Feature List & Status
[Done]
Website Design
Invitation System
Item Listings
[InProgress]
Refactoring the Trading Post section
Adding Comments to Links (Friday)
[ToDo]
Add Pictures to Item Listings (TackleTheWorld)
Show Items on Map (TackleTheWorld)
Job Listings
Bartering System
Personals
An optional public page displaying whatever attributes of your that you would like to make public. A resume for example.
Possibly integrate with Porc 411, any new messages will be displayed at the top of the site.
If you would like to help I need your name and email address to boot strap the system with a few tuath members. Either post it here or PM me. Thanks!
I have registered the following domain name: http://tuathnetwork.com
I need help coming up with a tiered trust system. So, when someone adds you as a friend or you add someone as a friend you can specify how much you trust this person. I'm thinking of doing a -1 to 4 system. But I've only spent a few minutes thinking about this so there's probably much room for improvement:
4 With My Life
3 Very Trusting
2 Trusting
1 Friend
0 Acquaintance
-1 Distrust
I looked at LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com) and they don't seem to have any way to add a quality of trust attribute to the links. You are either added to the person or not. I still think it's useful to be able to designate your trust in the link. If someone is untrustworthy you would want others to know about it. But maybe it should be simpler:
Trust
Neutral
Do Not Trust
Quote from: Lex Berezhny on August 14, 2007, 10:33 PM NHFT
I need help coming up with a tiered trust system. So, when someone adds you as a friend or you add someone as a friend you can specify how much you trust this person. I'm thinking of doing a -1 to 4 system. But I've only spent a few minutes thinking about this so there's probably much room for improvement:
4 With My Life
3 Very Trusting
2 Trusting
1 Friend
0 Acquaintance
-1 Distrust
I like something like this.
What would you REALLY like to see in the first alpha release? So far I was thinking I could get the following together rather quickly:
1. Being able to login and see a home page.
2. Add skills.
3. View an aggregate of everyones skills on one page.
4. Add item for sale. (For Sale)
5. Add item you want to buy. (Wanted)
6. View list of members and add them to your friends list.
I could also try to fit in a prototype of the invite and linking stuff into the first release.
But let me know if there is anything you specifically would really like to see first.
I neet tester, please PM me or post here your email if you have 5 minutes to try out the program.
The login page is here (http://tuathnetwork.com) but you need an invite to login.
if someone invites me ... I will fill out some info :)
Quote from: Lex Berezhny on August 14, 2007, 08:36 PM NHFT
In '06 I started a website to help people network and specifically to link job seekers with job offers (threads: nhfree (http://newhampshireunderground.com/forum/index.php?topic=1662.0), fsp (http://forum.freestateproject.org/index.php?topic=10761.0), ftl (http://bbs.freetalklive.com/index.php?topic=2534.0)). The website sortof died off because there didn't seem to be a great deal of support for it and this was also right before my move to NH so priorities kindof shifted eslewhere. I'm now ready to start the project back up I have more ambitious goals than last time. Here is a preliminary feature list and vision for this project:
1. Website will be by invitation only, any existing user can invite someone else.
2. Create job listings and resume listings. Rate others on their work. (similar to ebays rating system, but I'm open to other ideas).
3. Ability to list items for sale and/or barter. The system will facilitate an bartering interface where you can make offers.
4. Personals.
5. An optional public page displaying whatever attributes of your that you would like to make public. A resume for example.
6. Possibly integrate with Porc 411, any new messages will be displayed at the top of the site.
7. And other stuff I haven't thought of yet...
If it's invite only, this site should be SSL, too. No point in keeping people out if you're not also keeping eavesdroppers out.
Quote from: J'raxis 270145 on August 16, 2007, 10:27 AM NHFT
Quote from: Lex Berezhny on August 14, 2007, 08:36 PM NHFT
In '06 I started a website to help people network and specifically to link job seekers with job offers (threads: nhfree (http://newhampshireunderground.com/forum/index.php?topic=1662.0), fsp (http://forum.freestateproject.org/index.php?topic=10761.0), ftl (http://bbs.freetalklive.com/index.php?topic=2534.0)). The website sortof died off because there didn't seem to be a great deal of support for it and this was also right before my move to NH so priorities kindof shifted eslewhere. I'm now ready to start the project back up I have more ambitious goals than last time. Here is a preliminary feature list and vision for this project:
1. Website will be by invitation only, any existing user can invite someone else.
2. Create job listings and resume listings. Rate others on their work. (similar to ebays rating system, but I'm open to other ideas).
3. Ability to list items for sale and/or barter. The system will facilitate an bartering interface where you can make offers.
4. Personals.
5. An optional public page displaying whatever attributes of your that you would like to make public. A resume for example.
6. Possibly integrate with Porc 411, any new messages will be displayed at the top of the site.
7. And other stuff I haven't thought of yet...
If it's invite only, this site should be SSL, too. No point in keeping people out if you're not also keeping eavesdroppers out.
I will add SSL before it goes out of beta.
In terms of security, the most secure thing is not to have the site, seriously. There is always the possibility of social hacking whereby a Tuath member is befriended and invites the hacker into the tuath, in the end there is no way to have a truely secure system, the best we can do is keep the honest people honest and the undetermined hackers out. SSL, invite only, and other features will go a long way towards that goal but you shouldn't let your guard down just because your connection is encrypted (hackers never target the encryption, they target the pre-encryption (sitting on your computer) and post-encryption (sitting in the servers database) parts). As for the government, they could simply ask the ISP for the database and I wouldn't even know it (this of course can be remedied, maybe down the line if some is willing to take responsibility for protecting the data and is able to host it on their server, although this goes back to trust...)
Think of the Tuath Network as more of a collaborative tool than a safe data storage medium.
Quote from: Russell Kanning on August 16, 2007, 05:44 AM NHFT
if someone invites me ... I will fill out some info :)
I will be sending invites tonight.
Quote from: Lex Berezhny on August 16, 2007, 10:45 AM NHFT
Quote from: J'raxis 270145 on August 16, 2007, 10:27 AM NHFT
Quote from: Lex Berezhny on August 14, 2007, 08:36 PM NHFT
In '06 I started a website to help people network and specifically to link job seekers with job offers (threads: nhfree (http://newhampshireunderground.com/forum/index.php?topic=1662.0), fsp (http://forum.freestateproject.org/index.php?topic=10761.0), ftl (http://bbs.freetalklive.com/index.php?topic=2534.0)). The website sortof died off because there didn't seem to be a great deal of support for it and this was also right before my move to NH so priorities kindof shifted eslewhere. I'm now ready to start the project back up I have more ambitious goals than last time. Here is a preliminary feature list and vision for this project:
1. Website will be by invitation only, any existing user can invite someone else.
2. Create job listings and resume listings. Rate others on their work. (similar to ebays rating system, but I'm open to other ideas).
3. Ability to list items for sale and/or barter. The system will facilitate an bartering interface where you can make offers.
4. Personals.
5. An optional public page displaying whatever attributes of your that you would like to make public. A resume for example.
6. Possibly integrate with Porc 411, any new messages will be displayed at the top of the site.
7. And other stuff I haven't thought of yet...
If it's invite only, this site should be SSL, too. No point in keeping people out if you're not also keeping eavesdroppers out.
I will add SSL before it goes out of beta.
In terms of security, the most secure thing is not to have the site, seriously. There is always the possibility of social hacking whereby a Tuath member is befriended and invites the hacker into the tuath, in the end there is no way to have a truely secure system, the best we can do is keep the honest people honest and the undetermined hackers out. SSL, invite only, and other features will go a long way towards that goal but you shouldn't let your guard down just because your connection is encrypted (hackers never target the encryption, they target the pre-encryption (sitting on your computer) and post-encryption (sitting in the servers database) parts). As for the government, they could simply ask the ISP for the database and I wouldn't even know it (this of course can be remedied, maybe down the line if some is willing to take responsibility for protecting the data and is able to host it on their server, although this goes back to trust...)
Think of the Tuath Network as more of a collaborative tool than a safe data storage medium.
This is all true, but transmission encryption certainly protects against a lot of the passive spying on the network level that's purportedly going on nowadays. If someone were actually hacked, individually targeted by a keylogger or "Magic Lantern" or somesuch, or the ISP were hit with a CALEA request, there's not much you can do to protect against it.
In a few weeks I might have some suggestions on the hosting issue you bring up, so hold onto that thought. :D
Invites sent to Russell and TickleTheWorld. If anyone else wants to try it please PM me or post your email here.
Most things obviously don't work yet. This is more of a preview of what's to come than anything. Here is what you can do though:
1. If you click into Network -> Invites, you can send invites to people. Don't get carried away on that one though, at least not yet :P
1b. After an invite is sent it will show up under pending, after someone accepts the invite they will be moved from pending to your Links.
2. If you click into Trading Post -> Sell or Trading Post -> Buy, you can list something for sale and see what other have listed for sale. Can't edit, delete or search yet, only add and view.
3. Navigate through the menus and see if you have suggestions on what I should add or if the menus are confusing, etc.
Thanks!
Oh, and keep in mind that I will probably delete all of the data when I make another code push out to the server.
Quote from: Lex Berezhny on August 16, 2007, 02:18 PM NHFT
Invites sent to Russell and TickleTheWorld.
:laughing1:
I never joined the Freedom Friends Tuath (unclear if there's a connection or not?), but I'd be happy to be a beta-tester.
Quote from: Friday on August 16, 2007, 03:41 PM NHFT
Quote from: Lex Berezhny on August 16, 2007, 02:18 PM NHFT
Invites sent to Russell and TickleTheWorld.
:laughing1:
Oops! ;D
Quote from: Friday on August 16, 2007, 03:41 PM NHFT
I never joined the Freedom Friends Tuath (unclear if there's a connection or not?), but I'd be happy to be a beta-tester.
I need your email address to send an invite to. There isn't really any connection, although I am a member of the Freedom Friends Tuath.
Quote from: Scott Roth on August 16, 2007, 04:08 PM NHFT
I'll test it if you need someone. I'm a member. Send to: rothamerica@hotmail.com
Sent! Let me know if you got the email.
Quote from: Scott Roth on August 16, 2007, 04:19 PM NHFT
Lex, that is an awesome site. Great work. Can't wait to see it when it's finished. Man, I gotta get you to teach me how to do that stuff.
What do you think I should work on next?
I can just see Lauren with a giant feather.... :o
Quote from: Lex Berezhny on August 16, 2007, 03:43 PM NHFT
I need your email address to send an invite to. There isn't really any connection, although I am a member of the Freedom Friends Tuath.
I created user "Friday", but my password keeps getting rejected. Then I tried reusing the same invitation to create user "Sandy" and got a really pretty pink and purple error message.
Sorry, there is a tiny bug. Please use ONLY LOWER case username. So if you enter FoBarDing when you log in use fobarding instead. Thanks! I'll fix this in the next release.
This is a neat idea! I'd like to apply, and will PM you my e-mail address. Have you considered adding a sort of value accounting system like Ripple? I think the main reason I only have 8 users at ripple.libertybrew is social apprehension/lack of screening. But the two ideas would probably dovetail nicely!
For anyone interested Friday has put her soul up for barter. :o
All right, sign me up!
Quote from: Barterer on August 16, 2007, 05:01 PM NHFT
This is a neat idea! I'd like to apply, and will PM you my e-mail address. Have you considered adding a sort of value accounting system like Ripple? I think the main reason I only have 8 users at ripple.libertybrew is social apprehension/lack of screening. But the two ideas would probably dovetail nicely!
and maybe people don't know about ripple...I remember it.. liked the idea.. and then forgot about it... will join tonight.
Quote from: Scott Roth on August 16, 2007, 05:32 PM NHFT
She did? Wow, an item of great value...count me in! LOL!
Errrr, she did say barter.. therefore I have first dibs :P
Quote from: Dreepa on August 16, 2007, 05:12 PM NHFT
Quote from: Barterer on August 16, 2007, 05:01 PM NHFT
This is a neat idea! I'd like to apply, and will PM you my e-mail address. Have you considered adding a sort of value accounting system like Ripple? I think the main reason I only have 8 users at ripple.libertybrew is social apprehension/lack of screening. But the two ideas would probably dovetail nicely!
and maybe people don't know about ripple...I remember it.. liked the idea.. and then forgot about it... will join tonight.
Cool. Personally, I'll just latch onto the trading system that is most prevalent by the time I get my tired ass to New Hampshire.. ripplepay, Lex's or mine.. it doesn't matter. But somebody must do it.
Sorry, I've forgoten what ripplepay is all about. Can someone give me a one paragraph synopsis.
Ripple is an IOU tracking system that would match perfectly with the social network you are developing. Discussion thread here (http://newhampshireunderground.com/forum/index.php?topic=7519.0). I mentioned you as one of the computer gurus that should take a look at it and give me some advice. If you were to embed my site as one of the tabs on the tuath trading network, or implement ripple somehow, that would kick ass.
I would like to thank everyone for testing out the system and loading it up with a bunch of records. I have downloaded the database from the server and loaded it into my development environment and I've already found a bunch of things to improve and fix just as a result of the data you guys put in. So again, thanks for all the records you guys injected into the db. It's going to be a big help moving forward. 8)
Quote from: Lex Berezhny on August 14, 2007, 10:33 PM NHFT
I need help coming up with a tiered trust system. So, when someone adds you as a friend or you add someone as a friend you can specify how much you trust this person. I'm thinking of doing a -1 to 4 system. But I've only spent a few minutes thinking about this so there's probably much room for improvement:
4 With My Life
3 Very Trusting
2 Trusting
1 Friend
0 Acquaintance
-1 Distrust
I would do something like 0 to 100.. 0 being total distrust, and 100 being total trust. Semantically simpler. I would also put some more safe guards in place, such as how long you have known the individual, in what circumstances you met the person (on line, from work, school, through a friend, curch, etc), how financially stable the person is in your opinion, the person's profession, other people who can vouch for the person, how well you think that person judges character of other people (you don't want a good friend who is a sucker introducing you to others, right?).. You can probably think of more things. I think that this would be one of the most important features of a site, so trust is paramount.
Quote from: Lex Berezhny on August 16, 2007, 10:45 AM NHFT
Quote from: J'raxis 270145 on August 16, 2007, 10:27 AM NHFT
Quote from: Lex Berezhny on August 14, 2007, 08:36 PM NHFT
In '06 I started a website to help people network and specifically to link job seekers with job offers (threads: nhfree (http://newhampshireunderground.com/forum/index.php?topic=1662.0), fsp (http://forum.freestateproject.org/index.php?topic=10761.0), ftl (http://bbs.freetalklive.com/index.php?topic=2534.0)). The website sortof died off because there didn't seem to be a great deal of support for it and this was also right before my move to NH so priorities kindof shifted eslewhere. I'm now ready to start the project back up I have more ambitious goals than last time. Here is a preliminary feature list and vision for this project:
1. Website will be by invitation only, any existing user can invite someone else.
2. Create job listings and resume listings. Rate others on their work. (similar to ebays rating system, but I'm open to other ideas).
3. Ability to list items for sale and/or barter. The system will facilitate an bartering interface where you can make offers.
4. Personals.
5. An optional public page displaying whatever attributes of your that you would like to make public. A resume for example.
6. Possibly integrate with Porc 411, any new messages will be displayed at the top of the site.
7. And other stuff I haven't thought of yet...
If it's invite only, this site should be SSL, too. No point in keeping people out if you're not also keeping eavesdroppers out.
I will add SSL before it goes out of beta.
In terms of security, the most secure thing is not to have the site, seriously. There is always the possibility of social hacking whereby a Tuath member is befriended and invites the hacker into the tuath, in the end there is no way to have a truely secure system, the best we can do is keep the honest people honest and the undetermined hackers out. SSL, invite only, and other features will go a long way towards that goal but you shouldn't let your guard down just because your connection is encrypted (hackers never target the encryption, they target the pre-encryption (sitting on your computer) and post-encryption (sitting in the servers database) parts). As for the government, they could simply ask the ISP for the database and I wouldn't even know it (this of course can be remedied, maybe down the line if some is willing to take responsibility for protecting the data and is able to host it on their server, although this goes back to trust...)
Think of the Tuath Network as more of a collaborative tool than a safe data storage medium.
I think though this could work if you really put forth the effort to add features (see my previous post) to grill potential new members to make sure that they are worthy of trust. Also some form of primitive Digital Rights Management might be something to explore. So if you wanted John do to see something, you could let him view some data and not others. Also filling the site with bogus data to confuse potential hackers, running automated bots to pose as users to expose people trying to compromise the security of the system.. This could be a really interesting security experiment...
Regarding trust levels, why not just have users upload their public keys and have GnuPG calculate trust like this:
Quote from: gpg man page
- No ownertrust assigned / not yet calculated.
e Trust calculation has failed; probably due to an expired key.
q Not enough information for calculation.
n Never trust this key.
m Marginally trusted.
f Fully trusted.
u Ultimately trusted.
Seems like that would take the least programming effort.
To save further effort I'd also cobble together a SimpleMachines forum for the "trading post" area, and of course drop in the Ripplesite package for actual trading (I'll shut up about that for now) ;)
Trust stuff has already been implemented and will be released tonight! I think you guys will like it. It's simple and intuitive.
Will be releasing within the hour! :-) Are you guys ready? :boogie:
Code was pushed. Everyone who was already in the system before should have gotten a new invite.
Here are the changes since last time:
1. The username bug was fixed, so if you enter Friday when registering you also have to enter Friday when logging in.
2. Menus have been slightly moved around.
3. Fixed the bug where you could enter invalid price ammounts. If you chose something other than USD or LD the input box is greyed out.
4. You can now add your own category to a listing. Choose other then use the text box to enter a custom category.
5. You can now delete listings. Click on a row of the listing and then click on the trash can icon.
6. On the find listings page you can now see the description by clicking on the row.
7. Trust can now be changed for the user, it's on the Network -> Links page.
8. You can now add user links by looking at users in the Network -> Search section and clicking the + sign.
9. Added some more fields to the registration page, we need the city and state to make things thing useful for you to find people in your area.
10. Random bug fixes here and there and some UI improvements.
Also, the site may not work in IE. I have only tested it in firefox. I also know for a fact that the icons will be broken in IE. I'm working on fixing that at the moment.
Enjoy!
Give me some feedback after you check it out.
I justed look at it in IE7 and it is broken. So if all you got is IE7 don't bother testing it :-\
After thinking about it a little I'm even considering just making the site require only Firefox as the webbrowser. I don't feel like having to develop the same thing to two different browser, it's just a waste of time and considering IE sucks major monkey balls it's not worth it.
So, are there any die hard IE users that wouldn't be able to visit the site if I take this course of action or is pretty much everyone here using Firefox?
From looking at my logs only 10% of users logged into the site using IE, so I'd say that's a good indicator that I can ignore trying to support it.
Quote from: Lex Berezhny on August 17, 2007, 08:04 PM NHFT
Give me some feedback after you check it out.
I would like to see a comment field in combination with the trust rating system. There are so many variables in trust, they can never be fully captured by a scale, IMHO. For example, there's this joker named "eukreign" in there... >:D I'd probably say something like "I have only met him a couple of times, but we have several mutual friends, and I've heard good things about him"
Okay, that'll be the first thing on my list of things to do. Maybe i'll even finish that tonight.
I see it let me pass through a <b> tag in a listing I made. Is that intentional, or is it letting any HTML through? :o
If you do intentionally plan to let markup through, the square-bracket stuff these forums use might also be useful. A "preview" button would be handy, too.
Quote from: J'raxis 270145 on August 17, 2007, 08:51 PM NHFT
If you do intentionally plan to let markup through, the square-bracket stuff these forums use might also be useful.
BBcode? I hate that crap.
Quote from: Beavis on August 17, 2007, 09:22 PM NHFT
Quote from: J'raxis 270145 on August 17, 2007, 08:51 PM NHFT
If you do intentionally plan to let markup through, the square-bracket stuff these forums use might also be useful.
BBcode? I hate that crap.
Anyone from one of these forums should be familiar with it, though.
I'm familiar with universal healthcare, but that's crap, too. :)
I'm going to be using the first post in this thread to keep track of features and the progress.
Quote from: Beavis on August 17, 2007, 09:34 PM NHFT
I'm familiar with universal healthcare, but that's crap, too. :)
What do you recommend?
To me it doesn't make a difference that much, whether i implement BBcode or parse our bad HTML and only leave stuff like bold tags, etc.
Will you have a place for folks to sell services on the new site?
-E
Quote from: Eli on August 21, 2007, 02:38 PM NHFT
Will you have a place for folks to sell services on the new site?
-E
Yes.
I'd love to beta test (send an invite to paulsonm@pluto.dsu.edu)...what language are you guys doing this in?
Quote from: MatthewDP on August 22, 2007, 09:28 PM NHFT
I'd love to beta test (send an invite to paulsonm@pluto.dsu.edu)...what language are you guys doing this in?
Yeah, sign me up too.
I think it's in English. If it's not, then most of us wouldn't be able to participate!
Programming language.... php? asp.net?
Quote from: MatthewDP on August 22, 2007, 09:33 PM NHFT
Programming language.... php? asp.net?
Python same language as Google uses for all of their web applications.
nice. Definitely like the concept so far
Any updates on this? I see my junk test posts are still in there...
Quote from: J'raxis 270145 on September 02, 2007, 12:33 PM NHFT
Any updates on this? I see my junk test posts are still in there...
I've been working on it off and on. I've also been working on the interface quite a bit in terms of the create/edit/delete/view of things. Playing around with some DHTML.
- lex
Ah, okay.
Lex, is there any particular reason why you're doing a system from scratch rather than using one of the social networking packages that are available? Some are free, and some cost a few hundred dollars. Not that there's anything wrong with building one from scratch, I'm just curious.
Quote from: Friday on September 03, 2007, 02:16 PM NHFT
Lex, is there any particular reason why you're doing a system from scratch rather than using one of the social networking packages that are available? Some are free, and some cost a few hundred dollars. Not that there's anything wrong with building one from scratch, I'm just curious.
I have my own way of doing things and none of the ones out there match my programming style so it's actually easier for me to write it from scratch.
Friday, how's yours coming along?
Quote from: Lex Berezhny on September 03, 2007, 07:04 PM NHFT
Friday, how's yours coming along?
My poll hasn't even closed yet! And I just came up with a new idea today, an awful, Grinchy idea >:D... so maybe I will leave the social networking to you.
I have been thinking lately of some ways that the rating system I have can be improved while still making the process of rating people simple and here is one solution I've come up with (i haven't implemented this yet):
Instead of allowing you to rate an individual, you would only be allowed to rate transactions with the individual. So, here are some scenarios:
Lets say you're having an important meeting and someone who promised to show up, didn't. You would go into the site, create a new transaction record attached to the person called "liberty meeting xyz" and then give a rating of how important this was to you, if you thought they were completely irresponsible give them a 1, if they called before hand but gave a really crappy excuse give them a 2 or a 3 and if they had a good excuse give them a 4 and if it was something outside of their control (car broke down on the way to the meeting) give them a 5 (since they were obviously going to make it but were prevented from doing it).
Another aspect I was going to add is categories for transactions. For example: Money, Promptness, Effort, etc. So if you know someone who's always very helpful and always on time but never pays back any of their debts you would have a bunch of positive transaction records for them on the Promptness and Effort category but a bunch of negative transactions in the Money category. Then your final rating for this person would consistent of the 3 different parameters.
In this way if someone wants to deal with someone they don't know very well they can get a better idea of the persons strengths and weaknesses. If you need a ride from the airport and someone has offered to give you a ride, you don't care too much about this persons money habbits (hopefuly they'll have money for gas) and while their effort should be somewhere above a 1, the most important thing would be Promptness, right?
There would also be a way for the user being rated to create a transaction and send it to other users to get their rating of it. So, if you organized some event and you want the people who helped you organize to vote on your organizational skills, you would be able to create a transaction item and forward it to all of your members. If you gave someone a ride to the airport you can create a transaction and send it to the person who got the ride, etc.
The person doing the rating would always have the option of keeping it private or making it public. I would probably have to implement some sort of weighting system so that someone doesn't just add a bunch of private negative ratings to someone else. One way to resolve this would be to make a private rating half as influential on the users final score as a public one. Also, if one individual has a ton of negative private ratings in the same category for another individual, the weighting of those ratings would become even less. Rating anonymously would allow situations where you may not want to hurt someones feelings or be the person to confront someone about their money habbits but would still like to give them a negative rating to warn other members.
Anyways, that was kind of a brain dump. Let me know what you guys think of this idea and if you have any additional improvements on it.
Anyone aware of any serious problems with the ripple system (http://ripple.sourceforge.net/)?
My gut tells me there are opportunities for fraud in this kind of system where you automatically agree to micro loans as a payment between two other people go through you. I realize that you set limits on how much you're willing to loan but is this scalable.
Thoughts?
There is no opportunity for that kind of fraud (micro or not) because if you are a link in a chain that passes debt along, you've got a line of trust between you and your adjacent links. If you get ripped off in a transaction as a passive link, you still know who to complain to. Shirehours is based on ripple and has been running for some time now with no complaints other than the difficulty of learning the interface.
Quote from: Barterer on August 13, 2009, 01:10 PM NHFT
There is no opportunity for that kind of fraud (micro or not) because if you are a link in a chain that passes debt along, you've got a line of trust between you and your adjacent links. If you get ripped off in a transaction as a passive link, you still know who to complain to. Shirehours is based on ripple and has been running for some time now with no complaints other than the difficulty of learning the interface.
How many people are registered with ShireHours? Is it being actively used? How many transactions have gone through?
100 users
Actively used by a few
About 150 transactions so far.
Hmm, maybe I need to make another trip up there and rustle up some users :icon_pirat: Right now the system is not popular enough to generate enough to pay Ryan for the next upgrade I want to make, which is a checkbox which would allow user-selectable email on/off. That would give end-to-end encryption for some, without shutting off the e-mail receipts most users like to get.
i think there are 2 problems with the shirehours system
hard for people to understand
nice and private ... but noone knows if anything is happening there
Quote from: Russell Kanning on August 14, 2009, 09:32 AM NHFT
hard for people to understand
Can you elaborate on this.
Do you think the concept is difficult to understand?
Or do you think the concepts are easy but the interface makes it more complicated than it needs to be?
If Ripple was rewritten from scratch, what would you do differently?
The concept is hard.
Quote from: Lex Berezhny on August 14, 2009, 10:01 AM NHFT
If Ripple was rewritten from scratch, what would you do differently?
Change the "credit" +/- nomenclature so that it does not seem backward to most users. People generally do not understand why you cannot "pay" others your IOUs until they give YOU credit.. that is, the person you pay has to recognize your IOUs as good (up to a certain amount). People see a "payment" as a cash payment, so why the hell should it require a line of credit? Ripple does not work that way.. only IOUs are exchanged. I cannot get the majority of users to understand that that's why the credit lines seem backward, no matter how many posts I write or message boxes I change on the system. So it needs a major retooling to make it easier to understand and use. I just don't know how to do it, and can't code fer shit even if I knew exactly what to do. Any confusion AT ALL on a monetary system is enough to drive people off.. darn. :(
What if the system was manual. Meaning that instead of doing all of this voodoo in the background of finding transaction paths and performing these rippled payments, it would be up to the user to make these decisions. Or maybe to allow both methods: manual and automated.
I would think that in most cases, at least for our use, we don't need this "ripple" feature to make payments because the trust distance between most people making payments is going to be 1 most of the time: most payments will be made between people that trust each other. As the system scales and ripple payments are accepted on Amazon and Ebay, then yes, of course the full power of "ripple" would have to come into play.
The largest trust distance in our community will probably be a 2 or a 3. This is a small enough number that you can let the user manually go through the transaction process:
Lets say I want to pay one of the tenants at Russells place. I trust Russell and assuming Russell trusts them then that would be one hop. So, if I was making a payment to the tenant, the system would find Russell and ask me if I want to:
1. pay through russell if we have enough open credit between us
2. add the tenant to my trusted circle and pay tenant directly
In this way there is nothing magical going on in the background. The system will explain what it will do and ask me for my input.
Then as a user becomes more comfortable with how it works they can choose not to manually approve the transaction in this way. For all future transactions or only transactions involving the particular payment path (recipient and intermediaries).
Have a checkbox for "Don't ask me about this transaction path again." So that after I've already successfully made a payment I would not want to get prompted about this specific payment path since I'm already comfortable with it. Next time I pay Russells tenant it'll just automatically happen through Russell - but this will no longer be a mystery since I had approved it the first time. If, on the other hand, the payment can't go through Russell (not enough credit, etc) then the system would drop back down to manual mode.
It would be a lot of extra work to involve the user in the process like this but does anyone see any value in it?
Would involving the user in the process make it easier to understand how it works?
Quote from: Barterer on August 13, 2009, 11:16 PM NHFT
100 users
Actively used by a few
About 150 transactions so far.
Hmm, maybe I need to make another trip up there and rustle up some users :icon_pirat: Right now the system is not popular enough to generate enough to pay Ryan for the next upgrade I want to make, which is a checkbox which would allow user-selectable email on/off. That would give end-to-end encryption for some, without shutting off the e-mail receipts most users like to get.
If I may make a suggestion, send out a newsletter to your users, even if the "newsletter" is an email saying "Hi! We're still here! We gained X new users last month." I know I have an account, but to be honest, I haven't logged in in so long, I remember nothing about it. :-[
Also, ask for donations in every newsletter. Can't hurt.
Going back to the example above.
I trust Kat also and assuming she trusts me and her tenants I also have the option of going through her to make the payment.
In this case there are two "shortest" paths to make my payment (other than paying person directly) one going through Russell and the other going through Kat.
I think that in this particular case the system should ask me which person I want to go through to make my payment.
There is more to this than trust, I trust Russell and Kat the same as far as them being honest with me but in a debt situation trust isn't as important as being effective and pushy at getting someone to pay the debt.
If the tenant at Kat and Russells place doesn't deliver on the product I purchased then who would be the better person to have made the payment through? Who will do a better job at hassling the guy to produce the goods? Or be willing to personally swallow the loss and refund me the transaction.
Which comes to my next question/point, charging a fee for the transaction. Trust is great and I suppose part of ripple is that it's a mutually beneficial system whereby Kat would hassle her tenant to get what I paid for with the assumption that if she paid someone through me that I would hassle them to get her the goods she purchased.
Kat and Russell know a lot of people and it's likely that they will have a lot of transactions going through them. This creates a liability problem for them, even if they give out small credit limits to their friends, depending on how many friends they have this can be a lot of money. For example: Lets say Russell has 50 trusted friends and gives each one a $200 limit on his account with them. If half of the accounts owe him money and he owes to the other half then he's on the hook for $5,000 (he's also owed $5,000, which technically means he's even). Assuming everything goes wrong and none of the people who owe Russell pay him back, Russell will have to pay $5,000 out of pocket to the other half if he wants to maintain their trust. At this point if I was in his position I would want some kind of fee/percentage if I am to insure this many transactions/accounts. Obviously this is worst case scenario and unlikely to happen because of how the system works.
If Russell were to start charging for payments going through him while Kat is still doing it for free (or vice versa) then I would definitely want to see both of the paths to decide if I'm willing to pay the transaction fee and gain certain benefits as far as assuring that I will either get my product or money back or if I want to not pay any fees and go strictly on trust.
Lex, there is a crude form of what you're thinking already in place. Users have a checkbox that turns their account on/off for use as an intermediary. You can stick with one-hop payments, allow no pass-throughs, and set up individual trust relationships with everyone you do business with. On one hand you have to maximize the "it just works" factor, on the other hand you don't want to freak anyone out by playing voodoo with their money.
The idea of manual path selection is interesting, and I can see how if some are charging a pass-through fee and some are not, you'd want to select the cheapest route. Or if you see someone you don't trust come up as a possibility, you could avoid them altogether. But if the system showed you a bunch of paths for you to select from, that would create a privacy issue.. you could deduce who trusts whom and know that their respective credit limits are at least as high as the payment you're attempting.
As it is, Ripple will just go with the shortest path that has sufficient credit throughout the chain. It will start with direct 1-1 trust, then look for a path with only one intermediary, then two, etc. but only the link closest to you shows up on your balance sheet. That's the person who's house you should egg if the deal goes bad. In turn, the egg-ee could either accept the punishment, or if not at fault he could look at
his balance sheet and egg the next guy's house. He still has the choice of revealing his other trust relationship to you or not.
QuoteIf Russell were to start charging for payments going through him while Kat is still doing it for free (or vice versa) then I would definitely want to see both of the paths to decide if I'm willing to pay the transaction fee and gain certain benefits as far as assuring that I will either get my product or money back or if I want to not pay any fees and go strictly on trust.
I'm not sure what you mean by gaining benefits.. as in, Kat would insure transactions for a fee? I guess transaction insurance would be good if you trust the insurer more than the person who's supposed to supply the goods in the first place. And since Kat and Russell probably live in the same house, that would simplify the egging justice system ;D
QuoteIf I may make a suggestion, send out a newsletter to your users, even if the "newsletter" is an email saying "Hi! We're still here! We gained X new users last month." I know I have an account, but to be honest, I haven't logged in in so long, I remember nothing about it. Embarrassed
Also, ask for donations in every newsletter. Can't hurt.
Yeah, I just never was a sales-y, promotional mass e-mail kind of guy. We'd still be at what, 8 users? if not for Jack. But I'm confident that Shirehours will tickle my palms again and I'll do something to give it a boost. I generally prefer working on the quality of things and just letting people gravitate to or from my stuff. Right now I'm focused on fixing a rent house and it'll be 3 months before I dare advertise it ::)
you guys are both right
your ideas are exactly mine Lex
i can see us doing something like this ... and you charge a little for the handling and trouble
make it basically manual and easy to see and very public to promote it
this is exactly what I am doing with the Cardinal Canning Shire Hours ... it i backed by Silver and/or my labor, so it is real and understandable. i then can promote who has the money or not if they want to be private. :)
Quote from: Lex Berezhny on August 14, 2009, 10:00 AM NHFT
Quote from: Russell Kanning on August 14, 2009, 09:32 AM NHFT
hard for people to understand
Can you elaborate on this.
Do you think the concept is difficult to understand?
Or do you think the concepts are easy but the interface makes it more complicated than it needs to be?
the concept is hard for a bunch of people
only like 20 of us get it :(
the interface is decent
This is not dead by the way. I still think about this off and on, have been planning it out.
If someone has ideas or would like to help please contact me directly or post here.
It was so secret, I could never figure out who was in the tuath, and couldn't help them. ::)
Wait!! Aren't we in the same 'cell'??
This hurts my head a little; but I like it. Does this fit in with the freedomengineering.org (http://freedomengineering.org) project?