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.