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Strategy

Fri, 2006-12-15 00:19 — Zaphod2016

I signed up for this project over the summer, but lost interest like everyone else. Sadly, as a PHP coder, I am not sure that my skill set will do much good for the project.

However, I have a few bucks I'm willing to donate. And I'm not alone: http://wiki.okopipi.org/wiki/Volunteer_Signup#Financial_backing

I suggest we implement the following strategy:

1. start a "prize fund", donate what we can
2. host a contest. goal: working proof-of-concept program
3. set a deadline, say 7/1/2007 for all entries
4. spread the word; digg, slashdot, blogs. goal: announce contest, attract more donations to the "prize fund"
5. as submissions are provided, post them publically so that everyone can test them
6. all testers vote, winners get paid

This will not solve the project, however, it will get the ball rolling. Once we have some submissions, we will be able to weigh the pros-and-cons of each. The final project can implement the best design from each.

The specific technical skills required of this project can be left up to each "team" wishing to participate.

Slashdot and digg can help us find an army beta testers (judges) and (hopefully) a decent amount of cash donations (prize money).

Once we have submissions, we can implore the white-hat hackers to attack it, and find flaws.

The average "digger" can toss-in five bucks, and offer feedback on the prototypes (submissions).

Perhaps I am being delusional, and wishing for a Christmas miracle or something, but I really think the ENTIRE WEB can pull together and get this done. I think there are a million niche blogs, each hosting readers with a specific skill set. Not everyone is a coder, but bloggers, diggers, hackers, testers can all prove invaluable once we've got something to work with.

Furthermore, this contest should drive some good press to us. We should harness that traffic, maybe start some sort of "PR" blog where we explain whats going on to the layman user (most people don't have time to read through this site). We can keep the public eye interested in us throughout the next year or so while we prepare to launch.

Forgive me if I sound insane, but I think ENDING SPAM is a goal that *all* web users can participate in. I think this is a true case of "us versus them", and I think "us" includes 99.9% of Internet users.

I am not an attorney, but I have a friend who is. I will be happy to ask him how we would go about collecting money. We might need to organize a non-profit corp. Running and organizing the contest, and organizing into a non-profit will require time and effort. I am willing to donate my time and effort free of charge. I think all labor should be donated (no pay) and all donated monies used as contest prizes or promotion for the final product. In other words, I'm not trying to commercialize this, I just think we need to organize and get serious.

I see a lot of good people here, but no one with the skills to code this project. I say we unite, and pull together some prizes and press that will attract some teams of coders ready, willing and able to get it done.

I am happy to move forward with this, but I won't do anything until the community has had a chance to respond.

Your pal,

Zap

P.S. Who is in charge of this website? Who registered the domain? Take me to your leader...

Comments

Sun, 2006-12-17 15:52 — Poltergeist

Money may be dangerous

I'm working on a prototype. Unfortunately I can only work very little on it until (most likely) February. But by then I should have plenty of time for this work.

My prototype looks very promising, I'm very optimistic.

You will probably be interested in the discussion thread at http://www.okopipi.org/forummsg/110. A proposal similar to yours is discussed there. My two posts in that thread explain why that idea wouldn't work for me. Your proposal is a little different, but I believe that it has similar problems.

In summary, our adversary is organised crime, very dangerous people. I think money tends to leave a trail that such people can follow, considering that they don't hesitate to use extortion, kidnappings etc.

If you see a safe solution I'll be very interested. It's annoying, to say the least. I'm coding something that may be worth quite a few millions of dollars, but I can't see any safe way to reap even a fraction of its worth.

I hope you can help testing the prototype when I release it. I'll need a lot of help testing it, I'll be very grateful for all the help I can get. No experience is required.

Because of this I hope that you and everyone who is interested in Okopipi will subscribe to e-mail notifications from our website forum or from our Google Groups -- or from both -- so that you're notified when something important happens. When I release my first prototype I'll post in both places.

Inexperienced people can help test whether the prototype's user interface is understandable and usable for regular users. Experienced people can help with code review, security checks and bug searches. And everyone can help with network statistics, because the prototype will collect such statistics automatically. The prototype frogs will communicate with each other, gathering statistics to see if there are important flaws, and to see what improvements are necessary.

These network statistics will be much more reliable if lots of people run the prototype. That's why I hope everyone who is interested will subscribe and be notified, and help when the time comes.

Mon, 2007-03-05 15:33 — IceTheNet

Re: Money may be dangerous

Well many of us wait in anticipation. You may not be aware of that. Blue Frog was the only thing I used and it was so effective at removing spam. I am sad they gave up. If your product works then I would say recovering your money will not be a problem. If blue frog had worked I would have gladly paid for it. It saved me hours of deleting unwanted spam. I get so sick and tired of seeing viagra and girls that want to have sex with me that I puke a little each time I open my email program. I have Thunderbird but I still have to open my hotmail account by the web. Every day about 40 spams now with blue frog online it was down to about 2 a week. I hope you truly can build this thing I know it is hard otherwise there would be many already. I have been watching your site for over a year now and wish you the best of luck. I will help you however I can. I am a talented graphic artist and web designer php programmer and broke so money will not be in the cards but I will try to send a donation when I get a working copy. or design work or testing or what ever I can do. I respect your talents as a programmer at even attempting such a project.

Again Good Luck
May the spam be on your bread,
not in your inbox.

Mon, 2007-03-12 00:39 — Poltergeist

Re: Money may be dangerous

Thanks for the encouragement. Much appreciated!

Unfortunately, some of the coding is rather difficult, and takes time. I've also been delayed by urgent work that I just have to do. My frog is coming, but unfortunately much patience is still needed. But I'm not giving up! I still think my solutions will work very nicely once they've finally been coded.

It's unfortunate that I seem to be the only one coding a solution. It would be better if there were more people with different solutions. Therefore, if anyone has solutions, do code them!

Wed, 2006-12-20 16:29 — Zaphod2016

Good points

I never thought of the potential risk to those who donated. Sad as it is, you are probably right.

If there is anything else I can do for this project, just let me know. (I'll be keeping an eye on the RSS feed).

Merry Christmas to all!

Fri, 2006-12-15 00:21 — Zaphod2016

Crackpot

Crackpot has the same idea:
http://www.okopipi.org/article/111#comment-405