Topic: Create More Complete Historical Record of Bitcoin's development using IRC logs (Read 328 times)

I believe bitcoin is one of the world's greatest inventions since the internet itself.   In the interest of posterity I would like to create a database that contains all messages related to bitcoin going back to late 2008 just before the project was announced. We have this forum, Bitcointalk.org of course. However as wonderful as it is there is still much missing information.   For instance a lot pivotal behind the scenes discussions and debates took place on IRC and nowhere else.  Decisions that affected the course of bitcoin history were made there and are still being made there but we don't have an easily accessible archive of it.     We would want messages from all servers, not just freenode.  It needs to be comprehensive.  For example it should contain all related channels; not just #bitcoin and #bitcoin-otc   All of this information should be archived in a DB of choice.  We need to be able to determine relevancy of messages, likely with scoring algorithms.  It needs translation support and support for transparency.   IRC and bitcoin have a lot of jargon that is incomprehensible to most people.  The tool should help deobfuscate the jargon.  The tool could be presented in the form of a wiki but I am open to other ideas.  All that matters now is getting this information together before it is lost in the dustbin of history.  Other platforms like Usenet, mailing lists, twitter, facebook, etc. could be integrated as well but IRC is the first priority.     


There's a lot more to it than what I have described but before I delve into specifics I would like to see how much interest is out there in terms of doing this.  I am willing to devote a fair amount of my time and effort.   I would be willing to serve as the project manager if there is not a better candidate.  I am willing to kick in money as well in return for skilled work done by project participants.  Or to pay for certain costs of putting this together like hosting or whatever is needed.    If you want to participate reply to this topic or send me a pm if you want to stay private.   Please provide comments and constructive criticism.