What one change would you like to see in bitcointalk in 2023

[UmerIdrees]

2023 will start in about a day or so. There are many suggestions thrown every now and then to improve the forum.

What one change would you like to see in bitcointalk in 2023?

Let's be precise in this discussion and list only a single change that you would like forum admins to make which can make the forum more productive yet it should not lose its traffic.

[Welsh]

Reporter badges .

Self explanatory, but I think it would help with encouraging reporters. theymos knows this, but obviously has talked about how he wants to implement it correctly, and mitigate abuse of the system. I'd just like to see it implemented even if it's a very basic version. We'd likely have to have some very large tier systems though, as this forum is several years old, and some users have over 100k reports.

[tranthidung]

My only wish is to have an update for Epochtalk - a new forum software. As far as I know, since the last update, the new software was mostly done. Just need

• Testing
• Improving
• Data transitioning

Epochtalk.org

• 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)
  
  • https://coinbistro.com (by Cryptios team) ^live
  • www.cryptos-currencies ^dead
  • https://blog.mocacinno.com/ ^dead

Last update

The software is substantially complete. The main period of development was a while ago; the current work is mainly just maintenance & relatively minor improvements. Try running it yourself and you'll find that it's working, fast, and nearly feature-complete.

The things blocking a transition from the current software to the new software are:
 - There hasn't been enough testing. I think that immediately after transition, a variety of small missed features, bugs, and performance issues would crop up. As a result, if the transition happened now (which is technically possible!), I'd expect the post-transition user experience to be poor for months while these things are fixed, which I don't want.
 - I am the only bitcointalk.org sysadmin and on-demand programmer, and I'm used to the current software. Furthermore, I need to frequently make changes to the current software, but each change I make might require alterations to Epochtalk, which is problematic.
 - The current PHP software, while ugly and sub-optimal in many ways, performs well, especially since I have extensively modified the backend to add features and improve performance. So I don't feel much urgency.
 - The data-transition procedure still has a few known minor bugs.
 
We continue to work on these issues. I think that ultimately I may need to hire one or more full-time people, since a big problem is that the full transition is likely to create a ton of work which I won't be able to effectively handle alone.

The software is not vaporware (it's long existed in a runnable state, and is currently basically feature-complete), and is not abandoned (look at the git commit log). If anyone is unhappy with the progress, I invite them to take the Epochtalk code and create a competing forum with it; since they won't have to worry about the transition issues, they'd have a much easier time, and their testing will also end up helping us.

In short: If you want the software quicker, go run your own forum with it, and work to get any problems or missing features you find resolved via bug reports, etc. This would increase public interest, provide much-needed testing, and I might even hire you to work on bitcointalk.org when we're ready to do the final transition here.

[Wapfika]

Forum bitcoin wallet and extra security such as sms & 2FA verification. I really like the idea of giving a tip to other user or pay services here without the need to access our main wallet and copy paste the address manually from here just to send someone Bitcoin in the forum.

And also a cool forum marketplace that user can purchase extra feature here in the forum such as custom title, avatar extra modification feature and other things that related on forum profile account decorations.

[shahzadafzal]

Mobile App please

[mk4]

Mobile App please

Doesn't even necessarily need to be an app. I just want better UI/UX for mobile. Heck, I'd be very happy even with just having a responsive UI alone.

[tranthidung]

Forum bitcoin wallet and extra security such as sms & 2FA verification.  

It was asked many times and theymos said it will be available on Epochtalk, not SMF forum software.

Reporter badges .

I revive those topics about reporting

• Seeking reporter badge images
• Monthly Report Statistics

Doesn't even necessarily need to be an app. I just want better UI/UX for mobile. Heck, I'd be very happy even with just having a responsive UI alone.

Not what you ask but you can add either ;wap; wap2 ;imode at the end of URL link. It does not work for table but fine for texts.

• https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5432403.0;wap
• https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5432403.0;wap2
• https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5432403.0;imode

Additionally, let's check this

• Community generated suggestions to improve the forum (+ eventual voting on them)

Last update

None of these ideas are new to me. Even if I don't respond to suggestions, I do read them, and they float around in my mind going forward. If it's not already done, then there's some reason why. A big possible reason is that I'm the only person who does development on the current code, and my time is limited. Another big reason is that this is a huge forum with complex dynamics, and even small policy changes can have big effects which need to be thought through very carefully.

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.

I'm not going to respond here in detail to all of these ideas. It'd be extremely long. I will classify them as OK/maybe/no:

• A newbie welcome message or link to a welcome thread upon sign-up explaining the basic rules and links to everything they need to know including the full forum rules, helpful guides and FAQs etc. No excuses for not knowing the rules then.
• Dedicated sub board mods for most boards that don't have any mods or non-global mods already assigned (Bitcoin Discussion, Beginners & Help, Off Topic etc).
• More patrollers/mods who just handle sig spam or farmers.
• Restoring the memberlist search and stats (very useful for finding huge farming abuses).
• Enforce the sig campaign guidelines. If a campaign is spotted that is doing little to nothing and is abused en mass by spammers, farmers, bots and copy and pasters they are warned. If nothing changes then they are punished with such things as bans, threads trashed, signatures blacklisted site-wide etc.
• A 'bump button' for the marketplace that only allows you to bump your thread once every 24 hours. Manually bumping by posting will then be disallowed. As mentioned above, posts by lower ranked accounts could not be able to bump threads thus curbing potential abuse.
• A report queue for reported messages. Currently every global and admin are spammed by any reported message and half of the time when you go to handle it it has already been handled, thus wasting everybody's time.
• More admins or demi-admins added to help with account recoveries and other admin duties.
• A captcha added to a user's first post or two/three etc to curb bot usage (purchasing a Copper Membership could remove these).
• Require email verification for new accounts.
• Require email verification first before passwords/emails are changed.
• A Beginners and Help board for the Alt Coin section (the bitcoin one is mostly swamped with alt coin and bounty-related issues).
• Add badges as a reward for high reporters and/or merited users (some perks would also be nice). Maybe we could have a 'most merited' user of the month badge. Prizes or awards could be given at the end of the month/year for the biggest rats/grasses/ass-kissers merited users or reporters.
• More options for self-moderated threads (being able to limit participation to certain ranks ie no Newbies or Juniors etc or banning certain users from being able to post in your thread at all to stop trolls and personal attacks etc).
• Signature bans. Bans that remove the signature for x amount of time or even permanently (actually proposed by theymos but never followed up on). Being able to blacklist an entire campaign's signature would also be helpful for those campaigns that refuse to do anything about spam.
• Certain sub boards shouldn't count to post count or activity (Bounties, Games & Rounds and possibly Off Topic).
• Awarding merit doesn't take you to a new page. Clicking the merit button multiple times could pump up the merit one by one. This would make awarding merit much swifter and less annoying.

OK in principle, would require thought/adjustment/implementation. Many of these things are more complex than they look at first glance.

• Charging ICOs a fee to make their ANN here. You could even get rid of the ANN board completely and give them their own sub once they've paid the fee. If there's no Ann board then there will probably be no paid bumping because it will be useless, but let them spam away in their own slum and squalor.
• A dedicated Marketplace for the Alt Coin board that would be used for currency sales/exchanges and advertising/requesting services etc (the current one has no description and is being used as catch all for anything and everyting and not what it was intended for).
• Requiring manually whitelisting of all new accounts before they can post. All new users will essentially be shadowbanned until they've been verified by a mod. This will eliminate 99% of bots and spammers before they even start. Spam threads can be trashed on sight before they even become spam megathreads.
• Press board locked/archived as it's served its purpose
• Some local boards have Press and Off topic subs. They should be removed as they're hotbeds for account farmers/spammers and are not necessary here.
• Warnings in red displayed to lower ranked users when they go to post alerting them to the most commonly ignored/broken rules.
• A sub board for highly merited users to encourage constructive topics only by users who have proven their worth here over time (or make the Ivory Tower merit requirement much higher [OMG ITS LIKE SOVIET RUSSIA GULAG]).

Maybe.

• A publicly displayed 'banned' rank under a person's username for permabanned accounts (people are wasting both theirs and staffs time reporting already banned users and bots).
• Implementing a redirect notice/landing page for when users click an external link urging them to double check the url for phishing and possibly warning them of the dangers of buying things from autobuy links and that they should likely use a trusted escrow etc).
• Require at least one merit to become a Junior Member (bots will never rise past Newbie status then and can be nuked once spotted).
• More donator ranks such as Silver and Gold Member that come with additional perks such as avatars and Full/Hero member-sized signatures etc (which will severely curb account farming and sales). You could also even have an expensive premium 'Platinum' rank (bling bling) that comes with further benefits (for example: image banner in signature, animated gif avatar, custom title, ability to change username etc).
• Remove signatures completely from everyone (or everyone only has a basic signature) and to get one you either need a very high amount of activity & merit or:
B) Buy them via new donator ranks (theymos did initially comment: "This may be a good idea. Though I do think that people who don't pay should be able to get a small signature." [though Newbie signatures have been removed completely since this comment was made]).
• Posts from lower ranked accounts don't bump ICO threads to the top (which would then render paid bump spam useless).
• Two report buttons/queues: one for sig spam and low quality posts and one everything else that is more urgent (hundreds of reports on spam posts are currently burying more important reports).
• A new member rank after Legendary as it is becoming far too common now and will only become more so as time passes. I would suggest fixing Legendary at 960 activity and the new rank is double that at 1920. You could also make the merit requirement very high for this rank so it's only for the crème de la crème of users [OMG NAZI RANK ITS LIKE THE RICH KEEP GETTING RICHER].
• Additional perks for Legendary accounts or a higher rank if added (for example: custom title, image banner in signature, clickable link in personal text, access to exclusive sub board etc).
• A captcha added to deleting a post.
• Disallowing lower ranks from posting in Off Topic (this is bitcoin forum, why would they head to that board straight away other than to easily farm their accounts (alternatively, posts not counting towards postcount or activity there would also work).
• If a post is removed then so is any merit awarded (I think some users are deleting posts to hide evidence of abuse).
• More advertisement slots. This forum is badly under-monetised in my opinion and we likely lose hundreds of thousands in lost revenue to signatures and lack of ad slots and visibility.

No. Or not yet. Or the idea would need to be significantly modified.

[aysg76]

There are many requests we have at this time but one that others have said and discussed before also is a pop up box for newbies while registering giving them idea about forum and important links so they don't have to ask it in making lot of threads would be great addition to the forum so there are other requests as well but we need to wait for it.

Doesn't even necessarily need to be an app. I just want better UI/UX for mobile. Heck, I'd be very happy even with just having a responsive UI alone.

That would be big relief for mobile users and whenever I login from mobile device it's hard to explore the forum and write posts as I have to make it compatible to my screen for eyes comfort but see if we have it anytime and yes improvements are good rather then having extra app.

[dkbit98]

What one change would you like to see in bitcointalk in 2023?

I think it's time to make forum update and make it responsive to work on all devices, especially for mobile devices.
If epochtalk is ever going to be released than 2023 would be ideal time for that, but I would also be ok if everything stays the way it is now and I don't have any real complains.
However, if changing software would reduce security of forum, than I would prefer we continue using current software.

[mk4]

Not what you ask but you can add either ;wap; wap2 ;imode at the end of URL link. It does not work for table but fine for texts.

• https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5432403.0;wap
• https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5432403.0;wap2
• https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5432403.0;imode

Those seems to be fine when you're only on Bitcointalk for viewing purposes though, as it seems like the QUOTE feature is missing on those 3 modes.

[Oshosondy]

Reporter badges .

Self explanatory, but I think it would help with encouraging reporters. theymos knows this, but obviously has talked about how he wants to implement it correctly, and mitigate abuse of the system. I'd just like to see it implemented even if it's a very basic version. We'd likely have to have some very large tier systems though, as this forum is several years old, and some users have over 100k reports.

I wish to go for this before, but with what you explained, I have a second thought, it can be possible that this can make other members on this forum that are not reporting now to start to report posts and many good posts may be reported which can become a problem for the moderators.

If posts are often reported effectively, I think reporter badges should not be done, theymos can just be making yearly post about good reporers and how they all appreciate their efforts.

[Welsh]

I wish to go for this before, but with what you explained, I have a second thought, it can be possible that this can make other members on this forum that are not reporting now to start to report posts and many good posts may be reported which can become a problem for the moderators.

If posts are often reported effectively, I think reporter badges should not be done, theymos can just be making yearly post about good reporers and how they all appreciate their efforts.

Shouldn't be too much of a problem. They need good reporters to get the badges, and if they're reporting inaccurately they aren't going to get them. You could counter this problem by deducting bad reports from the good reports a user makes. The only issue I see with it is it could be short lived. Users will have the motivation in the beginnings to get the highest badge, and then unless we keep adding badges users will stop once they've reached he highest badge. 

But, yeah; users reporting inaccurately shouldn't be a problem. We've got enough moderators to deal with it, and it doesn't really effect the moderator much to mark a report bad, instead of good. There might be a few select users that could become problematic if they're just reporting everything, but again that's just counter productive.

[Findingnemo]

One rank above the Legendary is my wish!

I believe it will be a good thing to do for the members who contributed a lot to the forum and also it will encourage the legendary to post more to reach that super recognition rank.

[LoyceMobile]

One rank above the Legendary is my wish.

My wish is to call it Legend.

[NotATether]

More lenient DDoS Firewall, after seeing how Cloudflare botched all the bots here. Is there not an alternative that provides the same protection (but lets our bots through), even if it costs some money?

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

What one change would you like to see in bitcointalk in 2023?

Changing of Feedback system.

Apply it only for trades. And feedback will be given or exchanged between only the two party who will be involved in trade.

Before a deal, the seller create a topic with the amount he needs. The buyer pay it and update the topic with the trade information. Then a feedback window enable for both buyer and seller to leave feedback for each others. It could be a neutral or positive or negative.

The current feedback system lost it's value.
Forum members do not need an approval of others who will say "This is a good form member" or "This guy is a scammer" or "This is an alt account of mr. x".

[DdmrDdmr]

I’d go along with an oldie (2019): Search engine optimization for local boards.

That, or something along that line, to drive more traffic over to Bitcointalk’s local boards that have a substantial gap between their potential and their factual participation (i.e. the Spanish Local board is extremely lightweight in terms of participation, in relation to the amount of people that speak the language).

Note: It’s rather a complex matter, with younger generations being prone to be less prosaic and more stuck to fast-paced social networks (that normally treat matters thinly), but the gap I referenced before seems something to at least try to tackle at some level.

[indah rezqi]

I don't want more changes, but maybe in terms of account security it can be improved. Right now we only have modest security, it comes down to how we have passwords and how we manage them, and apart from all that then increased security is one that I look forward to in 2023.

It doesn't stop there, forum also need to have a few other things like reporting posts with one click. Currently there are extensions that help, but of course when the forum has its own feature, it will be much more great.

[drwhobox]

What one change would you like to see in bitcointalk in 2023?

Notification menu I don't mean it to be like a social media notification alert or anything. If anyone quotes me in their reply, the notification menu bar will show a simple number or sign just like the message menu.

OP wants one wishes from everyone, so I will be happy to see this only change on this forum.

[PX-Z]

My only wish is to have an update for Epochtalk - a new forum software. As far as I know, since the last update, the new software was mostly done.

Damn, everyone is deadly waiting for this, i really wish it will be available in the next year. But, but I saw the repository's^[1] last commit was way back 2021? So what development happened for this year?
If this is nearly done, announcing it for testing phase^{(on https://beta.bitcointalk.org/)} will be the best thing theymos could ever done for the whole decade ^{(as this development is nearly decade)} next to deploying it.

[1] https://github.com/epochtalk/epochtalk