Topic: Mandatory forum donation (Read 1984 times)

How would it be mandatory, nobody would force you to sign up at bitcointalk.org.

If this "review board" is a good idea then it should be able to find funding through the free market.

When something needs to be funded by mandatory fees it really makes me wonder why it would not be viable without fiat funding.

Auditing for free doesn't really get the job done.  It may cost a bit, but the real deal it worth it.

So you're demanding regulation on the one free currency? Got it.

BBB, Bitcoin Business Bureau

Kinda like the Better Business Bureau?

+1 A 'forum tax' = me leaving to visit another Bitcoin forum.

Bitcoin forum tax is a bad idea imo. There is definitely a need for auditing of bitcoin services, but this should always remain voluntary

I think a better method would be to push for donations more if needed. Obvious donation button, etc.

This idea would just push out a lot of members who don't need their accounts. It would start to exclude those new to bitcoin who start to take an active role and can't or don't want to afford it. The database might start to fill up with many more accounts... mokahless1, mokahless2, mokahless3.

In many ways the idea contradicts some reasons for the use of bitcoins.

Terrible idea to charge BTC for using the forums.

I thought the idea was to have a growing, active userbase to support Bitcoin's evolution, and having to pay BTC to use the primary discussion outlet would work against Bitcoin, ultimately.

I would imagine the community would want to be more inclusive opposed to exclusive.

That's disingenuous. Nobody forces you to use the forum.

The accurate term would be a subscription fee.

By definition, if it is mandatory, it no longer becomes a donation.  You might instead call it a tax.

Personally, I'm against "mandatory donations".

Excellent points Sir. My thought was to help the community, as many people don't seem to take security seriously. But from a cynical perspective, I agree with you. Let services die that are not fit to live.

Sorry but I think this is a bad idea for a few reasons. First of all, I don't see any reason why this service should be free. If someone is starting a business, they are going to have business expenses, so security and security audits is something they need to pay for as a for profit business, just like any other business. Second of all, what if this 'review board' reviews the site and signs off on it but the site gets hacked anyways? Now the review board could potentially be found liable. This opens up a whole can of worms ethically speaking and legally speaking. Third of all, why would this be funded by mandatory forum donations? I don't see any official connection between bitcointalk.org and any Bitcoin business. Bitcointalk.org is in fact an unofficial forum that has people with all kinds of aims and goals that may have nothing to do with any Bitcoin related business and forcing them to pay for something that they don't support to stay on the forums is just wrong.

Not a bad idea.

If everyone with 50 posts or more wanted to keep contributing to the forum, they would need to pay 1 BTC.

This could be moved into a pool, and used for funding a group that could do security audits / pen testing on
new bitcoin sites. It would be better that a white hack group found security holes before a real blackhat does. :\

Once a site is found to have no known security issues, it could be 'certified' and a listing of the security review / pen testing could
be added to the global bitcoin business security audit list, which to support the existing p2p nature of bitcoin could be distributed.

There are probably several ways to do this.

Of course, there would need to be a 'whitehat'-group that would need to be reasonably trusted.

This would probably be cheaper than hiring a professional firm to do the same, but quality would be just as good I assume.

Question is whether anyone would have the time for this, and if they could assemble a group that was willing to spend resources on this,
obviously it would be for the greater good of bitcoin, and not for monetary gain.

Of course, there's always the risk that a security hole is found, and the auditors doesn't tell about it, but waits until enough bitcoins are available,
and then mysteriously a 'hack' happens, and the coins are gone..

I think it has been talked about it before, to create a 'security' standard, and then have different levels of 'certification' for different sites.

Heck, it might be a viable business idea to specifically offer bitcoin related security audits.

Is there currently a wiki outlining recommended security practises for a bitcoin site ?

Also, some people would probably not like to pay 1 BTC for forum access, but I think most serious users and businesses (10 btc?) would not object to this ?

Thoughts ?

Maybe anyone who uses the site for free advertising in their sig block?

The sad truth of the matter is that at this point I use the 'donator' tag to identify people who want to look earnest and upstanding (telling me that there is every liklihood that they are anything but.)  I use this site more than is healthy...at least when Bitcoin itself is behaving interestingly...like tonight for instance.  I really should ante up a pitance I suppose, but only if I don't get hit with the donator label.

Hi

I was just thinking about what happened the last months with bitconica and now bitdaytrade and how it hurts all of us bitcoin supporters.

What is needed is a a kind of independent "review board" or "auditing service" or .... supplied for free to bitcoin business owners or startups or who ever feel the need of it.

The service should be free so that the barrier to entry to bitcoin remains low. The bitcoin community already have talented white hat hackers that reviewed websites and advised of potential securities issues. I think those talented and trusted members should get rewarded for their community work.

My idea is to make use of the forum donation tool to collect funds to support all kind of community tasks by enforcing a donation of 1BTC from members and maybe 10BTC for businesses after a member reach i.e 50 postings. I believe that when reaching this amount of posts it's given that members are interested in following and developing bitcoins further.

I open this for discussion here and hope that some new ideas will come out of it. This is really just an idea feel free to give your feedback or improvement.

Thanks for reading, brian