Hello dear fellows, I've thought long about what is the best course of action for the turn to the second-half of this decade in order to avoid repeating previous mistakes and with the overall goal of separating us from being "yet another gambling forum" (with its negative traits) to getting us to focus in being an actual "Bet Selection" board to honor our name and create our own positive flavor. These are the results.

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As BetSelection.cc is financed by BetSoftware.cc it becomes part of its operation.

BetSoftware is focused in software, BetSelection gets to be focused in studying & analyzing systems.

We get to enforce a "Be Nice" policy to cut every message that doesn't abide to it.

This will make us a much-hated board for every troll, the "freedom of speech for whatever I want to say" folks, hinters, as well as those who are "mixed" posters, being productive today and troublesome the next day, in an endless loop/cycle.

We can certainly do good to outsource all of the bickering, personal arguments and recurrent nasties elsewhere and stick to delivering a great experience to the fine fellows who end up enjoying our flavor for focused discussion and testing here.

This change in focus gets to be powered by a new custom web engine.

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2015 gets devoted to developing this new web engine, one little bit at a time, with the overall plan for the year being this:

The forum gets split in independent sub-forums, one for each game, featuring only three (3) sections: Bet Selection, Money Management and Systems.

This allows us to confine the system selling ads to the roulette forum and the roulette forum alone, which enables us to appeal to audiences such as Poker, Blackjack, and others which wouldn't ever like to participate in a forum featuring those the ads in their messages.

Alongside, a system-testing rig, where users submit posted system and created BetSoftware modules are used to test them on a daily basis, generating open stats for them to act as a way for attracting more activity to the focused discussion. Also, a hosted betting server for real-time gaming with chat as a hang-out place for our users.

Our ultimate goal for 2015 is to become an actual bet selection board, with focused gambling study, complementary to our BetSoftware web, being self-sufficient, enjoying our custom web engine with bleeding-edge features to deliver a great experience to those who want to discuss, test, play in group and in general enjoy our very own flavor.

The fellows who have the right productive profile sure are getting to be pleased to the maximum and stay with us for the long run in a higher octave.

Okie-dokie I'm freer to work in gambling coding and getting the site(s) in shape.

Thanks a bunch for being here. Let's make 2015 a year of success [smiley]cxp/cool.gif[/smiley]

I'm getting freer by the day, so the hiatus is about to end.

Great things are cooking, 2015 is a year of changes for us

New web engine included.

Cheers!

This "mini-hiatus" actually serves as a sort of a grant to gather funds for our software endeavor, it gets to provide at least some cushion in the local jobs front to be freer to work for our online purposes.

I'm not doing this for the quick buck, but rather to build an international movement of coders for our framework and ultimately bringing benefit for our online gaming community's users as a whole, regardless of forum name; this isn't for the get-rich-quick sort of guys. What I aim to achieve requires a certain type of vision to withstand "walking the path". Gladly, I have faith in the open-source movement and its ways of building things, slow but surely, so we're set in stone in our goals.

When you are tired but happy, you know you're doing things right [smiley]cxp/cool.gif[/smiley]

Cheers!
Vic

BTW, the "or such" part derived from me going online more time permitting to publish BetSoftware and attending around here.

Not by much, but still not a full hiatus

Hi guys, I took work from two mid-size local companies which amount in hours to 12+ six days a week (up to almost 16 at times), so I'm officially beaten until 20th-22th when I finish one of them.

Hey! none is officially "exploiting me" since none is giving me more than a regular work hours load, but combined I'm squeezed .( the word for IT guys' real life over here LoL).

...My off-line life permeates my virtual world, can't do anything about it.

I'm currently in no position to say "no" locally until I'm able to derive enough from my online activities; at least a part-time salary from home There's a good chance BetSoftware gets to that sooner than later, but in the interim I must take what I have to take.

Of course, the wife's happy since there's a good financial compensation and I'm willing to do the extra mile for the family, but I'm physically exhausted. I get home and don't want to even look at the computer.

This is just another "patch" for the online road, but a happy one locally since I'm actually over-employed which is always better than "un-".

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Regarding "moderation enhanced" for 2015, the core idea is we put all rule breakers in pre-moderation for a week as an immediate action before things escalate to foster peace at all times.

If they choose to continue poor behavior after coming back, a poll for a one-month mute is triggered.

If after this they still aren't willing to maintain peace, then a poll for a one-year mute is triggered. This should be enough prospect of a consequence to be a deterrent.

Most people wouldn't go further than pre-moderation but still the system gives enough to rule abusers to think twice before triggering polls.

The community part: any member can ask for another member to be moderated with valid arguments (This and polling mechanism is what needs fine-tuning before being implemented, but by preventing conflict before things escalate, we are headed to a certainly peaceful forum).

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So, I'm fully back this month. There's actually code to release at the BetSoftware site so I'm going to focus more over there to bring my part-time online job closer to a reality to be able to attend both sites dearly.

It's all part of our bigger-picture plan

Cheers!
Vic

Have our best wishes for a bright and happy new year 2015 for you and yours.

[attach=1]

Victor & Family

Quote from: Rashid on December 30, 2014, 02:33:27 PM
Victor, with all your software and coding skills, why has the typing lock-ups, freezes issue not been resolved?

It is just as bad as ever.

No use, attempt at fixing it introduce more bugs. Our hope's a re-install from scratch.

Quote from: greenguy on December 30, 2014, 10:12:35 AMI think esoito's heart was in the right place

I second this ... 

Quote from: TheCaviarKid on December 30, 2014, 12:14:11 AM
That sounds like good news Vic.

[...]

It's worth the effort to try. 

Indeed.

BetSelection.cc is "piggybacking" on our software site's server right now.

Our Software's site is subscription-based, so the first bunch of subscribers pay for maintenance, then it's profit. (Unlike making money out of discussion sites, software sites intended to make money are OK)

Off-loading my administrator's duties to mods and members frees me to focus on building great software for everyone in the community to enjoy. The other choice for this transition would have been to simply handle all my admin's powers to another single pair of hands; to be honest, I didn't want us to merely move to have the "new era" for another person to impose a personal will (i.e. the new XYZ admin era). Better for us to make it be the community & staff cooperation era, where members grew mature from past quarrels and police the forum wisely to keep balance.

Hey! 2015 is just a couple days away, so these are my last couple days as a full-blown admin.

Our first open community-council poll is regarding Albalaha's situation.

Quote from: TheCaviarKid on December 29, 2014, 07:57:04 PMbetselection.cc=on life support

Hello TCK,

We're shifting Admin's role, not pulling the plug on us (i.e. not shutting us down)

This might end up being a more balanced place as a result; instead of every little thing coming to my "admin's plate", it's the community + mods who get to solve things in a more independent & democratic way.

Quote from: esoito on December 27, 2014, 10:41:17 PM
Yes, but a wise man knows when enough is enough!

Sure, that's what makes you wise

It's all opt-in. The only one who can't give up on the forum is me; even if it frees me up from the "$3500 RouletteForum.cc loan-like scenario".

The "hole in the bucket" should I quit would be a "404 not found" error when people visits the site.

It's an attractive option short-term but I have to think long-term; to me this site is part of a trifecta of webs, a family of sites so to speak:

[Gambling] + [Gambling software] + [Software]

We get to open the 3rd site with money from the gambling software site, so it's all interwoven.

I'm not done with my online project, we sure can eventually have the $3500 to spare in order to free the forum from the ads, then we're continuing as a totally independent, free operation with no ties to anybody else.

As it's now it's also a mutually beneficial deal: Steve gets the ads as a guarantee while the $3500 are due, then he gets the RouletteForum.cc site when they are returned, not bad on his side of the deal.

On my side, my benefit derives from mending things with Steve and remaining in good terms with members from the community, that's worth it for me. I'm here to remain, not to vanish.

We're not done yet

Hello dear Max,

Please note we do need to keep a figure of wise men across the board.

We don't want to entertain neither the “tyranny of the elite”, nor the “tyranny of the majority”.

We strive to feature a form of middle ground here.

Mods are needed to keep order and -in general- a moderated forum is much better than a non-moderated one.

Public polls are needed to check what people want. Letting regular members have a voice with weight becomes paramount here.

The power to put members in moderation, the power to mute, and other powers should be attributed to the forum's wise men. You sure have demonstrated being wise.

[...more to come...]

May you and your families have a nice, prosperous time this Christmas.

[attach=1]
(Click above to enlarge)

Victor & Family

(Attaching this image was inspired by a fellow member who reminded us about the true meaning of Christmas)

From a fellow forum member in Monte Carlo:

"It's very pretty and the lights change colors."

[attachimg=1]

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Thanks to the fellow member for sharing this with a special group of people who values it!

...May we all have our Merry Gambling Holidays!

Cheers!
Vic