Author

Topic: Was Epochtalk doomed to fail? (Read 49 times)

legendary
Activity: 1722
Merit: 1048
Top-tier crypto casino and sportsbook
Today at 10:03:28 PM
#4
Consider taking your own advice:

While disappointing and sad, I guess there is no choice but to move on.

"I guess there is no choice" means I don't see any other option. That doesn't mean that's what I'm advising, or what people should do.

As for the rest of your (valueless) post:

11,000 BTC

Why do you keep repeating this incorrect figure when theymos already told you it was wrong?

Reportedly 11,000 BTC were donated toward creating this new forum software.

That's not true. 3116 BTC was donated, with a total value-at-time-of-transaction of just $68k. The remainder comes from advertising/fee revenue, with a total value-at-time-of-transaction of $3.2 million. (A lot of spending was also at these sorts of low prices.) Furthermore, donations were meant to be a way of supporting the forum in general terms; it wasn't like some Kickstarter project. The main pages about donations didn't mention the software project at all, and almost all donations were made before that project even started.

Obviously you're aware of his response as you quoted that same post.

I think the main question is - how much BTC is left?

If you didn't donate any BTC, then its not a question at all as it doesn't concern you.

Actually it doesn't concern the donors much either, hence the use of the term "donation."


Pretty appalling from two members who are respected by the rest of the forum.

Honest mistake on the 11,000 BTC, I corrected it with theymos' figure...Though, I wish I hadn't made it considering if you deduct that correction, you contributed absolutely zero value with your post.

I won't take full fault on the figure - considering that you want to derail the thread on the 11,000 BTC / 3116 BTC debate, here's the whole chain which is yet to be responded to (for audience context):

Reportedly 11,000 BTC were donated toward creating this new forum software.

That's not true. 3116 BTC was donated, with a total value-at-time-of-transaction of just $68k. The remainder comes from advertising/fee revenue, with a total value-at-time-of-transaction of $3.2 million. (A lot of spending was also at these sorts of low prices.) Furthermore, donations were meant to be a way of supporting the forum in general terms; it wasn't like some Kickstarter project. The main pages about donations didn't mention the software project at all, and almost all donations were made before that project even started.

Do you plan to compete other social platforms and make this forum more popular like it was during its glory days?

To justify my comment, it was based on these ones:
Buyers remorse is worse with bitcoin.  I am a guy looks at what he spent to buy a tablet with 0.2 BTC and keep thinking I have a mental disability looking back but then I think of Adam Levine's camera for 30, and Theymos paying 11k for web software and another guy bought two pizzas for the same amount.  Money is for spending. It's only a game.  I learned a lot by using the tools and services I bought with BTC, and I am glad I had those.  It must be disheartening after three years for Theymos but good software can take time.
The choice may have been different if we were to start the project now. But I believe that interfaces are what matters. Also, we kind of didn't have a choice on the frontend. If you would like to see, our migration layer and database schema design is written in Elixir and Ecto. As for JS, there are definitely shortcomings but performance-wise, Node is good enough on the server side for the time being.

Do you have any specific questions?

Do you realize how hilariously unbelievable it is that 11k BTC has been donated for new forum software and nothing has changed?

Do you ever feel like you scammed bitcointalk users that donated?

Javascript is slow... why the fuck would you be developing a 100 million dollar forum in javascript? "Good enough," seriously???. With all the bitcoin that was donated this is just insane... 2018 and no new software. Not even an alpha example to go look at.

You never corrected that the actual figure was 3116 BTC and not 11,000 BTC there, so I assumed they were correct. That figure has been thrown around more than once.

As for $68k being value at the time of transaction, that means that each coin was worth $21 each at the time of the transaction which would have been February 2013 at the latest. I estimated values based on this post:

Work is underway by Slickage on new forum software for this forum. The software will be written in Node.js. The goal is to create new open source forum software that will directly compete with software like SMF and phpBB. Unlike Discourse, the software will be featureful and information-dense. Unlike Reddit, the software will support and encourage lengthy, high-quality posts (while allowing shorter posts). The software will be a jump forward from our current forum, but not something entirely new. The basic concepts will stay the same, but with significantly better code, better methods of filtering the huge amount of content, and many other useful features. All old forum data will be retained and migrated to the new software.

Here is the current master requirements document. This document is evolving. If you have any ideas for new features or changes that are reasonably high-priority and realistic, discuss them in this section.

Which was over a year after February 2013, March 2014 (Price was $500+). Though if February 2013 was the case, that would mean that work began a year after the donations came in? It sounds like the project was not going so great from the beginning if that's the case. One whole year before development even begins is quite a long time...one whole year before a post is made or a goal is published is also quite a long time.

I could go on, though I'll actually take nutildah's advice (despite it being wrong in my eyes) as I wasn't a donator and I'm not interested in pressing the admin of a forum I enjoy being a part of. All I will say to end this post, is that I think you could be a bit more transparent with what happened since it's ending here. Answering questions like why it took a year for development to start, how much Slickage got for this failed work, any disputes between the two of you, or any kind of recount, would be useful insight for a donator (or an outsider) to understand the whole saga (especially since not a single thread with info like this was opened in that board since that initial thread, until this thread, afaik). That's my opinion (not a requirement, obviously).

All of that aside, it is a part of life to fail, and if this was just genuine failure, it sucks that the project turned out that way and I'm sorry for you and the donators that it did. I know that personally it wouldn't feel good, and I'm not trying to make you feel worse than you already might. I'll leave this at that.

The no response to the above and the lack of transparency on the epochtalk project as a whole is why I said to the user that I guess there is no choice but to move on - not because that is the right way forward, but because no other choice or explanations are seemingly going to be given.

I'm not sure why you continue to trying to divert discussion about the amounts and epochtalk, making yourself look like a fool each time you post in defense of the notion that "what happened to 3000-11000 BTC is no ones business, not even the donators". Not only is each time you post counterintuitive to that notion, though it's irrational, and shows that for some reason, you don't want people digging into the matter. Why is that?
legendary
Activity: 3010
Merit: 8114
Today at 09:41:57 PM
#3
11,000 BTC

Why do you keep repeating this incorrect figure when theymos already told you it was wrong?

Reportedly 11,000 BTC were donated toward creating this new forum software.

That's not true. 3116 BTC was donated, with a total value-at-time-of-transaction of just $68k. The remainder comes from advertising/fee revenue, with a total value-at-time-of-transaction of $3.2 million. (A lot of spending was also at these sorts of low prices.) Furthermore, donations were meant to be a way of supporting the forum in general terms; it wasn't like some Kickstarter project. The main pages about donations didn't mention the software project at all, and almost all donations were made before that project even started.

Obviously you're aware of his response as you quoted that same post.

I think the main question is - how much BTC is left?

If you didn't donate any BTC, then its not a question at all as it doesn't concern you.

Actually it doesn't concern the donors much either, hence the use of the term "donation."


Pretty appalling from two members who are respected by the rest of the forum.

Consider taking your own advice:

While disappointing and sad, I guess there is no choice but to move on.
legendary
Activity: 1722
Merit: 1048
Top-tier crypto casino and sportsbook
Today at 09:21:15 PM
#2
It appears that a large portion of the bitcointalk's community donation funds went toward this software's development. These were funds that were initially donated and held to the forum with the goal of improving bitcoin and its community.
How much did this investment cost?

The total amount spent was $5.9 million, spread across 11 years.

Imagine if that $5.9 million was actually used to improve Bitcoin itself and its community, rather than replacing a forum software that in 2025, still reigns as one of the best forum solutions there has ever been.

I really enjoy this forum and I believe theymos has been an integral part of it getting to where it is today...though there's no doubt that epochtalk was one of the biggest blunders in forum history. 11,000 BTC 3,900 BTC - imagine if instead used for something like a locked vault, purposed to reward those who contributed to this community down the line when BTC eventually took over? Or used to reward those who had already built or started new initiatives in the project development board? Would have, could have, should have I guess. Instead, trusting some kids to replace one of the largest community built forum softwares in our time.

While disappointing and sad, I guess there is no choice but to move on. The lack of transparency around epochtalk will surely remain, and the answers to questions that you, I and others seek, will only be met with no answer or comments like this:

Why did the forum pool so much BTC together instead of working on the project open-source or in outsourcing with milestone agreements?

Epochtalk is open source. You can fix it up, run a demo, and we'll all pile on to make fun of it.

I'd consider looking into it if it wasn't built on some godawful server-side javascript framework, but for someone who knows that shit or wants to learn, it might be an interesting project, or a complete waste of time.

or this

I think the main question is - how much BTC is left?

If you didn't donate any BTC, then its not a question at all as it doesn't concern you.

Actually it doesn't concern the donors much either, hence the use of the term "donation."


Pretty appalling from two members who are respected by the rest of the forum.
legendary
Activity: 2422
Merit: 1451
Leading Crypto Sports Betting & Casino Platform
Today at 08:27:14 PM
#1
From a software development perspective, Epochtalk had a massive scope.
It aimed to replace software such as the one this forum runs on, which on its turn is based on decades of collective knowledge and thousands of manhours by a very wide array of people that contributed to the SMF open source project.

The Epochtalk team was small. Not much is known about the people that were part of the development team. However, since the very inception of the project, many members of the bitcoin community were quick to point out that they seemingly were too young and seemingly lacked previous experience. It's easy to substantiate these conclusions given the fact that the developers, to their credit, use their real profiles on GitHub.

At the time of the team got the project, these developers would have been around 25 years old. Many had said that choosing such a team for a project with the goals Epochtalk was unacceptable. At the time, the budget was huge for how small bitcoin was as a whole, so it was a big deal. Eventually it got hard to follow this discourse because it got lumped together with the blocksize debate/crisis the bitcoin community was getting through around that time.

But focusing on Epochtalk's fate, now with the eventual announcement that the plug will be pulled from supporting its development after so long, even more questions arise. Looking back, I'm afraid we now have to admit that those expressing concern with how the project was handled were right.

The question of why this specific team was picked, and based on what criteria it was decided to support them continuing work on the project remain.

It appears that a large portion of the bitcointalk's community donation funds went toward this software's development. These were funds that were initially donated and held to the forum with the goal of improving bitcoin and its community.
How much did this investment cost?

The total amount spent was $5.9 million, spread across 11 years.

This remains one of the hardest subjects that concerns this community. The failure to deliver the new forum software, while no longer a hot topic after all these years, surely deserves a revisit to these old questions.
Jump to: