Was Epochtalk doomed to fail?

[alani123]

I see many people here lead the debate towards personal responsibility.

Saying things equivalent to "since it's an open source project, why don't you develop it yourself"?

And others here try to argue that since we didn't donate we have no right to speak.

These arguments hold some truth, but they also both try to stifle discussion.

As to why people may not take it upon themselves to develop Epochtalk... Well, the answer is simple. There's near-0 incentive. People may develop open source over for-profit software for a meager salary, or if it's something the world greatly needs, just for self realization purposes. But here there's neither a financial incentive. Amd also, this forum isn't a community project or a democracy, so there's also not much in terms of self realization to have by helping develop software for it.

By this point it's become pretty clear that the world moved past Bitcointalk to a large extent. This place used to be the starting base for nearly everything bitcoin. Now almost every development in the space takes place without even a relevant discussion being started here after the fact. We're a very small and niche crowd that has remained here. Could it have been different? Maybe. We don't know.

But I'll tell you one thing. Documentation and analysis is the foundation of humankind's progress. A historian wouldn't need to have been personally affected by certain events to document them and analyse them for instance. Personal accounts by those personally acting in events are very valuable, but discussion around the events shouldn't be restricted to these people only.

And to say that we're not affected by what's going on in bitcointalk is also a fallacy. Discussions here could affect anyone involved with BTC to some extent. Due to a plethora of reasons that may even be outside of anyone's control now, things are not like that anymore. But especially among us that keep using the forum, many have been in this forum for over 10 years. It's our digital neighborhood. The least we can do is have a discussion about it in a civil manner.

I'm not directing what I'm saying here at anyone personally because just as I'm allowed to have a voice here I respect anyone's right to also voice arguments I may consider bad. But I'm jut hoping everyone will see why this discussion is good to be had.

[JollyGood]

Back to the question about was Epochtalk was doomed to fail?, I doubt it was doomed to fail.

It could just have easily have succeeded had some decisions not been taken but we will never know now. When theymos began the project he did it in good faith, he did not know everything from the financial cost of failure as well as the time it would take to get to the point of cancelling the project.

[joker_josue]

I would like to know how many forums exist that are +10 years old, have +3 million users, and have +65 million posts.

This broke deepseek!

I pasted that quote into the engine, and it started spitting out a list of the larger ones, then everything vanished and it wrote "Sorry, that's beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else."  LOL!

But, did I get the numbers wrong? Or maybe it was a translation error... One million has 6 zeros.
The forum has 3,673,956 Members. And has 65,027,052 Posts.

Building a forum of this size, or at least managing to keep a forum of this size running, is no easy task. Usually the forum does not last that long, without a constant income.

Managing a community with paid moderators while being able to get a degree wouldn't take the skills of a great manager - just someone with high school budgeting.  I am a funny guy, but I'm not just saying he is incompetent for just that one mistake, as big and obvious as it was.  Remember that every single treasurer he gave coins to stole from him, and he still didn't learn and paid one of the thieves more.   When you reward a thief with donated funds, that's not a bad manager anyway - that's a criminal.

A criminal is someone who donates money in the hope of helping a project grow. Or is a criminal someone who receives donated money, in the hope of carrying out a project, and runs away with the money?
For me, a criminal is someone who runs away with donated money.



Now, if mismanagement is constant, you really need to review the situation. But, I have the idea that these events occurred some time ago, at a very specific moment, when everyone was inexperienced, and BTC didn't even have the value it has today.

[worldofcoinsaltacc2]

Theymos, with all due respect, you wasted so much bitcoin on this project, you gave thousands of bitcoin to treasurers, you rewarded bitcoin to a thief who stole from you and you still trust him...

[1] Isn't it time to step down and let someone competent control the donated funds?

I don't mean ill will towards admin, but there's always a possibility of some accident, and what happens after admin's gone? someone's left to take over other than Cyrus, anyone other than Ognasty trusted with forum funds?, servers, and domain?
Cobra was the last person, I believe, the only person who had shared control over the forum after Martti left.

[JollyGood]

If theymos were to step down as someone in control of the donated funds, who in your opinion should the funds be entrusted to?

Theymos, with all due respect, you wasted so much bitcoin on this project, you gave thousands of bitcoin to treasurers, you rewarded bitcoin to a thief who stole from you and you still trust him...

Isn't it time to step down and let someone competent control the donated funds?

[Ultegra134]

Since Theymos has already replied and explained how things ended the way they are, providing that his answers were adequate, is there a reason to continue this discussion? From my point of view, I also believe that the development team was too young and likely inexperienced to handle such a large project and to receive such a huge amount of money as a payment for their work. As @LoyceV already mentioned, that's $33,000 per developer, per month. That's almost $400,000/year per person; it's a huge sum, and even though I have zero experience with how such large-scale projects work and how much they cost, I doubt that a team of experienced and renowned developers from a different company would get paid that much.

A donation is a donation; that doesn't necessarily imply that donors shouldn't have their objections, but the opposite also applies. You don't donate money to expect something in return. Even though I haven't donated to the forum, along with many other members, I do believe that we have the right to voice our opinions, we're using this forum, thus it concerns us.

Personally, I don't mind the current design; it has its flaws, but it's something that can be worked on, which perhaps was the most major issue of Epochtalk, wanting to create something from scratch when you already have stable software to work on and develop. From how I see things, it's best to leave it in the past; discussing it here won't change how much money was spent, nor is it going to return back to the forum's pockets. Is it a shame? Yes, it is, but as @OcTradism already mentioned, it's not unusual for corporations to spend millions of dollars to develop something that wasn't ultimately used.

With that being said, I believe Theymos and whoever else in 2013 acted in what they thought was in the best interest of the forum. No one had decided or speculated that after all those years the project would eventually fail. Many mistakes were made, from budgeting issues to time and management and perhaps the chosen developers, but it happens. Probably if we knew what we know now, it could have been avoided, but that cannot change now.

I am not trying to sugarcoat things, nor am I profiting from having a neutral stance, but what is done is done; we either find a way to move on as a community or we stay in the past. There are ways to upgrade this forum with a relatively low budget, which I believe has already been discussed on the other thread; pointing out that it was a mistake makes no difference now; we either try to make a difference or stay silent.

[Cryptohygenic]

It might be worth creating a thread about what steps @theymos should take to ensure that what happened with Epochtalk doesn't happen again, or in other words, to ensure that the remaining funds are used properly.

I don't know what suggestions would be helpful, but I think creating an advisory board of trusted forum members before spending any money on development would help a lot.

If I may get this right, so was all the decision taken singlehandedly by Theymos alone on the development of the community site without a board of committee to lay emphasis on how the project should go?
I think it is indeed a big tax for one person alone to handle because definitely there would be lost of what is right to do and going back to reformation or corrections would definitely cost extra expenses which that is if the Epochtalk project for instance has an estimate expenses of $1000 it may take extra expenses because the error correction is a added expenses.
But when there is an instituted bodies to oversee the project or if I may say playing helping hands to Theymos, the mental efforts on critical decisions would be easier to handle.

[jamyr]

If theymos were to step down as someone in control of the donated funds, who in your opinion should the funds be entrusted to?

Theymos, with all due respect, you wasted so much bitcoin on this project, you gave thousands of bitcoin to treasurers, you rewarded bitcoin to a thief who stole from you and you still trust him...

Isn't it time to step down and let someone competent control the donated funds?

theymos_away

[BenCodie]

I do not have leisurely free time to dig for what I've already seen, analyse the blockchain (for who knows how long it will take) to connect the financial dots, correctly annotate and format the information into a post that can not be disputed

But you do have time to make huge accusation posts without any evidence?

Takes a lot less time to state what is already known than it does to go out of my way to prove it to someone who also already knows, and is purely sending me on a wild goose chase out of spite for the fact that I had pointed out what is known.

You can keep on posting this "without any evidence" crap but the evidence is already out there. How about using your massive database of bitcointalk data and looking for it yourself if you genuinely don't know what I'm talking about. OR publicly and officially deny a huge accusation that I've made, and then I'll disprove it, that way I can leave a valid negative trust rating and create a reputation thread about it after doing so? That'd be enough incentive. I don't see a lot of "that never happened, you're a liar", and I see a lot of "go find the evidence". Two very different things.

I'd personally be happy to manage a signature of the donation wallet, listen to the community and their opinions when it comes to me giving a signature, and I'm happy to do it for free as I'm sure several others would be.

As long as nobody asks you for any evidence, I guess?

That doesn't even make sense buddy. Do better.

...not surprising that LoyceV had a similar mentality:

First point on the agenda: the salary of the forum board members

Pointing out the obvious human nature isn't a "mentality", it's being realistic.

You're pointing out the flawed human nature that was a big contributor as to why Bitcoin and its roots came into existence into the first place, and why the world is generally so corrupt. It's not human nature, if you're a genuine decent human who cares about whatever you're contributing to.

for me, raises the question for LoyceV - how much have you made from the donation wallet?

Which donation wallet? I've listed donations received on loyce.club, and "the forum" isn't on that list.

So you've never gotten an incentive for any of your work privately? Sure thing

I don't count on there being blockchain evidence

So I guess you're not taking my word for it either....

Why should I or anyone? I'm not asking people to take my word for what I'm saying, I'm encouraging people to go digging. On the other hand, you're asking people to take your word simply on that this forum is all roses, daisies and innocent people doing gods work, in comparison to people being corrupt.

You make out on your website as if you do it all for charity, but what is your real motivation?

It's like reporting posts: all small things to improve the forum. Feel free to create a topic in Reputation about me. Or use my reputation thread. This is my last response to your unfounded off-topic accusations in this thread.

The same guy who says it is human nature to need payment or incentive to give something as little as an opinion, also says that his contributions (that are much more than just reporting a post or giving an opinion) are nothing but small things to improve the forum. Sure LoyceV, you're just a innocent guy, creating tools for free. No ulterior motives or incentives here!

Give me the fiat equivalent of what was spent on epochtalk, heck even a tenth of it, and I'll commandeer a project that will build something even better than epochtalk from scratch.

You're asking for $600k without showing any skills. Start with a business plan.

For now, I have higher personal priorities to chase over creating a business plan/community initiative and wasting god knows how many hours on something that ultimately will be bashed by high-ranking individuals (irrelevant of how good the plan is) or that is not funded even if it is perfect. Though do not mistake that for it never being done, I have full intentions (and have already documented and thought of) an initiative that will shit all over epochtalk and achieve a better result in a fraction of the time. You simply don't know me, therefore, you don't know my skills. You'll witness when the time is right. Until then, happy to leave this here...

This is my last response to your unfounded off-topic accusations in this thread.

...Though will happily keep responding to you if you prompt me to do so.

If theymos were to step down as someone in control of the donated funds, who in your opinion should the funds be entrusted to?

Theymos, with all due respect, you wasted so much bitcoin on this project, you gave thousands of bitcoin to treasurers, you rewarded bitcoin to a thief who stole from you and you still trust him...

Isn't it time to step down and let someone competent control the donated funds?

Not you that's for damn sure LOL!

It should be a group of individuals who control a signature in a multi-signature wallet. Not a single person. That group should be decided on by the community based on discussions that help to determine who is most fit to be able to do right by the remainder of the funds...but before that ever happens, something needs to be done about the corruption in the forum, and this broken trust system that has put so many people (like yourself) in positions of power and influence that they definitely do not deserve.

[PrimeNumber7]

So the main question that remains unanswered is why the funding was kept up for so long.

Ultimately, the money theymos spent on this project was his own. The money he received from donations were reasonably his when he received them. However, even if this was not the case, he only received approximately $70k in donations, denominated in BTC. He made the decision to not convert the BTC to fiat, and as a result, saw massive capital gains.

So I guess the answer to your question is that theymos is a millionaire who has wayyy more money than he knows what to do with.

I also don't think $400k for a developer is unreasonable. Especially considering the potential for the project to end at any time, even if it lasted for 10+ years. Slickage obviously needed to make a profit, so not all of that money went to the developers, but most of it probably did.

The project failed, which, unfortunately, is not uncommon in software development. Could things have been handled differently? Yes, hindsight is 20/20. Meta spent billions on the "metaverse" in about 20% of the time, and that has been pretty much abandoned.

[SamReomo]

I feel bad for that Epochtalk project but it was a tough project at that time, in today's time if Theymos or someone else decides to spend money on such project then I don't think it would cost $5.9 but way less than that. I believe it was just a good way to see how a native software works on this forum and it didn't work and that's why Theymos stopped supporting that project and noting else.

I hope the developers who got paid some good amount may continue developing that project for free and if they were sincere then they will surely create something good for this community or for open source community. As of now, we the users of Bitcointalk really don't want to move to another software as for us this current software with those added patches over the years is more than enough.