Topic: New message board wish list (Read 4491 times)

For better or worse, I'd post about twice as often if there were [abridge] tags. If you read what I write too often, you'll notice I have a bad habit of including way too much information, frequently going off-topic. In fact, the majority of my time posting is spent in post-posting, trying to remove information but getting so caught up in internal debates over whether or not I should delete something, I end up ADDING a paragraph to expand on a quip in case it might be misconstrued. When I catch myself doing that too often, I delete the entire post, including the on-topic contributions.

The [abridge] tag could work in either or both of these ways:
1) Hide the text but provide a javascript-powered (or whatever) asterisk. A user could click on that * and see the hidden text in case they don't understand what was said or maybe otherwise want more details.
2) Hide all abridged text and have an "unabridge" button which reveals all text within [abridge] tags.

This is meant to be a much less space-consuming form of "spoilers," though I can't think of any reason to not just have "spoilers" have these options.

Bitcointalk holds an abnormal amount of personal information in PMs, from names and addresses, to bank routing and account numbers. A private message self-destruct option would be reasonable, I think. The sender would tick the option and enter the number of days before the PM is hard-deleted from the server (both in the receiver's inbox and sender's outbox). This would encourage extra caution with sensitive information, where the receiver could copy the data and store it locally only if he really thought he'd need it. In the event of a warrant or community lynch mob, it also takes some of the heat off Bitcointalk given they had an absolutely legitimate reason to delete the info.

I meant to say only the first time someone posts in a thread will their WTA be calculated (for decay purposes). If a HAU posts once in a thread, it's the only time his contribution will be counted for WTA (decaying), so he can't later make a new post in a thread he's already posted in to increase it's WTA (decaying) score. I was thinking this would help prevent abuse by people thinking they could game the system in keeping it in the "what's hot?" list by just deleting their old original post in a thread and then posting something new to bump it up. I wasn't trying to suggest that everyone's WTA (decaying) resets to the highest value as soon as someone comes in and posts "hi mom" to a 500-day-old thread -- sorry about poor wording there.

The WTA decaying is definitely resource-hungry. But let's just recalculate the WTA (resource-hungry) whenever someone posts and store that value as a numeric value that's compared to the timestamp when you're displaying the list of threads. That's a static request with a simple numeric calculation, not at all resource-hungry.
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This may end up being most pragmatic. I was hoping for something which could more accurately forecast when HUAs (or many "LUAs") were being most active in a thread so that old active threads would eventually fall off the "what's hot?" list. I think it'd be very time-efficient for people without a time to have a more dynamic version of the "top 10 threads" list @ https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=stats which is effectively useless in finding new, trending discussions (and I think it'd be fairly useless with non-decaying WTA alone, too, since "old" stuff never fades away).

when we have BTCTalk 2.0 it would be great if these features were present (of course if it's released in this millennium)

Yep. Great idea. I'm still trying to find ways how this could be abused, but as long as I don't find any, this would be second on my wishlist (right after API).

Why would you prefer the first post of a specific user in a thread for WTA? I'd rather use the last post of a user or just all of them. Imagine a necroed thread with High Activity Users (HAU ) which is mostly kept alive by newbies posting "Hi Mom" (you all know what thread I'm talking about). As soon as a few HAUs post there, it could probably safely be assumed to be interesting again, right? Probably I'm just missing something you've thought of

The WTA decaying is definitely resource-hungry. But let's just recalculate the WTA (resource-hungry) whenever someone posts and store that value as a numeric value that's compared to the timestamp when you're displaying the list of threads. That's a static request with a simple numeric calculation, not at all resource-hungry.

Okay, I think this is the one. I think this is critical for BTCTalk 2.0 (or 3.0, I guess?)

Have Weighted Thread Activity ("WTA") display next to threads, maybe color coded. WTA is displayed in percentage and is the cumulative activity score of unique users posting in thread, divided by 10,000.

Stephany has activity of 50 and posts once
Bill has activity of 100 and posts twice
John has activity of 1000 and posts ten times
Betsy has activity of 300 and posts three times

They all post in a particular thread. The WTA for this thread is (50+100+1000+300)/10,000, or 14.5%

This percentage is to roughly guesstimate the "legitness" of the thread. This could have a major impact on astroturf ponzi threads where low-post bought accounts are pumping up the nonsense. Every time a "major poster" posts in a thread while leaving the default-on "add to WTA" option checked, he is adding to the thread's "legitness."



Beyond this, another positive impact can be made with "WTA (decaying)," a column where WTA is calculated normally, but with a 5% (nominal) per day decrease in a poster's WTA contribution since the day he originally posted. This is able to be abused, so once a user posts the first time, that original posting date should be stored by the forum server and unable to be changed, even if the user deletes his original post.

Stephany has activity of 50 and posts once, first on 1/24/14
Bill has activity of 100 and posts twice, first on 1/20/14
John has activity of 1000 and posts ten times, first on 1/11/14
Betsy has activity of 300 and posts three times, first on 1/10/14
It is 1/29/14

The WTA (decaying) for this thread is ([50*.75]+[100*.55]+[1000*.1]+[300*0]), or 1.55%.

WTA (decaying) can be used to find the threads recently most actively posted in by high-activity users, a relatively accurate (IMO) "what's hot?" I'd also suggest something similar to a "what's hot?" button in the main user toolbar, where the top 100 or so threads (by WTA (decaying)) are kept.


I'd imagine this would be very resource-intensive, so the dev should be careful about giving rough estimates over hard real-time statistics (for example, don't calculate WTA contributions by user more than once). This would effectively replace having to ban giveaway threads and help reduce the potential for scams (except, obviously, by high-activity members, whose threads would initially be given more credibility). Trust rating could act as a multiplier to someone's WTA contribution, but that seems like a clusterfuck waiting to happen.

Something like that is fairly high on my to-do list. It'll work just like the Ignore feature, with highlighting when someone is "popular". (Ignore highlighting is currently disabled, of course. That's higher on my to-do list...)

Something like the trust system now, where you add users which seem important to you, and where their choice of important users would also be considered important to you... "importance scoring", sounds like a nice idea.

Rename forum.



(for serious suggestion, some type of option to mark users "important" would be nice. I'd see this as creating a larger border around posts they make so it's easier for me to notice when I'm skimming a thread, or possibly just a little icon somewhere in their post.)

You can already do that. Well, at least sort by number of views.

glad there is some activity in this thread.

* filter/sort threads by number of views
* star features, like github
* news. like hackernews for bitcoin

+1

Also:

"Ignore Sig" Button, like the Ignore Button in the Sig of Users, to Ignore only specific Sigs (Those Advertising Sigs are annoying). I know this can be done with addblock. But using addblock on this forum causes other problems.

"ignore thread" feature. Preferably with a checkbox in the thread list. So that when you move on to the next page, all the checked threads are ignored.

*Ability to auto-ignore new subforums being added, non-obnoxious notification ("alert bar"?) of new subforums being added which are not ignored by default.

Useful because I have some local language sub-boards unignored, but end up with a handful of new subforums in a language I don't speak adding topics to the "new posts" list.

*Some type of "spoiler" code, as used on other forums, would greatly benefit this forum, which tends to have a high number of exceptionally long and often segmented posts. It'd be nice if images in "spoiler" data were not downloaded unless the "show spoiler" button were clicked.

* kickstarter like features
* projects are listed in a separate category (like github links users with projects)
* verify donations (to give feedback)

advanced stuff

* advanced trust models, using networks. if I X and X Y, I can Y a little bit more. if X Y's trust with BTC that's even better. if Y defaults on trust, X has to post me his insured BTC. if I find 10 people who trust Y and each insures him with 1 BTC, I can do 10 BTC volume business with him. This was the goal with ripple, but breaks at beginning with trusting a corp for money supply.

Furthermore: if 10 people trust X they can insure him as a group, creating a mutual account. some trust insurance can be specific to some contracts.

* proof of property. I use keys to prove I own virtual good X. now I can transfer that virtual good.

Problem with all of this, of course, it is subject to a server / admin. but there is no way to execute software on the blockchain securely, so we have to find a different way.

URL?

let there be 10 competing clubs. each releases their source GPL'ed and the best one wins. I haven't seen anything like it yet, because there is loads of work required to make the smart contract part work.

It's already being built actually

yeah, API would be cool.

how about this: if 10-20 people chime in, we create a club which builds this, and then roll out by method circling, to reduce spam/corporate sellouts. bitcoin community driven projects only.  we need some way to enforce minimal policies, while keeping the ecosystem clean.

suggestions on how to set something like this up, which builds on community efforts, very welcome. I suggest a minimal fee to keep noise out. that fee would go to bounties, in smart contractable way.

* API!