Topic: Can we expect the forum this year? (Read 3619 times)

Thank you, i just checked the github project and seems good,
Including me there are lots of suggestion made in this subforum and i think it's requires too much time to implement most of them which are very useful.
I think all of us are excited to see the new design, new platform and a new feeling.

The public beta of Epochtalk on this forum needs the green light from theymos first, so it's up to him. A lot of the work has already been done though. You can follow the development here: https://github.com/epochtalk

Any eta?

Yes, no need to worry about it. Pretty much everything will be carried over.

Since it is an update, right? I am worried about one thing,
The posts and the rank of the members will still stay ?
Or it will be a completely new forum and we should register again? I hope to see the new update by the end of the year.

About two out of three giant software projects end in complete failure. I have heard programmers advise others to run rather than walk away from any giant project. I'm sure the new forum will eventually be up and running, but if the devs have a deadline forced on them it will either not be finished in time or be a fail.

The devs also have to grapple with the problem of feature creep, where loads of threads here are suggesting new features to add when they haven't got the basic thing finished yet. Every new feature will take time to integrate, and some new suggested features could break whatever they have already done and force them to rewrite the whole thing.

You may also know that when it comes to software it is frequently delayed. Any ETAs are simply guesses. There are always issues that need to be resolved, and you need to first figure out how to solve them before you can actually do it. This means the variance is huge. Sometimes a bug is fixed in one line of code after five minutes, sometimes it leads to a complete redesign of a system.

I'm not making any statements about this particular case because I'm not informed enough. But software is something that is constantly improved by developers. You shouldn't be talking about release dates and ETAs because those things are almost meaningless. What matters is the speed and quality of development. So we shouldn't ask when it's getting released, we should ask if they're putting enough developer effort to be worth $100,000 a month.

you can expect the new epochtalk forum to be done when theymos runs out of money (in 3 to 4 months)

this is applicable for few bucks projected leaded by 2 high-school students. but this is little bit different scenario, we are talking about 1.5M USD project. Based on my experience with similar projects in enterprise, there is always project management, milestones, regular communication and ETA for delivery, which is adjusted every week..

I really hope, that ETA is known.

Even the team working behind this might not have a clue on release date. Better take much time and get a proper output. As you can see many product with a proper base taking around 4-5 years for the final release even it does have bugs. So take much time and release a proper one other than one with lot of bugs. Current forum which a well established software serves a better platform for now. Everyone is too eager to see the new product. But must understand that SMF is a long run project with lot of contributors so not expect much on new forum tool.

To be fair, "They" were just giving a wild guess. No one was ever given a firm deadline, people asked for a guess, and it was given. Something else to consider, Theymos and Slickage had a basic idea of what needed to be done. So many additional features have since been added beyond the basic plan, it would be ridiculous to think that the original quote would still apply.  In reality, Slickage is creating two different forums. Epochtalk and Bitcointalk. One to be the blank slate that will be the open source anyone can use software (epochtalk). And then Bitcointalk has to be built on top of that blank slate that was created in the first place.

It might not be done this year, it might be. It might not be done in 2016 for all we know. Rather than giving estimate completion dates, its far more appropriate to say when it wont be done. It wont be done this month. I'd also say it wont be done in June. At the end of June, I'll let you know if I think it will be done in July, and so on.

Who cares when its done, I'd rather it be done right than hurried.

They said the million forum would come in early 2015 last year, but now it's almost June, 2015...

Sorry, didn't see the testing mentioned

It is in first page. Didn't you read?

Will there be any beta testing for some select members or previews or anything that was supposed to be released?

No from what I been reading in here new forum software it is going to be built from the ground up and new and moving away from SMF from what I have read up on so far.

I haven't heard anything about this new forum in the works.  Is it based on Simple Machines?

Well who knows only admin knows when the new forums will be ready to use. If theirs problems then theirs problems and delays. To be honest all that is really needed is SMF updating and not having to use totally new forum based software and to make things more secure than to use older versions. Yes theirs a lot of wok being one on the new one with new code and so forth. No doubt going to take till towards end of the year if things don't speed up.

Thanks all for the replies. I guess we won't be seeing it for awhile at least a few months anyway. I've read this thread here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/changing-emails-1020023

which I assume theymos would need to put up a reminder in the news area of this forum and also a thread in meta telling people to change their emails in advance before chaning the forum.

Don't get your expectations too high. I don't think it's going to be anything revolutionary by the looks of the requirements that theymos has given to the public, and it seems Slickage(?) is building the core, the very foundations of the software and it will be expanded upon in the future by the public.

The features being introduced look to be a more personalised forum to Bitcoiners and theymos, rather than something to blow anyone out of the water. I'm not saying it's going to be terrible either, I'm just saying that simple machines, was even barer in features when it was first released and was very buggy. So don't expect a miracle and everything clean sailing from the time it's released to the public.  Of course, we all have certain expectations because of the price tag, which I don't know if I agree with although, I've never really been in the market for building a forum engine from the very scratch so wouldn't know the going price, I do know it's a hell of a lot of money though.

I'm just hoping we won't go over the top with features, I prefer simple machines to the alternatives because of it's basic and minimalistic feel. It seems theymos also shares this attitude.  I really dislike modern forums because of the lack of content that each page displays, instead it's fancy graphics and blank space which I find unbearable. Hopefully, it's not going to be anything like disclouse. The staff who are beta testing at the moment probably have the best idea of how it's going and what to expect. I know we'll be seeing a lot of meta threads when it is finally released, regardless of the state of the software.

Lets see what the new forum will bring to the members.


should be good considering the price tag... 

It will be nice to have the forum and i wonder how many of these suggestion here will make to the new Forum Software.
Having another rank is probably a good idea

Wow... 100k each month! That's quite an insane amount.

I remember seeing a post saying Beta will be available in early 2015. Now, it is about June.. I wonder when will Beta be released. Or maybe the administrators and some others is having closed beta.

Yea I too also just heard about this love upgrades even more so when they are that expensive.

I hope the new forum is worth the time and money we're spending on it. Monthly $100k fees is no joke.

I'm not sure if an exact date was ever given other than 'early next year' (said last year) but people kept mentioning February for some reason. It's being tested now so it hopefully shouldn't be too long but I'd rather it be extensively tested and made sure it's secure because releasing it with bugs could be disastrous especially if people's accounts are easily compromised in some way.


Just to be an improvement and a forum tailored to the needs of the admins. The specifics of what was requested can be found here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/current-requirements-523070

This is the first time I've heard of this, but now I can't wait to have this thing gone. It feels so outdated and old
What was supposed to be the focus of the new one?

Yeah, they said it would come out around early spring (or at least something would be released).
I'm hoping that they'll release it this year before the summer ends, but we haven't been updated that much recently, so something tells me that it might take a bit longer.  Honestly though, I like the simplicity of this forum. 

A reply for these 2 posts:

Exactly, maybe it is better to don't expect the new forum software .... it will be relly awesome if it will release and no one know the 'date' (like a surprise).

I haven't had the chance to test. What's your o far?

You told us "1-3 months" 1 month ago and I already told you that giving an ETA isn't a game / simple... even the slickage team isn't able to give us an ETA so I can't see how you could! Same for the people who are currently testing the current version (like me) -> we don't have any ETA to share as we don't know!
If you don't know, just don't say anything instead of making up stuffs!

I think it is almost completed except design. Last commit in Epochtalk repo is 1 day old, last commit in Emailer and Validator repos are 1 month old and all other repos are ~3-5 months old.

I think we can expect an aplha/beta in a few months. Mistake corrected. Thanks to kcud_dab!


Yes, a beta was to be released in February.

Just hoping the forum will be nice and polished! I know I'll probably hate it for the first few weeks like I did with any other forum software I've used. But I will grow on me most likely.

I don't care when the forum comes out I would prefer to have a polished and slick forum rather than a rushed and broken forum.

I would say a realistic date would probably be mid-late 2016.

I don't think we will have any stable / tested / "final" version before late 2015 or ealy 2016 but there isn't any official ETA at the moment.

NB : I'm not part of the team that is working on epochtalk, I don't have any special infos from theymos or somebody else, that's just my opinion regarding the current status of the software, the work that has been done so far, the github repo history and my fellings about this!
Also I hope that I'll be wrong and that epochtalk will be ready before the end of the year / 2016.

Not looking good. It was meant to come around February I think? So, it's delayed by quite a bit already.. I really hope it's worth the wait and all the issues that could be solved in the meantime (but aren't)..

I'm not complaining. Just would like to know when to expect the new forum. I understand that you have problaby run into issues and are in the process of adding new features.

Is it going to be this year or maybe early next year?