Topic: . - page 7. (Read 22407 times)

For a million dollars, I'd expect the forum software to have all of the features we could ever want and more. I don't disagree with having an automated Ad system, however I would have thought far more things would take precident. I also hope Theymos made a wise decision, frankly, the community has no idea what is going on, Theymos could have spent $1M to get $10M worth of features, I dont think there is room to critize content yet, because we haven't seen the content to be produced. We can somewhat criticize his decision making process, but we also don't know how many people he spoke to about it, and who they are and their levels of expertise on the matter. For all we know Theymos may have contacted the world's authority on forum software, and they may have pointed him to Slickage. What we can undoubtedly criticize is the lack of transparency that is going on. While the community isn't entitled to know everything that is going on behind the scenes, it probably would have been a good idea to hold an official Q&A and fill us in on what he could prior to now.

Moderator's aren't employed by Theymos, we are welcome to question his every decision and flat out disagree with him at any point we want. Of what I know of him, I like the guy and expect that he would have done a better job handling this than he has, however I will be giving him the benefit of the doubt until he gives me reason not to. If the work produced is subpar, then I'll complain then. Theres no point in complaining now, the money has been spent, we can either support slickage and try and help get things done in the form of suggestions, or we can continuously badger them and slow whatever work is being done. I move that we withold badgering until after they have proven themselves incompetent. If they prove themselves competent, then we will have no reason to complain.

I respect that the staff are getting paid because of all the hard work they put in for this website to function correctly, but spending money on a automated auction system sounds silly to me, this isn't going to get more adverts to be displayed it's just a fancy system which is only going to benefit Theymos so he doesn't have to post now and then the auction.

Of course there are some promising features being discussed for example two factor authentication but, that is still pretty standard in most forum these days, this feature has been requested for a long time now and we should of had it implemented sooner he has the money to pay someone to implement this into a simple machines forum, yet he hasn't. That's something which I would support spending money on, but even that doesn't cost a lot for someone to implement. It's just ridiculous that one of the only mentioned features has no benefit to the community.

I hoping theymos has made a wise decision, but even then he hasn't got by it the right way. The staff should of been involved in such discussions and decisions even asking the communities feedback as we as Bitcoin users rely on trust, I don't understand why this has been kept a secret from A) the public b) the staff. Also, I don't quite understand why we can't see what James Wang sent to Theymos, considering he's a business owner I would of thought he would want to advertise as much as possible but, he has not given out anything.

I see the staff are making more effort than Theymos himself in trying to resolve the issues that the forum is having, you can slowly see the community getting tired of all this secrecy and there has already been people leaving the forum. Even Tysat a moderator (which I respect highly because of his high workload and friendliness) doesn't quite understand what is going on and looks like he doesn't support the decisions being made.

We have a wonderful community yet if these decisions keep on happening I fear that there will be drastic changes but, all it takes is a little communication and community involvement. Thank you SaltySpintoon for trying to answer everyone's questions even though you don't fully understand yourself because of the lack of communication, although it does seem Maged and maybe Badbear knows a little more than you do.

First about ad auctions, yes the forums no longer needs donations because it is now self sufficent because of the Ad Auctions. Staff are paid based on advertising revenue, but as you said a bit later in your post, we were not in the loop either, so no staff members had any say on that feature, nor do I understand why it would be one of the first things to be implemented. Sure, for a million dollars revamp everything, but I would have thought more important features would have come first.

Theymos did discuss who to pick for creating the new forum software, but with people he trusted and thought were qualified, privately. He said that Wangbus was recommended to him by Warren, who's opinon he valued. https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/wtogami-81508

I don't know the details as to why Wangbus in particular was picked over others, but we the public also don't know their qualifications, which I'd hope Theymos got before hiring them. Maybe their NDA that they are talking about is something incredibly major. Theymos was aware that they were a new company and that the $350k downpayment would be used to hire more people. There weren't any kickbacks for Theymos. If he wanted to embezzle money, I'm sure he could have thought of a far easier way than to introduce this kind of controvercy.

They donated it for forum software which they never got till now.
Also
True,but point is, theymos didn't used those 5500 BTC or 100k on time.


They are assigning 2 different values because theymos is giving 1 Million Dollars not XYZ Amount of BTC
 and please check bold text, you are one of those "Some".


How do you know that software really worth 1 Million dollars? it's not even created yet, It's will be a forum software not some NSA's new surveillance software.

Ps: It won't be first forum software built on node.js , check
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/nodebb-the-discussion-platform-of-the-future
https://github.com/designcreateplay/NodeBB

Not just merely "throwing 350K USD" at some random start-up company, but also ignoring all offers made by various forum participants since 2011.

Well, he wrote "probably"
But I hear you, claiming not to pay anywhere near 5500 BTC in advance, which where something like 600K USD at that time, and throwing 350K USD at someone now just doesn't compute.

 

That looks a long time ago... At that time I donated to the forum because I was under the impression the forum development plan was being followed since 2nd November 2011:


I assumed the new forum software development was about to start and Michael was able to manage the project. This is a post made on 7th September 2012 which made me confident the money about to be donated would be used to improve the forum:


After my donation I expected a candidate to be chosen. That, of course, did not happen in a reasonable period of time. It was never mean to happen. I was straightly duped into a money grab scheme perpetrated by Michael under the disguise of "donations".

This is the last post by Michael in that thread:

So what you're saying is, you started up a company, with no website, but somehow found million/billion dollar businesses to buy code from you, without previous work, (because everyone knows everyone gets a NDA so they just have to trust you...) and you don't need to build your website and or portfolio because you're so busy with work, you can take the time out of the day to earn some chump change to build forum software? And the only way these million/billion dollar businesses know about you is word of mouth? So theymos knows the admin of a major site such as walmart, bank of america, how about chase bank who referred you to him? I'm highly sliptical pun intended!

I would like to ask some questions and also express some of my views on the matter in hand.

Obviously, a big issue is the automated ad auctions, why do we need this? Haven't you expressed enough times already that the forum doesn't need any more money, yet you are 'investing' in a module which is going to increase the income of the forum. Another question, is what do you plan on doing with this money that you have gained from this new auction module? Do you plan on keeping the new forum software up to date and fixing vulnerabilities with it or do you plan on paying staff members with it or anything else? Isn't the new automated auction going to run into problems too?

 
Here's a quote from a staff member stating that the forum no longer needs money, and let's be honest even though you are spending a awful lot on this forum software you will still have a lot left over. Now, why would you want to focus on this and implement this into the new forum if you don't require any donations, because ad revenue is basically a donation to the forum but you pay staff members a percentage of it.

Another question: Why did you pick James Wang to develop the software for that amount of money? It seems that a lot of others at the forum would be willing to do what you are asking him to do for much less, and maybe these people are more qualified. I want to know why you didn't communicate to the forum about this, why couldn't users at this forum get involved and create a open source forum software between each other. Gweedo is more than qualified for this along with several other programmers at the forum.

If this project really is open source then why are you not answering all our questions? You have to convince us that this is a good idea because lets face it there hasn't been much communication between the administrator team and the community. Even staff members are ill informed and are not sure what is being done.

According to CrunchBase Slickage Studios have 4 employees and founded in 2012. Surely, in 2 years there isn't enough past work present to show they are the company for the job. Established companies or well known people which have done big projects are normally the people to hire because the big projects are normally known by a lot of people. But, such a newly created company which has I personally have never heard of and I'm sure others haven't either are now working on a one million dollar project, which will probably turn out to be more because of vulnerabilities found and other issues. How long are Slickage studious going to continue support after the software has been handed over.

What I don't like about this whole thing is we don't even know if they are capable of doing this, it seems either not a lot of research was done or you like to gamble. If you have reasons why Slickage Studios is the right company for the job then please send us some references so we can have a look personally too. In many peoples eyes I can understand why they think you might want get the money out of the forum and into your pocket by hiring someone who you personally know or have a mutual friend. I have seen the IOS apps that they have posted and I'm less than impressed, their design and functionality are not impressive one bit. All I do know about him is that he learned was learning Python in March 2009.


James, I have a question. You have tweeted previously on twitter this: If that's your philosophy then why are you requiring 1 million to start this? Or do you lie much? 

Also another tweet:
You tweeted this on march 2013, I hope you have done your home work in less than a year my friend.

I'm also glad we are hiring Wang because he is always productive.


I have nothing against Wang or Theymos, but you have stated that you have been transparent and are doing the best for the community yet we have not had many answers or have we been involved in any of the decisions (Although I strongly disagree with this), maybe normal users like me shouldn't be included in the decisions but donators and people who have helped you ie. the staff should at least have a say in this.

How much of that 350k is being sent back to your bank account so you're not accused if stealing funds? We're not 9 years old and stupid enough to believe you found a company that doesn't even have a website to build forum software for 350,000. Sounds like one of those ill give my friend the job type deals. I'll await the oh he scammed me messages.

2011-08-29, BTC was around $9, so that's $450

From August 2012, BTC was usually above $10, so here's a list of mother fuckers:

+1 I know we are scraping this forum, yet lets put some money into it before we get rid of it.

"We"? There is no "we". You did not participated in the decision and it is not your money. So stop with this "we" bullshit, OK?


LoL

The only thing that Michael got done until now is a flawed trust system and an activity counter...

LMAO a lot of people care. Just cause you really have no say, or idea doesn't mean no one else care.

Also thanks for being stereotypical against my nationality, only people that have nothing to contribute to this discussion attack off-topic features about people.

I want one mother fucker here to step forward if you even contributed more then $500 in bit coin at the time that you gave it.

sure it's worth millions now but at the time that 5500 coins was worth less then 100k.

I feel like its super hypocritical that some of you are assigning 2 different values to the same money.

this million dollar software is getting bought with $20k worth of donations. your getting a great deal.

Good idea.

I hate to say it, but at the end of the day, dictators get things done. If new forum software were just a nice thing to have sometime in the next ten or so years, then theymos absolutely made the wrong call. However, we needed new 21st century forum technology here two (three?) years ago, so I can't fault theymos too badly for just going ahead with this on his own. I just hope that he realizes that if this goes bad, he is solely responsible for the outcome. Since I don't wish ill fortune against theymos, I'm hopeful that this will turn out just fine and we'll all be able to laugh about this later.

While I can't answer for theymos, I thought that I would at least provide my thoughts to the discussion.
Because there is not much money if forum software anymore. Jeff Atwood got his seed funding for Discourse off of name recognition alone. If you disagree with this statement, please give me a list of startups that started in the last five years that are working on new forum software, along with how much funding they've received (if available). I am genuinely curious to see how much attention forums have received from VCs and angel investors recently.

I would argue that it is. First and foremost, this new forum software is being made for us and us alone. Sure, we're giving it away to the public, but that's besides the point. Since it's hard to make a case that there is still much money to be made in forums (as I brought up above and might be wrong about), software companies entered negotiations with us believing that we could very well be the only paying customer. We wanted this done now, no matter what, and we could afford it, so we stuck with that belief and compensated them accordingly. In return, we required them to make the project be open-source. They can act as the official distributor, maintain the official repo, and provide consulting services (much like wordpress), but they can NEVER require anybody to buy any of the code that they produce for us.

Again, I would love to be proven wrong in my assumption that people aren't investing in new forum software anymore, because at least then there will be some innovation outside of our platform to look forward to and integrate in the future. But as it is, we've already paid our initial deposit, so there's no point in arguing that we should have paid less. Instead, look for reasons why we should get more for our money. Convince them that outside investors can and will fund the rest of the project.

Well $1 million dollars is appropriate when it isn't your money, when people donate, then you do whatever you want according to theymos

Thank you Kouye! This is the type of feedback we're looking for. Although we can copy as much of the functionality as possible from SMF to ease the transition from this forum to the next. It's up to you guys to help point out the features that are essentially broken or could be better in other ways.

As for the specification, once we make the Github account public, you can track our progress and issues there. You can even submit your own issues as you guys use the new software.

As for the number of people working on the forum, Wangbus and I have volunteered to go public (and thrown to the trolls) but we do not feel it's fair to others (if there are any.  ) for us to release that information. Is this a cheap cop out? In essence, yes. But that's the best I can do given the circumstances. You can assume there's at least two of us.



For everyone else, we understand your concerns and agree that they are valid concerns. I would be just as skeptical about "some company" coming in and trying to sell some million dollar software. The best we can offer is that we are professional Software Engineers. You have our day to day / professional handles. The information about us is out there. You will probably come to your own conclusions as many have. We cannot sway those conclusions with just words. We hope that as we start releasing software, we can start to change your perceptions. We hope that we can work with the community to build better software.