>>911958
Yea I don't plan on doing a tor bundle type of application. The main reason I haven't started work on it yet is I don't know if I want to design a new protocol or keep it strictly over HTTP. When I first had the idea years ago it was meant to solve the problem I saw with forums, mainly that they are too restrictive. I wanted to take the best of imageboards and typically forums and put them together. I wanted a way to allow people to remain anon or post with a username but I also wanted everything to be interconnected so you could use that username across multiple forums. Targeting forum administrators allows the network to grow faster because as they import their user databases you get tons of new users overnight. The problem is forum admins tend to want total control over everything, are driven by greed, and they all run in a clique so if you can't convince the big players to switch over to your software none of the small guys will either.
Over the years I've realized that targeting forum administrators was a bad idea due to the above reasons. Forums are dying due to how they are operated and the fact that google is pushing them further and further down the search results. But forum admins are faggots chasing adsense money so they put up with whatever google does to them like the beaten housewives that they are. They are going to run awful software like vBulletin until the end of time and they'll sell off any user information they can get their grubby little hands on. So, at this point I'm more focused on drawing in users from imageboards and usenet.
On to your other points; I want to put most moderation in the hands of the end users but I think it's a good idea to allow each nodes administrator to have the ability to moderate as well. If an admin decides to be a faggot word will spread quickly and the node can be blacklisted/avoided. I also want the software to be able to function without relying on the rest of the network. Private nodes are good because they allow people to set-up places where they can share and talk about things without the rest of the public knowing about it. If they can operate by themselves without relying on the rest of the network to supply bandwidth than good for them.
The scope of the project got way out of hand though. At this point I'm basically attempting to implement usenet, irc, torrenting, video sharing, imageboards, mumble and text forums all under the same network. It can be done but it'll take a lot of time. It's also going to require dedicated nodes to pick up the slack because some users simply aren't going to be able to use it in a full on P2P type of set-up. I'm wrestling with how I want to handle encryption as well. I'm thinking it best just to design everything and allow individual nodes/users to decide how they want to encrypt stuff going over the network. Last but not least I am attempting to figure out the best way to manage user accounts. Users are going to have various things associated with their accounts like avatars that are going to have to be constantly sent and stored throughout the network.
I'm going to get started on it over the summer and work at it. Hopefully it'll go somewhere but if not at least it'll make for a fun time. I figure if enough people like it maybe somebody will start using it for warez and it'll take off. I'll probably just end up with a cheese pizza network knowing my luck.