Topic: New forum? (Read 20436 times)

While the forum might not be finished, it is certainly working. You don't know what you're talking about.

The envy is strong.

It is just money, right?

So you're telling me that a government agency might have paid too much on an iPad app*?
And got, at least, a working app?*
For roughly half as much as Thermos "spent" on an unfinished, non-working version of software which is available FOR FREE?

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*from linked article by intrepid journalist who wants to be the Julian Assage of Transportation Security Administration:
"Unfortunately we don't know everything the TSA got for that $1.4 million. They might have just gotten the iPad app; they might have gotten iPads, or work on multiple different apps, including the TSA Randomizer. We only know it's associated with the TSA Randomizer based on the FOIA request that returned this document."

The TSA just paid IBM $1,400,000 for an iPad app that randomly chooses left or right.

https://kev.inburke.com/kevin/tsa-randomizer-app-cost-336000/

Doubters will be doubters. I personally can't see 2.5mil being worth it, but whatever.

I'm glad you finally agree!

Joy! $2.5 million US well spent!

But you can watch the code being written here: https://github.com/epochtalk/epochtalk

Also, you really should lookup who these "Anons" are. They actually have a pretty long list of accomplishments. Warren in particular.

>When this forum is done, it will be bitcoin that built this forum.
*If. If this forum is done.

In the meantime, I'll point fingers and say
"bitcointalk software hasn't been updated for SEVEN FUCKING YEARS, which would have been trivial to do & cost exactly 0 dollars and zero zero cents, if not for a brilliant Thermos cobbling himself some super secret special tools he felt he really needed to haz.

But hey, due to the magic of blogchain technology, he found an excellent solution: He just paid TWO-AND-A-HALF MILLION FUCKING DOLLARS to Anon going by "Wangbus," who was recommended to him by another anon, to code him up another extra-special snowflake of a forum.
Need I tell you the fucking thing is still not done?
Much like every fucking scam "project" in Bitcoin?

TL;DR: At best, this will show that Bitcoin enthusiasts don't have a smidgen of common sense between them; are not to be trusted with money; will spend 2.5 million dollars US for shit that is free. Scratch that, "an unfinished, untested version of what they could have had for free."

Because that's not what I was paid for. If you'd like to front the money, I could build those things too. Although I'll admit right here that those things you ask for are not my specialty so they may not be built to the highest standards. Web Applications though, is what I've spent my entire career on. So while you ask why I don't write those things, you might as well ask an Electrician why he didn't build his own electrical grid for your house to be on while he was wiring up your house. Do you understand the gravity of your question now?

Trolling aside, if you're more concerned about the why. Then I'll leave you with this. When this forum is done, it will be bitcoin that built this forum. That's point 1. Point 2 and probably more of interest to theymos, the forum software that is already out there did not meet the requirements that theymos wanted. The key reason being that he wanted more control over what could be done to the internals of the forum. This approach allows him to build specific tools that are not found in other forums tailored to the needs of this community. Some of these tools are more comprehensive moderation tools, more expansive reporting tools, and more precise banning tools to deal with spammers and scammers.

To be fair, he did have a number of these tools that he wrote himself. We've just rolled them into the new forum so they act and feel as if they are a part of the software and not just an after thought or mod.

You also missed one more thing. The fact that we're building this from the ground up means that the community can have an active hand in the building of this project. I've already listened to those that are helpful and integrated some of their ideas into the forum. Things that the current version of this forum does not support (spoiler tags for one, highlighting admin/mods for another).

With that said, it's all been paid for already. Why not help make the forum better than all the rest by giving it a try when the next beta comes back up and giving some constructive feedback?

Also, the reason why there are so many "other" forum software is because there is more than one way to use a forum, and often times more than one use case that determines how that particular software is going to be built. This is a use case for the bitcoin community. To go back to the house analogy, it's like having a say in the blueprint as you are building your house. Do you want higher ceilings? A marble staircase? French doors? You can make those suggestions and if they are within reason, we can just build it.

If by that you mean "don't understand why new bbs forum software needs to be written, from scratch, when shitloads of better open-source software -- tested/updated/used by millions for years, already exist and is free," I guess I got nothing.

Of course, Bitcointalk is a completely unique, special snowflake, and its moderation requirements are also completely unique and special. Which begs the question: why didn't you write your own OS, from scratch, while you're at it?
And maybe commission a SoC to run the whole thing?

Bonus points: Make sure to commission the SoC from Anon you never meet in person.
Combo FTW: Make sure the deal is sealed with an open-ended nonviolent non-contract, with no noncompletion clause because no completion date specified.

100% true, the reasoning behind this is really simple and I've experienced it first hand.

My game for example. I've done the majority of the work and then brought in another developer down the road. I know the code and what I changed, what does what, and where to find it. The new developer doesn't know this. They have to basically learn the code themselves, learn what does what, and learn what is found where before they can begin to start making their own changes to it.

We can wait more, as long as it finishes without any trouble and open for public. It's better to wait than use with a lot of glitches and bugs. I'm not an expert, don't really understand github repos but I'm sure you deserved that BTC.

I think your issues stem from the fact that you don't quite understand how software is made. I can understand that to you nearly 2 years, and a 1+MM dollar amount seems absurd. No, really I do. But have you taken a look at how much it cost to build some of the other forum software out there?

All I'm asking is, before you go and make a forum post, consider if what you're about to post, is a gut reaction to some numbers or an informed rant. I encourage you to go and search for how much is costs to build software. This might shift your perspective a bit.

Being that you're still a student, I'll give you the benefit of doubt. Most software projects, especially of this scale, can easily go over 1MM. And to take a project to completion (although really there's never an end to any real software project), usually go over a year. Were we a bit naive with the initial estimate? Yes, we had the same thought you have. "It's just a forum, it can't be too hard, and it definitely shouldn't take a few seasoned devs more than a year to make."

Boy were we wrong. And I'll be the first to admit that. But rather than just call it quits and move on. We decided to stick with the project and see that it gets done. Here's a quick list of things you need to consider while making a forum and problems we've run into. Not all of this information can be found online and so we had to experiment until we found a good solution. Hopefully you can use this list to see what it's like to build a larger scale software project.

• What Programming Language do you use? This is going to be an open source project so you want to choose a language that's widely used and avoid esoteric languages like Haskell.
• What DB do you use? PostGRES? MySQL? Oracle? SQL Server? NoSQL? Remember to balance costs vs. performance vs. ACID compatibility. Atomicity and Transactions are key here. There are very nasty bugs to be found if you don't do your homework.
• What should the interface look like? Should it look exactly the same? Should you improve upon the old interface?
• Write your own BBCode Parser? Alternatively, how do you handle other parsers at the same time?
• Plugins. Make sure you balance extensibility with security. Also, how do you handle extensibility while making custom plugins a breeze
• Security! Are you making sure you're follow the latest OWASP?
• SPA vs static page rendering? Balance client performance vs server performance
• How do you handle large DB table sizes (over 10 millions rows)? How do you handle querying that data? Which indexes do you build
• To add on to the point above, what is a reasonable fetch time? Sub millisecond? 10 milliseconds? 100 milliseconds?
• Banning users. IP level bans? Username Bans? Temporary bans? Then do iterations of all those combined
• Notifications. You need to let the user know if they have a PM or else that page is just a wasteland. But what about other interesting items? Like letting the user know when a thread they posted in has more posts? Or if they were mentioned in another thread they haven't viewed yet.
• Additional Requirements. Theymos doesn't want a clone of SMF, if he did, he wouldn't have asked us to build new software. So how do you use your codebase to solve some of this problems? Better Mod Reports, highlighting admins and mods, etc. Do you take requests of the user base as well, things like spoiler tags and nearly every other suggestion in this board (They have insight on what works and what doesn't for them.)

By no means is this list exhaustive. There are many more topics to cover but I think this gives you the basis to form an idea of what it takes to build forum software. It's not as easy as a collection of posts under a collection of threads under a collection of boards. There are users, messages, custom pages, reports, moderation, administration, and many more things that need to be built along the way.


Also, being that you're a CS student, you should really take a look at Github. That's pretty much where all the open source code you'll be using the in future is going to be held. Oh and EpochTalk is on there too. You can keep track of all the work we do on a daily basis. https://github.com/epochtalk/epochtalk

I hope we get to test out this new forum sometime soon. I'm most interested in different theses and I guess 'modernization'.

I would have thought a forum software that had been in development from January 2014, with a budget of over one million dollars would have been done by now. Shows what I know, huh? So... how is the timeline of new people joining the project go? I'm very curious about that, because I thought the staff was on this since the beginning, therefore Brooks' law wouldnt be that applicable...

I guessed and I was wrong (as by ready, I mean a open beta). There's not much that I can do about it.

Actually you can see the beta already. However, it seems to be down at the moment due to a 502 error.

Funny, you said in December that it would be ready by February, at latest. I don't know much, being a Computer Science student in Guatemala, but I would think over a million dollars and about (over?) a year's worth of software development would suffice for a forum. Call me ignorant, but looks like there's been little to no product produced by those million dollars.

Just my two cents.


Hey, having to deal with a handful of angry donors (30 is my best guess-timate by taking a quick look at the donate page that a 16-year-old could have coded), and a few people accusing you of being a scam artist... isn't that big a risk. The risk/reward assessment for simply running away with the money and assuring people that there's a new forum right around the corner... is pretty damn sweet, if you were to ask me to go along with it. For me, it would be more like scamming a sweet old lady out of all her money, you know, like televangelists.

I would personally take $300,000 to do that. Well, help cover up for that. I would be rationalizing left and right that my partner in crime would have taken a moral action by using that money in any way (s)he pleased.

Mixed feelings, won't lie.
Would I stoop this low for $2.5 million US? Hope not, tho pretty hard to say.
But I'm mainly driven by incredulity -- think people shouting "bravissimo!" at a woman getting raped in the isle of an opera house.
But then again, 2.5 mil is a nice sum