 trust feedback per user
It was applied since 2nd February 2019

OK, new limits:
 - You can't give more than 5 ratings to a single user.
 - Your total sent ratings is limited to three times your activity, but at least 1.
 - The comment length is limited to 600 characters, but each newline counts as 120 characters.

Bump changes
I am not sure when bump rules first applied, but maybe here:
1. Marketplace rules and guidelines (first version of bump rules)
2. Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules, guidelines, FAQ

13. Bumps, "updates" are limited to once per 24 hours.[2]
21. Old bumps should be deleted. [2]
22. Advertising (this includes mining pools, gambling services, exchanges, shops, etc.) in others threads' is no longer allowed, including, but not limited to, in altcoin announcement threads. [8]

3. Bumping changes on some boards (bump button & bump score)
This idea to build up a bump button and bump score began here:
community generated suggestions to improve the forum (+ eventual voting on them)

An example: a bump button sounds good as a fix for certain very visible problems, but it also codifies a broken system. People would use bots to bump all of their threads constantly, giving "industrial" posters a huge advantage over casual posters. A captcha could maybe help a little, but there are services where you can pay a tiny fee to have captchas solved for you. (Which opens another question: maybe a comparatively tiny fee should be allowed as an alternative to having you solve a captcha.) A better solution would be to replace the concept of traditional bumping with something quite different, with different bumping models for different types of sections. But that requires further thought. If implementing a bump button was free, perhaps it'd be worthwhile to at least do it for now and fix a few minor problems with bumping today. But since it's a clearly-imperfect solution, this isn't even on my miles-long to-do list.

And there: Ideas for topic ordering in altcoin announcements?
For more, please see: Bumping - Rules, FAQs


Copper membership
1. Enhanced newbie restrictions & requirements
I am not sure about this one, and will check further.
2. grin is now accepted for forum payments
Later, in November 2021, theymos disabled grin as one of payment methods for Copper Membership.

Guide steps to wear Copper membership is here


Username change policy
Please read

• Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules, guidelines, FAQ

Q: I want to change my forum username. What should I do?
A: You can either donate 50 BTC to become a VIP or PM theymos asking to change your username (although he rarely accepts such requests nowadays).

Chronologically, it was allowed since 2009 till 2011, in August 2011, change was made and since that timepoint, only moderators, donators, VIP members can change usernames by themselves. Other members have to contact theymos for username changes and it very barely was approved.

This policy lasted from 2011 till December 2019 or January 2020, when theymos began to change his policy again, and he more easily accepted username change requests. Around time when I made this thread.

From 2020 to 2025, it's more easily to get approvals from theymos than previous years.


Image display

• Newbies can now pay a small fee to enable images
• Images in posts disabled for newbies

Captcha

• Moving to Cloudflare
• Login captcha
• Captcha bypass

Restrictions on newbies' PMs

• Newbie PM warning
• Newbie PM changes to address phishing
• New PM limits
• Newbie PM opt-in

Restrictions on signature in some board

• Two new no-signature boards
• Rules for Serious Discussion and Ivory Tower

General statistics
In 2017, after a DDOS attack, theymos disabled some of forum stats and user stats at profile page like "Show general statistics for this member."

• Start from Forum is really slow lately.
• Then theymos investigated, and took action as you can see in his posts.

Lots of traffic, not sure yet whether it's mostly legitimate or a DDoS getting through Cloudflare. In any case, I changed some things which may help.

I might've figured it out. A bunch of things are currently disabled; I'll work on safely enabling them in the coming days.

In 2018.

• Updating the Statistics Center Data

Collecting some of these stats became too expensive, so I had to disable some them. IIRC, I changed it so that topic read counts only count logged-in members, and some of the stats related on members online were totally disabled. I would like to enable them again, but it probably won't happen too soon.

Altcoin giveaways are not allowed
Giveaway threads are not allowed

15. No on-forum altcoin giveaways. [6][e]

For more, please see: Altcoin give-away rule results in temporary bans. Read before posting.


Retention/ Privacy info

• Retention/privacy info

Seclog changes

• Password reset log
• FYI: "ownership change queued"

Account recovery changes
Old:

• Recovering hacked accounts or accounts with lost passwords

New:

• Recovering hacked/lost accounts
• Account recoveries are moving again
• Cryptios

Thread ownership can be changed

• What to do with the wall observer thread?
• Wall Observer new ownership

From WO, theymos considered to disable signature in some serious boards later.


Links no longer open in a new window/tab

• Links no longer open in a new window/tab

Avatar changes

• Accepting default Bitcoin avatars
• Avatars re-enabled
• APNGs are now detected

Vote changes

• You must be at least a Jr. Member to vote in polls

Badge changes

• Badges
• Legendary coin color changed to dark blue

Newbie jails

• Newbie restrictions (Please discuss forum policy here.)
• Newbie restrictions
• End of newbie restrictions; ban changes

Self-moderated threads

• Self-moderated topics *
• Minor selfmod enhancement

*

• If you want to make a self-moderated topic, do it at beginning. Click on Additional options, and choose self-moderated. Do it firstly before you compose content of your topic, because after a long writing time, you will forget to choose the option.
• You can not convert a non-self-moderated topic to a self-moderated topic.
• Convert self-moderated topic to non-self-moderated topic
  
  • YES, you can.
  • How?
    
    • Move your self-moderated topic to a board in which this option is not allowed. *
    • Archival or Meta
    • You should use Archival board for this purpose because Meta is for important discussion about the forum issues, not for your own issues, and for such conversion purpose

*: Scam Accusations, Important Announcements, and Auctions. Anyway, Archival is the best board to do so because if you use other boards for this purpose, it is abuse and makes those board like your trashcan. Should avoid.

Self-moderated topics? Can you say what boards this applies too? This is going to be bad if it is on certain boards, cause some people can edit threads to benefit them, I really hope it is just the off-topic board.

I can manually make threads self-moderated (only I can do this), but I only do this if the thread is extremely long/entrenched and the OP is trustworthy, since you are not allowed to delete any posts made before the topic became self-moderated.

Forum servers

• Forum moved to current one
• Moving servers

Signature changes

• No more signature images
• Merit & new rank requirements (Newbies unable to wear signature)
• Enhanced newbie restrictions & requirements (old-era Junior members deranked to Newbie) if did not earn at least 1 merit, and unable to wear signature).

Forum data dumps

• Dump of posts
• Additional data dumps?

Suspend ad sales

• After Round 353, theymos decided to suspend ad sales on September 20, 2022.
• On 14 May 2024, theymos removed it completely when adding a SMF patch
  
  • See theymos' post on it.

2FA added

• Announcement on December 21, 2023.
• I was done with contribution from PowerGlove. A concise 2FA/TOTP implementation (SMF patch). Finally it was deployed by theymos, after about 6 months of development by PowerGlove and test by theymos.

Mixers banned

• Mixers to be banned (announcement) on December 01, 2023.
• It was adjusted a little bit from original terms drafted by theymos. It was applied since January 01, 2024.

Second chances

• Second chances (announcement) on December 12, 2023 by Cyrus, a co-admin with theymos.

Security Bounty

• Security bounties (announcement) on October 12, 2013 by theymos. Initially, all information is in that thread.
  
  • Wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20140420064832/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=309785.0
• Now, information is at https://bitcointalk.org/sbounties.php
• Rewards changed from troy ounces of gold (XAU), converted to Bitcoin. Since 2021, it is $, converted to Bitcoin.

Miscellaneous

• Get Donator status by donating 10 BTC
• Various limit changes
• Ignore users
• Watchlist
• BTC tag
• Ad Stats
  
  • Signatures with marquee text was disabled in December 2011.
  • Change was made with the indicator (or index, whatever you call it), namely "Unique IPs", since the round 243
  • It was changed to "Daily unique IPs from logged-out users"
• OP identifier SMF Patch since September 12 2022
• Small improvement regarding activity / "Show others your online status"

Reference

The active administrators are currently:
theymos (me)
Gavin Andresen
sirius

Sirius runs the server.

It's surprising how well-documented history can become totally forgotten... Satoshi created the forum on Nov 22, 2009, and was head administrator until almost 2011. Then Sirius was head administrator until 2012, which is when I took over.

Cobra also owns the bitcointalk.org domain name. I consider the forum to be basically owned by or at least dedicated to the Bitcoin community, though; I don't call anyone an owner of the forum.

That wiki article is kind of terrible...

Of course not, do you really need to ask?

 - I was made a forum admin in 2011, after Satoshi left. (Silk Road also appeared after Satoshi left.) I didn't have any special access to bitcoin.org until around 2013, and in fact I didn't even have any access to the bitcointalk.org DNS until 2013.

There was a period where both Sirius and I were active administrators. For convenience, I reckon Jan 1, 2012 as when I became head administrator, though it was actually a gradual transition starting before and ending after that.

The story of how I became head admin is actually pretty boring. Moderators were needed, so I was made a global moderator. Then admins were needed, so I was made an admin. Then over time the other admins slowly lost interest and resigned until I was the only one left. I guess most of the people who were around here to see this have more-or-less left the community now. That's a bit sad.

It's not entirely clear, but for simplicity I usually say that I became head admin at the beginning of 2011, a little over a year after the forum was created.

The forum was originally located at bitcoin.org/smf, then forum.bitcoin.org (hence the redirect), and finally bitcointalk.org. Fun fact: The name "bitcointalk" was invented by Jeff Garzik, and he's the one who bought the domain.

[/list]

[coupable]

As usual , you made a great nice job tranthidung ☺️
All my respect Sir .

I would like to suggest adding another element to your list which is about "Local Boards" if you can collect data about them. Personally, i don't know what non-English board has been created first or when/how hire mods.
As an example , and as far as i can remember, my local board "arabic" has been created in 2017, and i think this info should be displayed in your list if you can provide further details. Same thing with other boards.
It would also be good if you can find data about first to latest created boards and sub_boards. This should also belong to the forum great changes.

[Halab]

i don't know what non-English board has been created first

Funny, I asked myself the same question a few days ago. For that you can look at the ids of the local section. 
For example :
Russian section: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=10.0 (id: 10)
French section; https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=13.0 (id: 13)
Arabic section: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=241.0 (id: 241)

It will give you an idea.

[DdmrDdmr]

<...>

I actually went on a (mini)quest this past summer to find a thread that contained the original petition for the Spanish local board (if there was such a petition). I found it, at the time, on Meta: Please create a Local/Castellano (Spanish) forum.

Side note: While at it, I found this gem: Who's the Spanish jerk draining the Faucet?

[Bightening]

I think this should count as a new addition to historical change in Badge. (Although it is yet to be fully implemented)

5 art-contest-winner badges will be assigned to the winners of this voting.

Restrictions on signature in some board

• Rules for Serious Discussion and Ivory Tower

The link for ‘Rules for serious discussion and Ivory tower is wrong. You might want to correct it to; https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2722359.0.


Important to note that, Bitcointalk.org wasn’t a day’s job, most of the changes made resulted from ‘in-use’ challenges and from complaints from forum users. Most had to go through the polls, and some others were solutions suggested by the forum community, showing it’s a community decision. So if you’re new (or old) to the forum, you should appreciate the effort of older users and Theymos (who single handedly did the coding and Ann, except that done by Satoshi). Finally, the new software development would depend on lessons learnt here; community effort.

[notocactus]

Thanks @Bightening for pointing out my incorrect link; @coupable, @Halab and @DdmrDdmr for creative ideas.

I listened to all your opinion, made another decent thread, so here you go, guys: History of local boards

[coupable]

I listened to all your opinion, made another decent thread, so here you go, guys: History of local boards

That was amazingly fast !! But how you grab all this data in a very short time !!  Organise it in a wonderful way !! You don't even seems to make a lot of edits after publish !! Anyway, this really amazes me bro.
Now, it just lacks that you add the link to local boards history here to the main list so to have a full organised list.

[hosemary]

i don't know what non-English board has been created first

Funny, I asked myself the same question a few days ago. For that you can look at the ids of the local section. 
For example :
Russian section: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=10.0 (id: 10)
French section; https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=13.0 (id: 13)
Arabic section: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=241.0 (id: 241)

It will give you an idea.

Seems that cannot determine the order of creation of different local boards using their Ids.
According to History of local boards which was posted by tranthidung, German board has been created on 09/10/2010 and Russian board has been created on 29/6/2011 while their Ids are 16 and 10 respectively.  

[rosezionjohn]

Seems that cannot determine the order of creation of different local boards using their Ids.
According to History of local boards which was posted by tranthidung, German board has been created on 09/10/2010 and Russian board has been created on 29/6/2011 while their Ids are 16 and 10 respectively.  

Russian board was created first according to Veleor

The actual date of birthday of the Russian local is July 28, 2010

It's interesting that so many Russians have shown interest in the project. Thinking about the Russian culture and society, I'm not completely surprised why. I'll make a new board, let's see how many non-English-speaking users we'll get.

The first topic in the Russian local.

[notocactus]

I updated OP with a new section for the forum's domain name. The latest change comes from theymos. Domain name is the most important thing so despite of the section's very late creation day, I moved it to the second position. It deserves that position.
How to do private giveaways
This one will probably be implemented (from positive feedback the community members have discussed so far in that thread).

I noted it here and will updated OP when it will be officically implemented. The last reply of theymos in that thread gives us hope we will soon see its release.

[logfiles]

Have you guys noticesd that the "last edited" note with the time stamp is now visible while browsing on computer browsers too?
Thou no announcement was made, this new change has been around for about a couple of weeks now.



In the past, this feature was only visible on mobile devices where hovering the pointer on the timestamp of the post to see the time when the post was edited is not possible.

[notocactus]

In the past, this feature was only visible on mobile devices where hovering the pointer on the timestamp of the post to see the time when the post was edited is not possible.

On computer:
I don't see the change you mentioned. Maybe what you meant is after hovering mouse on the creation day of post/ thread, the latest edited day will be displayed. If it is what you actually meant, it comes from the past and is not a newest change.

On mobile devices:
The latest edited day is automatically displayed. No need for hovering mouse to see it.

Honestly, I don't know when it was firstly applied but it was an old minor feature.

[Saint-loup]

Have you guys noticesd that the "last edited" note with the time stamp is now visible while browsing on computer browsers too?
Thou no announcement was made, this new change has been around for about a couple of weeks now.



In the past, this feature was only visible on mobile devices where hovering the pointer on the timestamp of the post to see the time when the post was edited is not possible.

You are really seeing  that on a computer?
Could you tell us what browser you are using and what you have done to get that?

[dkbit98]

You are really seeing  that on a computer?
Could you tell us what browser you are using and what you have done to get that?

For me this works only if I hover over the date for specific post.
I tried with Firefox and Chrome based browsers and I am getting exactly the same result.

[CarnagexD]

It's been years since the merit system was introduced to the forum, I should have posted more so I could be a hero/legendary member before it got hard to rank up haha anyways it does not matter to me at all. Probably the change that got me bother sometimes is when I open links and I forgot to hit CTRL, it goes to different page and not tab 

Changes should be adapted, that's how we progress !

[notocactus]

Bump  after many months!
I only knew about the restriction on a maximum of trust feedback per one user. Updated OP too.

4. 5 trust feedback per user
It was applied since 2nd February 2019

OK, new limits:
 - You can't give more than 5 ratings to a single user.
 - Your total sent ratings is limited to three times your activity, but at least 1.
 - The comment length is limited to 600 characters, but each newline counts as 120 characters.

[notocactus]

LoyceV can whitelist users as I see the announcement Remove Proxyban (evil fees) - get whitelisted for free

There are guides and rules in that topic, you must read it. Not all applicants will be whitelisted, obviously. It breaks the main purpose of Whitelisting if all applicants can easily be approved.

One more thing, you can send your Whitelist request one time. If you get whitelisted when you are newbie, later when you rank up to Full member, you will not be able to get another whitelisting.

[notocactus]

I write an explanation on self-moderated option for newbies

*

• If you want to make a self-moderated topic, do it at beginning. Click on Additional options, and choose self-moderated. Do it firstly before you compose content of your topic, because after a long writing time, you will forget to choose the option.
• You can not convert a non-self-moderated topic to a self-moderated topic.
• Convert self-moderated topic to non-self-moderated topic
  
  • YES, you can.
  • How?
    
    • Move your self-moderated topic to a board in which this option is not allowed.
    • Archival or Meta
    • You should use Archival board for this purpose because Meta is for important discussion about the forum issues, not for your own issues, and for such conversion purpose

[Pmalek]

You can not convert a non-self-moderated topic to a self-moderated topic.

A regular user can't, but theymos can and he is the only one that can do it. But only if there is a valid reason for it. This was discussed yesterday (I don't feel like searching for the thread) and someone shared a quote from theymos where he mentioned that he has the ability to make such conversions. However, only posts made after the conversion can be self-moderated by the OP. Posts written before aren't affected and can't be deleted. 

[notocactus]

You can not convert a non-self-moderated topic to a self-moderated topic.

A regular user can't, but theymos can and he is the only one that can do it. But only if there is a valid reason for it. This was discussed yesterday (I don't feel like searching for the thread) and someone shared a quote from theymos where he mentioned that he has the ability to make such conversions. However, only posts made after the conversion can be self-moderated by the OP. Posts written before aren't affected and can't be deleted.  

It's interesting but reasonable because theymos can make a self-moderated topic in Meta board. 

Do you give me a quote? I can not find it.

By the way, I found that not only Meta & Archival, but a few other boards that don't allow self-moderated topics. I am not sure why theymos did not mention Archival.

Self-moderated topics? Can you say what boards this applies too? This is going to be bad if it is on certain boards, cause some people can edit threads to benefit them, I really hope it is just the off-topic board.

The excluded sections are Meta (except for this topic), Scam Accusations, Important Announcements, and Auctions. Tagged scammers can't use this feature. You don't have to participate in self-moderated topics if you're worried about manipulation by the OP.