

Bitcoin Tipping Bot for HN - BitCoinWarrior

We're in the midst of putting together a simple Bitcoin tipping bot for HN.<p>It would allow you to tip posters and commenters in the HN community with a simple text command.<p>Is it something you would use?
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carbocation
Please do not deploy this unless you do it in a way that does not leave a
trace.

In other words, if you do this in such a way that people who don't care about
this _can't even tell that it's going on_ , that's fine. If you have to
interact with the HN interface, e.g., by leaving comments, that will become
incredibly annoying.

How could you do it without leaving comments? Easy. People who care enough
could leave their public BTC address in their profile and install a browser
extension that allows for your tip trigger mechanism to be something other
than comments. The browser extension could indicate which users can or cannot
receive a tip based on a cached scrape of their profile indicating whether or
not they have a public BTC address.

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logn
Congratulations! You've been tipped .001 BTC! For more information and to sign
up for our newsletter, see btc.example.net!

~~~
ConceitedCode
Maybe like a $1 equivalent worth of btc minimum? Not sure I'd mind some spam
if I was getting some value for each piece.

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illuminate
The rest of us don't need your spam being visible here, though.

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felipelalli
I love Bitcoin. It is great for the free market, the voluntary market.
However, I am against this idea because HN is our fun, not our job. Some
things does not pay with money. Have a look at this:
[http://www.voxeu.org/article/blood-money-doesn-t-pay-new-
evi...](http://www.voxeu.org/article/blood-money-doesn-t-pay-new-evidence-
incentives-blood-donation)

And have a look at this nice thread:
[http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/25615/offering-
actua...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/25615/offering-actual-money-
as-a-bounty)

At that point (Dec 2012) I thought Stack Overflow should accept bitcoins as
bounty, but I was convinced that it isn't a good idea.

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shanelja
I'm not sure if I would use it to be honest, I barely have money for myself,
it seems it would be foolish to give it away to other people, even for an
outstanding post.

The only occasion I could think of where I would consider it would be if a
respected HN user was in some kind of trouble and only short term money could
help - living in the UK a transfer to the US is slow and expensive - but the
circumstances would need to be exceptional.

~~~
BitCoinWarrior
understood

~~~
shanelja
Don't take my comment to be against the idea, it's great to be honest, I'm
simply not the target market - however there are quite a few more wealthy,
entrepreneur and silicon valley types on here who wouldn't miss a few hundred
dollars in tipping.

The idea is definitely a good niche and if I simply had more disposable income
I would use it - don't let me refusal discredit it in any way.

~~~
biot

      > ... who wouldn't miss a few hundred dollars in tipping.
    

There's nothing preventing you from buying $1 worth of bitcoins (say, 0.01
BTC) and tipping 0.00001 BTC each time.

~~~
shanelja
I did not know you could do that, I always assumed it was full bitcoins, in
that case I rescind my original answer due to ignorance.

Thanks. :)

~~~
Wingman4l7
Bitcoin would be pretty useless if you couldn't break it up into smaller
pieces, especially at the current prices. =) It is divisible up to 0.00000001
_(8 decimal places)_ and the total number that can exist is 21 million _(which
hasn't been reached yet)_.

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mmastrac
Please don't spam comments from a bot.

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philwelch
It's an interesting idea. People do get paid in this economy for saying
purportedly clever and insightful things (newspaper columnists) and this is an
effort at upgrading that particular economic niche. Bitcoins are well suited
for micropayments, but it's not entirely clear that this idea is viable.

I also share mmastrac's concerns about comment spam. At most, this should
communicate out-of-band somehow, using the HNSearch API:
<https://www.hnsearch.com/api>

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nwh
I actually began writing something similar, but realised how spammy it would
become, and canned the idea. The one on Reddit relies a lot on private
messaging — which HN doesn't have.

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Casseres
I'm a big reader, not a big commenter here at HN. I imagine those who do
comment or make posts do so for the intrinsic value. They are recognized for
their efforts by their karma. People here help others because it's the right
thing to do, and mutually beneficial to all.

When you add money to the equation, then people's reasons and actions tend to
change. I don't want to see people competing for extrinsic things here. I
would like the sanctity of HN to remain as it is.

~~~
al1x
"the sanctity of HN"

~~~
Casseres
sanctity: Ultimate importance and inviolability.

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thibauts
I love the idea of sharing knowledge and insights for the benefit of the
community. I think it's sad to put money in the equation. Upvotes are a nice
and simple way to say "thanks, you've been valuable to me", more so than a tip
that will be way below the value most of the times anyway.

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jklp
Hi, I've been thinking recently about something similar, as a way to "tip"
people for good posts but more not just limited to HN, like a widget people
could embed into their site that people could click to tip.

Give me a tweet if you'd like to bounce some ideas - @jklp :)

~~~
lzy
<http://flattr.com>

~~~
jklp
Doh, ok next idea then

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geeknik
Hacker News doesn't need to be like Reddit. =)

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epikur
Would reddit be more receptive to this?

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veeti
reddit already has one.

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Wingman4l7
Here it is : <http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcointip>

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exit
spend my bitcoins? no.

nevertheless, i'm curious how this would work. a command line utility you
connect to your wallet, which looks for addresses in user profile "about"
sections?

i'm not sure what "bot" signifies then.

~~~
BitCoinWarrior
you'd prefer to sit in your armchair and stroke them gently?

~~~
exit
yes :)

at least until i need a house or something expensive.

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kolinko
yes, please. :)

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RTesla
Absolutely

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RTesla
yes

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reaclmbs
Yes, as long as the bot replied ONLY if the tip didn't go through.

