Bitcoinize boards / forums

[FlipPro]

I have suggested this before.

I recommend we start a bounty to get some developers to make plugins for all of the Boards available facilitating Bitcoin transactions.

[Andrew Vorobyov]

That's the problem.... it's not clear what to do... + I think having Bitcoin in hands we can provide something much greater than simple rating or old systems

[Andrew Vorobyov]

We need couple of use cases to discuss..

Let's say Oggr.com likes bitcoin...

What do they need?
What kind of problems do they have?
What bitcoin will enable them to do?

[weex]

What do they need?

I'll take a first crack at this. They need a module that is easy to install on their existing board system with the following features:
* Account balances
* Deposit request and fulfillment
* Withdrawal request and fulfillment
* User reputation system with feedback forms

What kind of problems do they have?

* Security of the funds themselves, since multi-sig isn't ready yet, the system should be able to facilitate one or more cold storage addresses. It should enable the admin to check the total BTC in the system and send anything over a reasonable amount of working funds into cold storage. It should also use the deposit mechanism to allow the admin to bring funds back onto the site when a large withdrawal comes. Any discrepancy should hook into the notification system of the board.
* Migrating from existing points systems. This is hard to automate without knowing more of what's out there. Still some tools would be useful generally. For example an automatic conversion utility that pulls in and exchanges point values from other tables into this module's. Another might be an estimator that would help the site-owner figure out how much BTC they'll need to back total holdings at a specific exchange rate. Or perhaps this module can help the owner increase transparency on their existing system and simply enable purchase and sale of points for BTC at whatever price the admin sets.

What bitcoin will enable them to do?

Bitcoin will enable them to attract productive users who wish to be paid for their time and energy. It can also help them develop additional revenue streams by allowing users to purchase forum upgrades, other goods and services from the admin using a widely(moreso than their points) accepted currency.

[Andrew Vorobyov]

Imagine every member have 10 BTC on their accounts.

How BTC possession affects rating of the user on forum? Can i inflate my ranking by depositing more bitcoins into my account? Is rating mechanism as simple as transferring your bitcoins to somebody else if they made a good post?

[weex]

I for one wouldn't explicitly use BTC for ratings. It's better as a tipping tool or for payment for virtual goods and services and that is how ogrr.com uses it. Other users might look at your BTC and draw their own conclusions but for the ratings/egoboo purpose perhaps you would have a number like total BTC earned rather than current balance.

[Andrew Vorobyov]

Ok... continue... so far

tipping != rating

with tipping - everything is clear...

What about rating? how can we create new\implement old rating model using Bitcoins?

[moocow1452]

^ Use something like Litecoin or Microbits, give out a few free with a register, then they cannot withdraw the coins on their end and explicitly have to give them to someone else? Not sure if the spam filters could take that much of a pounding, but I'm just throwing it on the wall.

[Stephen Gornick]

We need couple of use cases to discuss..

Here's an example of an opportunity.

The comments board for the community of readers of Calculated Risk is a Drupal 6 system which runs on the site called "Hoocoodanode" (as in, who could've known that the ninja / liar loans and the resulting housing bubble was really Goldman Sachs, AIG, Hank Paulson, and Countrywide Financial, etc. bending us over..  really, hoocoulda knowd)?

The URLs are:
 - http://CalculatedRiskBlog.com
 - http://www.hoocoodanode.org/node/5771

The sites see a pretty decent amount of activity.

What is interesting is how widely used are the icons in communicating.  It isn't just a few emoticons like and  and these icons become a substitute for typing and help as a visual aid.  I can scroll down a topic fairly quickly just looking at the icons to see what might be worth reading and what can be skipped.

Here's their legend for icons:
 - http://www.hoocoodanode.org/smileys_glossary

Here's a typical post to show how the icons are used:
 - http://www.hoocoodanode.org/node/15459

There's probably some monetization method there.  Like maybe to use more than one icon per reply you get a certain amount deducted from your balance.  Or maybe the operator wants to give an incentive for the use of the icons? I don't know, just that these are one example of something that I see on this one forum and haven't seen it anywhere else so I wanted to share.

[HostFat]

Here there is another possibility
http://www.monotiz.com/smf/index.php?topic=21.msg42
Anyway, he said that it's occupied with other things

[CrimsonRoze]

This very important discussion seemed to die out in 2012. I will attempt to revive it.

a module installable in a forum software should in my opinion ideally do the following:

1) Allow users to add public addresses to their profiles
2) Allow users to create multi-sig addresses (n/m) by selecting which user accounts are participating and what the n-of-m ratio is.
3) Allow users to share payment requests as parts of posts and as PMs.
4) For users with a public address in their profile, show a payment history with associated payment requests.
5) Allow users to configure if they want their public address shown or hidden.
6) Integrate well with the forum for notifications.

It is important that no funds are stored in the board at all, and that the board solely provides functions that makes using bitcoin more convenient.

I personally would be thankful if someone implemented this for phpBB so that I could manage family economics in a private forum like described here: http://forum.bitcoin.se/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=801

[Kprawn]

Well http://bitbiz.io/ have a interesting concept. {A forum where Crypto Currency Business is discussed}

The members get "shares" for things they do on the forum. Eg. 1 x share for each post or 2 shares for a new thread etc.}

All income from donates from sponsors and advertisers, are divided in dividends, as per their amount of shares.

The shares are sold amongst members for BTC

A real good idea to incorporate BTC in a forum environment.