Bitcoin Forum

http://blockchain.info/address/1GLCacip29fHaFFwSBm4c2iW8FDFFxwJxA

Are you concluding that because Theymos, Maged, and Johnthedong are all included in the transaction? Paraipan's not a mod and he's included too. The odd part is one of pirates old addresses is in there.

They deserve to get paid for running this craziness.

I'm a mod myself on another forum and do not envy the amount of time they must spend on a daily basis keeping this place running.

BTC well earned, IMO. Esp. whoever is running the server. Must get attacked daily.

I don't have a problem of them getting paid, but not at the expense of them saying they do it for free.

http://blockchain.info/address/1LGEXCENTo3UYK8VzYoS3YYYMmUfei78Fk

Very true.

There should be total transparency in regards to donations.

I'm surprised that Mr Gage, with his monumental post tally, is not already fully aware of all the ins and outs of this forum...

Wait, what! There's ins AND outs?

Is there a thread already addressing this issue?

Phone posting, so no quotes, but I'll try to answer the questions so far.

Yes, we get a percentage of ad revenue based on various factors now, which is fair since we spend a lot of time and energy keeping this forum usable and readable. Before only thing we got for our trouble was grief, which leads to burnout pretty quickly.

Donations are not used for this, transparency isn't necessary.

This is relatively new, when I said we do it for free, at the time we were, and had no idea this was coming.

Paraipan is a mod, local mod in Spanish board I think? All the local mods are included as well.

And no, there's no other threads about it, this is the first time I've seen it asked. Good job gage  ;).

how bout you enable the go up/go down buttons? its very simple. takes less than a second. aids immensely in navigating threads.

Only admins can do that.

yeah i know. i pm'd theymos and posted in meta and never got a response.

So who's address is this: 14eg3jCsqXNciW5TPnKHRLQQtEDWdcHNj5  They're worth a lot of coin.

John K. got $1,149. How do you sign up to be a mod!

Ad revenue to mods, but not donations?

Awesome. And well deserved.

Bruno, the mod payments started around April if I'm not wrong.


Yes, and about 20-30% is paid out from ad revenues. Of course, the donations aren't touched here.


That address should be a cold storage belonging to the forum - it's not a mod payment.
Theymos used a secret algorithm to determine the amounts being paid. I guess I'm quite active here - heck, even theymos got only 7~BTC.  ;)

*John looks at Total time logged in: 108 days, 22 hours and 6 minutes and sighs*

Yeah not all is being paid out, only up to a certain percentage. Rest goes to the forum for whatever.

Well, I guess you're worth it. Anyone that calls himself a dong is ok in my book anyway. lol

:P Why, oh why is that still being remembered?

The Internet never forgets.

It's also still his username. Hehe.

Sorry for offtopic reply, but how do you get name on blockchain?

http://blockchain.info/address/1NB1KFnFqnP3WSDZQrWV3pfmph5fWRyadz
or
https://i.imgur.com/lewL6wz.png

i asked greyhawk, and he told me that if you put your bitcoin address in your profile blockchain.info scans the forum every so often and updates their list.

Shouldn't this blub be updated then to make it more specific?

STFU and buy some more ads to badmouth Ripple. We need to get paid!

 ::)

Use this page to tag addresses: http://blockchain.info/tags

Thanks but i tried it and got error "URL Cannot link to this domain"

Well that's weird.. I seem to remember Theymos using the "This forum is not a business" line a few times to excuse not making certain important features. If it's not a business, why does it have employees and income?

Employees? You're doing it wrong, Matt...

BFL pays forum for ads and mods now get a cut of the ad revenue.

Gee I wonder why this was left out of the discussion in the other thread.  ::)

I'm not much for conspiracy theories, but it does seem like that would have been announced publicly so people would know that their advertising and donation "revenue" would be going to pay mods to censor them  :D

I'm gonna go ahead and use the word "BFL spokesperson" instead of "mod" in the future.  8)


"Someone call the BFL spokespeople. There is a scammer afoot."

"I think BFL spokesperson John did a great job cleaning up this thread."

"Just ask a BFL spokesperson to whitelist you."

It's gonna be great.  :D

No donation revenues are being used.
Advertisers pay based on the value that they see in the forum and the returns. They pay for a fair price to get a good chunk of visibility in the Bitcoin community.

Bad theory.

I feel left out!  >:(

That actually helps BFL by the way.

That's what happen when you're an ugly joe.

Ok. Moderating a thread is now called "de-rippling" it.

"I think it's high time someone de-rippled this thread! Can we get a BFL spokesperson in here?"

I'm surprised that no one noticed this before now. Almost all of the moderators have addresses in their Bitcoin Address profile fields, and these addresses receive obvious, regular sendmany payments from addresses owned by me or the forum...

Moderators are not employees. They are not required to "behave professionally," and they don't need to help you with anything. The payments are a form of thanks for past actions, and they do not establish any future obligations for the forum or moderators.


Report many posts accurately, and write good posts. Mods are added infrequently, and only when needed. Also, as you can see, few mods make anywhere near that much.

I wonder if SMF supports word filters, to just change them automatically. And here I was, thinking we might not hit our drama quota for the month.  ;D

Seriously though, I don't care who buys ads or for how much, people pay what it's worth to them. They aren't shares or anything, more or less in ad sales doesn't affect it.

 ??? I was replying to Phinneus's post when it disappeared.

I made an error. Sorry, bud.

But...reply to this one.

http://blockchain.info/address/1P5wRocJarYqdSYPPDmEhhTM9Dvuh3aF5A

The payments started around April as I stated in my last post here. :) That's the first payment if I'm not wrong.

I'm not an accountant, therefore I don't have the foggiest idea how ledgers are intermingled:

http://blockchain.info/tx/e6723b4bbdbd67aac1a44f4c4d4cffedf3a268aa8f6fda386e8bb765be5e7c96

Have to ask theymos on that. I'm guessing he used a single QT wallet for this...

Well, well now, I just can't seem to sleep without shit blowing up overnight. I need to get some caffeine pills. lol

I was just joking. I don't really want to be a mod. It's entirely too much like a full time job and I gave those up years ago. I do think it would have been a better idea to announce this when it was implemented instead of waiting for someone to dig it up just to stop any suspicion. Not many people that have been here for any period of time would deny the mods a few bucks considering all that we see them do.

The sad part is is that I wasn't even digging into this when I found it. I was researching something totally unrelated, then stumbled upon some taint coins via Google and one link later I found the URL on the OP.

Somebody's moving a heck of a lot of taint coins according to the BlockChain.

Does somebody know of a better address explorer that may be visual? Tracing back an address via 100's of clicks is too tedious.

There's a taint analysis tool on Blockchain.info.

That's only 20 times more than my login time and I'm still a total n00b. :D

Last time I checked non profits, foundations, and government also have employees.  By the nature of the relationship (a % of sales revenue) the mods are more like independent contractors then employees.

Just to clarify, I've been specifically watching to make sure that none of the other mods gave that impression ever since this was implemented. None of us did. However, it would also be inappropriate for us to bring the matter up because how much a person is paid is private information and we didn't want to artificially increase the amount of people who were trying to become mods. Mods that only mod because they get paid are the worst mods that a community can have. I am proud to say that the only thing getting paid has done for me is allow me to spend more time here instead of working other jobs. I like you guys  :)

As far as the BFL situation, here's my stance on it: My opinion on them has always been the same regardless of whether I get paid or not. If you look at my posts before April, you'll see that. Also, I don't really care that BFL sometimes pays for ads, because if BFL didn't get ads, someone else would. They'd just pay slightly less. That's how auctions work. The price that people pay for ads here isn't even all that outrageous. If you look around at other sites this size, you'll find that our ad prices are actually very competitive for what you get.

That said, we don't even get a fixed percentage of the ad revenue. Our pay is based only on our performance, so if the forum brings in less money one month and we have the same amount of work as the last month, we'll still get paid what we got paid the last month. Fortunately, the amount of work we do is directly correlated to how many people use this forum which is directly related to our ad revenue. Interestingly, this same effect tends to keep ad revenue in BTC fairly stable, since the size of this forum is indirectly related to bitcoin price :P

I wrote something very similar, but Maged posted a bit faster than me :).

Wrapping it up:
- Bitcointalk mods are in no way employees of the forum.
- Personally, these payments allow me to spend more time on the forum.

Currently, I'm out over $100K due to InstaWallet, Bitcoinica and three leather products of which I paid my Brother-in-Law for, but the hero member buyers backed out of the deals.

I've put mega hours into the Bitcoin thingy and this forum, and haven't ever considered wanting compensation for my efforts, one of which is protecting people form scammers.

I have never solicit person donations for my efforts.

If I didn't stumble upon this revelation, how much longer would it have been before it was was brought to light by the powers that be? It's already been two months of payments paid out, and up to the creation of this thread, we've all been under the impression that all the mods were performing their duties gratis.

To be clear, I do not have the red-ass toward any mod or admin, but to be fair to the rest of the community, this just doesn't smell right. It smells worse when you see where the money has been coming from and where some it has been going.

I'll leave it up to another brave soul to explore the blockchain themselves and report their findings.

Suffice to say, this saddens me.

~Bruno K~

Wtf, phinn... Do you think the payments make a difference on how we do our work?

Hey Phinn, Be a man dude, don't cry
You did spent alot time here but you also spent alot time on spamming this forum with useless posts.
(Do not make me post your 1-2 word posts), Moderators are getting paid to clean your and others shit.
they are getting paid to moderate and run this forum properly.

However it's still not running properly,alot moderators are lazy and have "we are not your nanny" attitude. I think theymos should give chance to new peoples to become moderator.

Perhaps theymos should incorporate, make this a subscription only board and get it over with.

Also: Under which legislation is the forum? How many taxes?

+1 I love your sarcasm  ;D

The mods have been doing everything in their power to keep this forum running smoothly. Many of them are likely spending hours a day moderating these forums and they deserve some form of compensation. I do think the forum could have been more transparent with this by editing the advertisement auction thread to mention that a fraction of ads will go to mods.

Paying moderators regularly is fine (not really the norm on forums, but what the hey). Paying them "because Theymos wanted to reward them" brings into question the true intentions of these advertising campaigns that are earmarked "creation of good forum software". An announcement and disclaimer would have sufficed. If we're left to just "figure it out", what else are we expected to "figure out" that will later be discovered? This reminds me of how the forum's hosting changes hands without notice.

No need to defend the payments, more transparency would be fine fellas.

That aint no shit either. As far as i can tell they hardly even moderate anything, let alone do any upgrades. this place is a dump compared to most forums. they need to hire a competent secondary admin to clean this place up. A person like me would rule this place with an iron fist.

Yes, well, no one said anything about wanting an iron fist. Transparency is crucial though to a community of tin-foil hatter libertarians who love cryptography and value privacy over integrity.

The topic here is where that money comes from (scams, scammy companies buying advertisements using funds they defrauded from users, etc), and what it goes to (it claims to go to creating software but goes to whomever Theymos wants to give a Christmas present to apparently). This is all fine and dandy of course, if there were some kind of announcement or disclaimer someplace. I for one would never buy advertising space if I knew the funds from which benefit some moderators who ignore my pleas for moderation, harass me because of their personal opinions of me, and not to the actual development of forum software now 12 months after said "project" was started.

As I've already stated, I DON'T have the red-ass toward ANY mod OR admin. And, I'm not complaining.

The OP was such as to confirm what I discovered is true and open up a discussion, which it has.

I honestly have no problem with any mod or admin getting paid, but the action was taken under the pretense that that was not the case, whereupon donations were accepted under that pretense. That's the problem, and it shouldn't have occurred.


Again, I'm not crying!

I believe that theymos does have a fine algorithm in place to compensate the mods accordingly.

Taxing my memory, I believe that improving the forum's back end was in the works, hence one the main reasons advertising was put in place. I believe there's a thread addressing this very issue, but I have not concerned myself with it.

I believe as a whole that the majority of the mods are not influenced by being paid to correctly perform their duties. But, I have seen it raised a myriad of times that theymos may be influenced by BFL, something that I have never weighed in on with the exception of now. I will only become part of such a discussion if some nefarious activity becomes overwhelming.

I firmly believe that theymos should have made some type of announcement prior to taking action. I'm 100% sure that I would have supported such action if I would have seen such a thread. I'm am 100% behind the mods/admin getting paid, but this enlightenment came at the expense of wondering what else is happening behind the scenes we are not aware of. The blockchain may hold a clue.

I'm curious as to why the ad money resides in various wallets, moved many times to perhaps cloak its origins.

~Bruno K~

I think we cross-posted, echoing the same concerns but, once again, I used more words than you to accomplish the same task. Ever thought about publishing a magazine?  ;D

We moderate far more than you might think. In the past day, we've received about 50 unique reports and we have to research every one of them. When only one mod is online, they can easily only have time to handle just the reports, and we're still expected to find stuff on our own that wasn't reported. Trust me, it's an actual job.

As far as upgrades go, theymos has done pretty well so far. Most recently, he added the trust system. He should seriously be paying himself just for that, but so far he really hasn't been* (as far as I know?).

*Not counting his mod payments to himself, which is for his moderating, not forum upgrades.

I was trolled for taking 6 months to actually design, produce and ship the Bitcoin Magazine. BFL is trolled for not having shipped regularly for what, 9 months? The forum has been receiving donations for 12 months, and now have hundreds of thousands of dollars. I don't think anyone cares about a trust system (a flawed one at that as no one can post rebuttals to spammed feedback or submit it for removal).

I think it's time the guise of "forum software creation" is no longer used to ask for funds until some forum software generation has actually begun development (I'm not aware of any). Either that, or the donations should be sent back and advertising revenue should be used instead. That would show a lot more integrity given the lack of transparency.

Oh very big job dude..
did you have seen namepros,hackforums or digitalpoint or some other big board?

They are 5x  bigger than this forum and mods are also less. They don't pay to mods, all are voluntary
and if you try to post spam or troll there, you will get banned within 1-2 minutes.

Can you also make a statement on why many people can report someone for harassment and going from thread to thread calling anything/everything a "scam" and making up stories and yet still not do anything about it?

Not trying to be a jerk about it; I'm genuinely curious as to why things like this haven't been dealt with yet.

Like I said, it's only bad like that when you're the only mod who is online. We have plenty of time on our hands when someone else is online, though.

I've been curious how other forums that are this size or bigger handle things, so I'll check them out. Thanks!

I remember I had a thread with absolute posting rules posted in the OP, clearly stating that if anyone goes off-topic that their post will be deleted by a mod. Mods did this regularly, but then got bored apparently. When I asked Theymos directly, he said "Start your own self-moderated thread". This sent the message to me that moderators don't want to moderate. Once I found out they're being paid to moderate, that is no longer acceptable.

U mad, bro?

Many things happen behind-the-scenes that you don't see. Typically, in these cases, we first send them a warning. If they don't stop, we ask theymos to consider a ban. Sadly, with theymos being so busy and unwilling to delegate banning decisions, this part can take awhile. Because the issue is not spamming, we're also not allowed to delete the posts.

Two things with this:
1) This was before the upgrade to the report system. It was hard to keep track of what had and hadn't been handled.
2) This was also before we started being paid.

Matthew, I always cleaned your threads when I was online and I was made aware of an issue. In fact, we make more money if we handle these issues, so if I saw that now I would scope that up in a heartbeat.

Theymos sells ad services and earns money. What's your business what he does with his own money again? ???

I don't even understand why you guys feel the need to justify yourselves.

It's spam when someone goes into a thread and literally responds to every single post with "SCAM SCAM >>>> LOL SCAM" all day long. I haven't looked at his profile but his name was "owsleybeatsbigcartel"

When some of us closed our threads and started moderated threads so we could just delete his posts on our own, he started sending all sorts of threats via PM as well out of anger that he could no longer spam his BS. I know a LOT of people have reported him.

Dude, owsleybeatsbigcartel? He spammed my email for some reason, probably thinking I'm a mod:

how do i get out of bitalk jail?...ifeas?

owsletbeatsbigcartel aka Big Baller

edit:
owsleybeatsbigcartel aka Big Baller

who are you? pingggg

> How did you get my email?

on your website...who is this ...pinggggg

hello?

are you part of the Simple Machines Community Forum Team.

> No.

my bad brudda ...i think we are on the same team >>expose the scammers! =)weee

do u know how i get unbanned?lol


cue more email.

That guy spammed a lot of people. And then started making threats over pm.

Just as with Bitcoin Magazine, BFL or any other project that has come under scrutiny, criticisms of the presentation and operations do not equate to criticisms of each and every involved participant. I have never doubted your interest or honesty, in fact, you were kind of protecting me from theymos and error's over-the-top abusive attitudes from day one. What bothers me is (and always has been) the hypocrisy.

Theymos wants to manage reputations by calling some members 'scammers', effectively ruining their business chances in the community, but doesn't want to provide them with the tools to defend themselves (rebuttals for spam feedback, petition for removal, etc).

Theymos wants to use the community for their good intentions in supporting what they believe to be a good cause, while claiming that cause is for development. We later learn, a year later in fact, that it has gone no where and now the funds are being spent to pay people he thinks deserve money (could be anyone by that rationale).

Theymos wants everyone to trust his judgement by making him the default trusted person in a trust network, but he doesn't want to admit his mistakes, wants to support ponzis, isn't transparent (2 years ago I called him out for switching hosting over to MtGox without announcing it to the forum community and he's still doing things like this on a regular basis).

Theymos wants to defend the forums basis of "free speech", but reserve the right to delete whatever he doesn't agree with, give scammer tags to whom he personally thinks are scammers, etc.

Theymos wants to call others scammers (Nefario of GLBSE: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=115669.0) while telling others that a bet that happened on betsofbitcoin is not related to the forum and thus not forum business (read: no scammer tag). Is GLBSE directly related to the forum?

Do I hate Theymos? No. I think he is lacking a personality, but that's typical of most nerds. Do I want Theymos to step down? No. Unlike the pitchfork wielding mobs on this forum, I understand the value of keeping someone around who is flawed in certain ways, because they make up for it in others.

So what do I want?

• Transparency - Announce what is going to happen, before it happens, especially when those actions bring the integrity of the leadership into question. Give people a chance to leave if they want, not buy advertising if they disagree with the way those funds are used, etc.
• Fairness - Do not pretend to manage reputations (scammer tags, etc) without providing a way for honest victims to place public rebuttals against spammed bad feedback. Force feedback to be attached to a transaction, and thus have evidence to support claims. Stop promoting a trust-based reputation system that is apparently only designed as a tool for libel
• No more hypocrisy - That one is obvious. Theymos currently has "TradeFortress" on his default trust list, someone who buys advertisements on the forum to spread anti-Ripple propaganda and pays other users for them to post his personal opinions. What exactly are we "trusting"? That he has integrity? Or that he just won't steal your coins? The reputation system is not defined, it's general when it comes to positive issues, and fierce and exact when dealing with negative issues. There is no benefit, only negative effects.

Hire more mods!!! and if not hiring, atleast accept a few volunteers. something has to be done about all of these scams occuring, and they stay up for 20+ pages and nothing is done. thats hardly moderation

 there are two extremes working here on the board

people like me who demand a little moderation, more than whats being done.

and then others like you,

who expect the moderation staff to roll out the redcarpet and bring you the horizon so to speak. there isn't enough time for the current moderation staff to sit in your thread and delete spam comments.

The way i see it is the answer is adding a few more paid mods and accepting well known and trust worthy hero members to do volunteer mod work.

Moderation and censorship are not the same thing. I wouldn't want TradeFortress to be a moderator for example, as he would delete any Ripple thread and call it "SCAM". That's disingenuous. What should be done is that discussions should arise and things should be allowed to be discussed openly before making these decisions, all the while posting proof of such. When a scammer scams as it is, there is absolutely no different between his negative feedback and someone's feedback against me whom just doesn't like what I have to say to them. They are weighted exactly the same, neither require transaction evidence, and both show in bright red as if it was something serious to pay attention to.

This forum does need more moderators, but not because it isn't good at moderating-- because when moderators need to be PAID in order to do what most people would be happy to do for free, you know there is an apparent shortage of them.

See you lose all credibility with this post. While i don't particularly like TradeFortress for my own reasons, we find common ground in knowing that ripple is a dishonest scam operation. If you think ripple isn't a scam you're mentally unstable, have been paid off, or are part of the racket that runs ripple, or both.

According to the blockchain via several confirmed wallets, it's over a million which is hundreds of thousands if X>10.


Curious! Is it theymos' money or some other entity?


Assuming you're speaking of the current situation where mods get paid, how would you know that aspect is incorporated in theymos' secret algorithm?


I've always wonder how he ever found time to take even one college course, let alone work on some major.


The general consensus is that this was put in place to end the scammer tag thingy after pressure mounted to give BFL, a paying customer, said tag.

I lose my credibility with a post? That doesn't seem possible.

Did I say I don't think Ripple has flaws, or that their current implementation is far from transparent and as-advertised?

I know for a fact they're not transparent and not honest. That doesn't make "Ripple" a scam. It makes "OpenCoin" a shady business. Ripple is still an awesome technology, and OpenCoin still has a chance to live up to their claims. Don't try to explain points of view as being those of a "shill" when general interest in a technology is more than enough to keep someone looking into it. There is plenty of fraud and corruption in Bitcoin, even at the development level, but that doesn't stop me from watching, waiting and using the parts of it that I agree with.

Let's get back on topic-- we need moderators who aren't crushing everything they don't agree with, but who leave it up to the community to make up their own minds. "Scammer" tags in essence are actually a step backwards in that respect. Having a feedback is a step in the right direction, but it's still being presented as a propaganda and libel tool instead of a useful feedback system. An example of this would be you leaving me bad feedback that says "I can confirm he is a Ripple shill!" even though it's incorrect. Where would I respond to this false and abusive comment against me? Why would it have any kind of "score" to it traditionally reserved for actual transactions, and not just be a general comment on my profile for all to see?

That would require a policy change, not more mods.

There is actually a huge benefit to having few moderators that work many hours: more consistent decisions. You'll be hard pressed to find other forums that have such consistent decision-making as we have here.

Not to mention, I think the mods would eventually rebel when they realize that the forum is making over $4k/week and they aren't seeing a single cent. In fact, I was considering quitting right before this was implemented because of that. I even burned out and stayed away from this forum for almost a month because of the time commitment. Now that I'm paid, I can actually justify the time commitment.

Judging by the "Did you delete that?" posts in the moderator subforum, I highly doubt that. I think it's more likely that there would be more discussion of fair policies, which would jeopardize the current status quo.

Somethingawful.com. They ban everyone for everyone. Very consistent.  :D

Basically you just gave more reason to bring more moderators in. Why would you be burned out when your workload is so little thanks to 100 more mods joining? Sorry, but your response sounds more like rationalization than an actual argument,

I don't, but I know theymos enough that I think that it is incorporated in at least some manner. I suspect that only one deletion in a topic per day or some such counts, though.

Well, that's true, but it was still plenty of work adding it. And it is useful.

The ad auctions say, "In order to collect more money for the creation of good forum software and for other useful purposes... ."


Bitcoin transaction data isn't meaningful by default. I would need to take extra steps to make the transactions easy to understand, and I'm not going to do that. It's all transparent, though.

Total BTC received:  6499.60971212 (http://blockexplorer.com/address/17RTTUAiiPqUTKtEggJPec8RxLMi2n9EZ9)
BTC in my cold storage address: 3043.20940098 (http://blockexplorer.com/address/1M4yNbSCwSMFLF9BaLqzoo2to1WHtZrPke)
BTC in treasurers' cold storage addresses: 3250 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155000.0)
Approximate expenses (total received - BTC in cold storage): 206.40031114
Actual expenses (from my records): 225.9696519

Expenses breakdown:
- Hosting: 27.96617
- Forum improvement: 40
- BTC storage: 21.9
- Mod payments: 136.1034819

This doesn't include any income since the last mod payment, and there may be minor floating-point errors that I don't care to account for.

I do increase my "quality score" in the mod payments algorithm to account for this.

Consistently flawed decisions. consider adding a mod to do your dirty work, like banning and scamtagging scammers. this takes the heat off of you and eliminates the prevalence of scammers in the process.

Those are fairly rare.

You know what I mean, Matthew...
I won't disagree. More mods would be nice to have. I've seen some really good reports, so I think we have some good candidates. Now you just have to convince theymos.

Paying mods (something we can all argue isn't necessary if you bring in more mods who are happy to support the forums by working for free) is the highest expense it seems. The "useful purposes" line in advertising auction threads is not transparent. It's completely subjective.

The forum has not been transparent enough with backend operations in the 2 years I have been here. You did not announce handovers to other hosts, especially MtGox (which was a huge conflict of interest and allowed a for-profit business to look into our PMs whenever they wanted to to see who was competing against them).

The forum has not announced what the funds were being used for before soliciting for donations, and continues to do so under the guise of "creating a new forum" despite no such activity happening.

The forum has not developed a new forum software in over 12 months, despite receiving an admitted 6000 bitcoins now.

The forum pretends to manage reputations by creating "scammer" and "untrustworthy" tags, but doesn't finish the job by removing libel/slander or allowing innocent-until-proven-guilty members to make rebuttals to what the forum agrees openly as spam that is malicious in nature.

The forum spends funds given to it for advertising on moderator paychecks without telling anyone, and continues to ask for more without telling what it's for ("Other useful purposes" is not telling what it's for).

Please make the necessary announcements, be more transparent, bring in more moderators that don't require payoffs, do what you set out to do 12 months ago with the half of a million dollars you're sitting on, and either moderate reputations fairly or don't bother at all.

Thanks!

I heard that the perks include

1.   Lamborghini with chauffeur (female btw, Victoria Secret's standard and above)
2.   $5000/a minute moderating
3.   Weekly payments via Bitcoins
4.   Helicopter in case of emergency trips
5.   Israel Iron Dome installations to protect against angry scammers' homemade missiles......

What have I missed? :)

Don't forget the lifetime supply of alpaca socks.

This is completely off the mark.

Actually not, you would mod those with emotion and feelings then being a neutral party.

Actually, on every forum I modded, I stay away from things that I have a strong opinion for and against.

self reinforcement? you're better than that admin.

So it would hinder your job as a mod.

You run paid libel/smear campaigns against companies you don't like and pay people to repeat your opinions as if they were their own (a form of astroturfing), all while asking neebies to add you into their trust pool on a financial services site enabling you to steal money later whenever you want, just to further this smear campaign. You're saying if you were a mod, you'd be magically the opposite?

that aint all he does.

Matthew, does your buddy Vladimir Marchenko still have a forum in the UK? 

It's not libel if it's factually correct.


Yeah, it's called advertising.

I have not stole any money. I have allowed OTHER people to swap their money, to demonstrate.


I should have been more clear - I stayed away from being a moderator on topics I have a strong opinion for or against. WP:INVOLVED.

Also, we're getting pretty offtopic here.

I don't think anyone would have a problem with the forum paying moderators, but the way it's being done in secret (Blockchain trails doesn't count) is what upsets people.

boy, you really pissed in Mathews cheerios huh ?  ;)

If i'm not wrong theymos is just a caretaker like other admins, he does not own's this forum, and it's not his private property.
Real owner is satoshi.

No actually its Jesus.

Is that what that taste was? I thought it was the milk.

It's factually correct that Ripple is a "scam"? Who have they scammed and for how much exactly? Are you confusing "lie" with "scam"? If Ripple is a scam, Bitcoin is a ponzi.  ::)



I'd love a clarification from Theymos on that. I see many other people with the "staff" tag, but I seem to remember him being the only "admin", so I guess it's just his personal company site and the only thing keeping everyone's avatars turning into giant penises is because Theymos doesn't care to do it (and because there aren't enough people who do it on their own).

Bitcoin is such a tiny, microscopic and yet insignificant project in the face of almost anything else in the world, even Linux is more popular and even that is seen as having a tiny user base in the face of the open public (despite being kind of skewed and incorrect). I think for any forum that has a majority of bitcoin users accessing it, there needs to be much more transparency and decentralized control than just Theymos' whim.

I guess it's time to start one.

Looks like you didn't seen him
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2211

But yeah, theymos is main, others are appointed by him.

If mods are getting paid, then I too want some kickback for my epic wisdom contributed!

You're right, I saw that and completely forgot about it. That said, Stefan is far too busy to respond to Skype much less actually administer the forums. It's safe to say that Theymos is the only *active* admin, and the owner of the site.

Been watching this subject for a while now, wanted to get most info, and be calm before commenting. I'll chim in my opinion.

Theymos, by far, that gots to be the best way to avoid letting members know what really is going on. It's like keeping members completely totally out of the lope. In my book this is a form of distrust. Now that this was called out and caught prior of you notifying "whether you're entitled to or not" members is completely unacceptable, this is my opinion though. Now that this was called out and caught, makes me wonder what else is going on.

It's not the part that the mods get paid, that's fine, its the fact that members was notified after the fact of the matter of the subject was called out, then it was decided to be told. Is this a form of censoring?

This one little subject, imo, just opened up a can of worms.

 :(

Well they are obviously using the popularity of Bitcoin and this board to pad their pockets while offering little new features(besides the trust feature of course. )

Is it morally wrong for them to do that?: possibly.

Did they work hard to be in the position to make money off of it? : assuredly.

Is it their right to make money off of it: yes.

would you or i do the same thing in their position: probably.

I used distrust, I think I may have selected the wrong term, and should have used dishonesty to be more appropriate, so my apologies for that one misused term.

Please sign me up. I'll even give everyone daily handjobs and get everyone's coffee for them and lunch as they desire!

Where do you people get your information? Don't you ever read this forum? Mark Karpeles owns the forum and justmoon (Stefan Thomas) is the other admin with full rights and direct access to the database. Justmoon was to take over when theymos is away. Any funds collected would by rights belong to MagicalTux.

I've never looked it up. Where did you get yours? I'd love to see proof of that because that would make me even more depressed at the state of things than I already am.

I can't remember the exact threads but will run a query later and get it for you.

I'd like to see that too, as far as I know MtGox/Mark just hosted the forum for a while for free, until theymos found a more suitable place. If anyone were to be considered the owner, it would be sirius IMO, as he owns the domain. Only reason his account isn't an admin account is because he isn't very active on the forums anymore, and having unused accounts with admin privileges isn't good practice.

True dat. Almost as bad as having unused funds sitting around on a non-profit community forum and continuing to collect.

Your shtick is getting old man. Like you wouldn't do the same? Start your own website and make your own money. don't criticize others on how they are spending theirs.

No, I wouldn't do the same. I would ask for funds when I thought I needed them, use them for the intended purpose, and if that purpose were to fail, would return the funds as I always have. I understand you think I'm just barking because you don't know me or what I've accomplished in 2 years here in the community, but you're the newbie here, not me. There is no excuse for holding the funds for a year under the guise of a new forum software that has never even begun to be developed.

Why couldn't you have left your original complaint at that? instead you continue to nickel and dime them in a passive aggressive fashion. I think that as long as you continue to be hostile towards them they won't get in any hurry to address your concerns. just my opinion. carry on.

Well it seems to be gone: https://bitcoin.org.uk/forums/topic/244-confirmed-bitcointalk-hack-rumour-sirius-to-resign-mtgox-will-take-over-management-of-bitcointalk-forum/page__view__findpost__p__1420 (https://bitcoin.org.uk/forums/topic/244-confirmed-bitcointalk-hack-rumour-sirius-to-resign-mtgox-will-take-over-management-of-bitcointalk-forum/page__view__findpost__p__1420)

Here's the other one: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=107085.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=107085.0)

Maybe that's the case now. I remember reading this a looong time ago.

Edit: misinformation is the reason to release info ahead of time. This thread could have been avoided with an early release of info.

The forum is no longer associated with MtGox in any way.

Who owns it?

I do. Here's the truth: The forum is in reality a giant prank instigated by me to make fun of Bitcoiners.

I'm sorry you had to learn it this way.  :(

Sirius owns the domain, and theymos owns the server.

At least that's what I guess I understand here...

Did you also make BFL?

Depends on your definition of ownership. Different resources are controlled by different people. Private Internet Access has ultimate control of the server. Sirius owns the domain. A lot of the money is managed in accordance with the Treasury Agreements, which defines a somewhat more complex organizational structure, though these agreements don't rule the entire forum. I coordinate it all, but I have no ultimate, binding authority over anything except the bitcoins that I hold (and I'd like to reduce this). No one person can permanently shut down the forum.

No one said anything about shutting down, as you know that isn't the issue. The issue is operating under false pretenses. Saying it can't be shut down by one person simply means honest people will have a hard time calling out dishonesty when they see it.

You asked who owned the forum, and I gave you a detailed answer. Someone who can't shut down a site clearly doesn't own it, wouldn't you say? No one person can shut down the forum, so I like to say that no one owns the forum. Alternatively, you could maybe say that the forum is owned by a corporation-like entity with a very unusual structure.

Maybe. I suspect the result would be same either way, most of the complaints are related to forum policy in general ("you're being paid, why isn't x being done"). This thread has been mostly positive, relative to this forum anyway. I appreciate that most see the value, gives me the fuzzies inside  ;).
 

You should see a doctor about that, it may be diabetes. http://www.musiker-board.de/attachments/f3-musik-instrumente-know-how//f75-e-gitarren-forum//f39-modifikation-technik-gitarrenbau-e-git//188660d1312529323-refinish-gibson-les-paul-standard-faded-professor.gif

+1

So you're saying the US government owns this site? That's a pretty non-answer you've given.

Would it be fair to say that you own it, but there are others who have administrator privileges and certain steps have been taken to require other people who work for you to agree before a very select few actions can be taken, correct?

actually i believe he's saying its none of your fucking business, in the most polite and respectful way as possible.

Forum policy will always be debated. That will never stop at any forum. The problem is that distributing funds collected from the ad revenue generated by a company with a reputation that is, at the very least, tarnished and then effectively hiding it's distribution to pay people we thought worked for free looks really bad. If mgmt wants to pay for work at the forum that's fine. Good for you, most of you deserve it for doing a crappy job. But don't let us all believe this place is for the people by the people instead of just another for profit org. I now have to believe that all the complaints I've read about BFL have fallen on deaf ears because the forum is in their pocket. It could have been handled so much better than it was.

Logic fail.


No.

I dunno, not giving BFL a scammer tag is perfectly consistent with other decisions so I don't get the fuss, like Pirate, Mining United, and the various other long cons. Correlation =/= causation.

I'd be fine with stopping BFL from buying ads just to stop the complaints and any perceived bias, but I suspect we'd see just as many complaints from people who don't want to see any one person deciding what content they should or shouldn't see.

And here we have the quandary, I no longer know that I can trust what you're saying because it may be biased.

I never said to stop BFL or anyone from posting here, running their own threads or limiting their voice. That's the one thing I really do appreciate about this forum. Their voice will have to compete with all the voices against them. I only said stop paying yourselves with their money to eliminate suspicion.

Haven't you heard?

When BTC goes to $10,000/coin, we'll share the bounty according to post count/sign up date/trust rating/etc.

Can't wait for 2016  8)

Why should they? Ad money from BFL or anyone else is just ad money... Objectively auctioned to the highest bidder. This has not, from what I've seen, caused the moderators or administrator to pull threads negative to BFL. In fact, you'll notice that there are PLENTY of BFL flame threads on the forum.

Now, if they accepted ad money to censor negative threads against BFL then there might be cause for alarm... but I see no evidence of this. Saying you don't trust BadBear or others in charge here is a pretty bold statement when all they've done is be objective about who is allowed to post ads.

In the end we all need to make informed decisions on who we do business with and an ad on the forum without research into the company placing the ad is nieve and the responsibility of the purchasing party -- NOT the mods.

As we say on another forum, if you don't like this place then GO SOMEWHERE ELSE.

Didn't Diablo3 get demodded in the custom hardware subforum specifically because he dared to moderate in a way Josh saw as detrimental towards BFL? Or is this an old man's faulty memory at work?

He tried to censor anyone that wanted to discuss BFL (bad or good), even went so far as to start deleting threads consisting of many pages of discussion. Remember when he moved all the threads to german off topic, then locked the only remaining BFL thread? He felt very strongly that it was a scam, and that discussion regarding BFL shouldn't be allowed or should be heavily moderated.
My post in the staff forum (before payments mind you, this was 6+ months ago).


This part in particular I still strongly believe "People are more than capable of making their own decisions without our interference", assuming they have access to all the information, and not just what some dude who happens to be a mod thinks they should have.  

Moderators should get paid. I see no problem here, especially not an eight-page problem.

Thanks for the clarification, Bear.

Yeah, I remember that too. As I said before, I don't care how theymos runs his business and don't mind the mods getting paid. I'm all for it but it does look suspect that BFL is paying the forum admin and mods. Mods should be looked up to and their opinion should be trusted (look at the new trust system - who administers that again?). I do think people should make up their own minds about who to trust. I don't think it's a good decision to make sure that they know they can't trust forum staff. I'm glad your against it but perception is what I'm concerned with and it looks bad. How many people think that way but won't waste the time to say something: "Bitcoin - um, let's take a look - nope, just a bunch of crooks - move along."

To the dumbass above that said, "if you don't like this place go somewhere else." I do like this place and Bitcoin that's why I'm concerned about how it appears to the world. Only a moron couldn't see that.

 ::)

Do you fail this hard at life, too?

Why is it a big deal if they get paid? They provide a service for all of us and in return earn some bitcoins, I don't see anything wrong here.

It is an ethical thing, are they doing it cause they paid, or are they doing it to help foster growth in the community. Also they didn't formally announce it. I see their point but also transparency is key in this community at the most.

The mods have been giving their time and effort for years without being paid, so you can't just allege they are doing it now because of wanting payments!
The reason for not publicizing it makes a lot of sense: to let people aspire to become mods without being overly influenced by wanting payment for it.

Yeah we got all that. But still, I was thinking of buying ads soon, and no where does it say that the ads are going to mods. That would be nice, cause the forum is non-profit so transparency is a big thing. At least in my opinion, and money does change people, not saying it changed any of the mods but it could happen. 

Now, really, it's none of your business where the ads money is spent. You buy an ad, you get served what you paid for, an ad only, no decision power on how the forum spends the money you paid for a service that was provided.
Talk about entitlement!

I don't feel entitled at all. You are correct, it is none of my business where the ad money is being spent, I don't want the decision power at all on how the forum's money is being spent. But the forum is a big hub for the community and I think it should be as transparent as it could be, is that really too much to ask? I also agree that people who see the mod job as making money and not as a privilege in the community, if this become too publicized. I am kinda torn between being open and not publicizing it.

In most entities including corps and even gov the owners don't have any control over it on purpose.  Real ownership falls to those who benefit from the net income of an entity.  Find out who that is and that's who owns it.  The rest is just smoke and mirrors.

I've seen forums 10x this size, games, and websites modded by others for free, all volunteer.
Hell RuneScape, and World of Warcraft are un-paid forum mods, and game mods.


Should moderators be paid to click 1 button to mod retardation of the community? No.
Should I bitch because the owner of this site, takes HIS income, and 'donates' to some people who help him out? No.

Believe it or not, the donation, and ad revenue belongs to the owner of this site, he can do what he wants with his money, as long as we never have to pay to use, so the mods get paid. This isn't a community owned forum, with the revenue its bringing, its a business.

/end thread

That's not true. This forum is not for profit, and theymos does not own it.

I never said theymos owns it, and not for profit? You keep telling yourself that my friend.

Maybe I'm just blind, but I see a $850 payment to theymos. I'm not sure if there are multiple wallets, but I recall seeing $40,000 sitting in the donation wallet. Now $24,000.

This isn't a charity, its not up to anyone who gets to spend the funds in the bank on who and what, don't like it, make your own.



P.S. id be claiming not for profit too.

Would be interesting to see how the good ol' IRS sees this non-owner and not an official nonprofit forum structure but now a bunch of mods admitted and claimed btc addresses receiving income to themselves.

to my knowledge none of the forum owners or hosting occurs in the US, so its probably exempt to the laws of the IRS

Could apply to a few users most likely but really doubt anyone will hear anything unless the get reported.

thats actually pleasant to hear

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/contact-us




Yes, I know this is about the VPN they are offering but I wouldn't be surprised if they gave in under pressure for some content on this forum (e.g. the Securities or the Gambling section).

Good thing the world datacenters aren't ALL in the US, then...

Yeah, I know about that, but do you know in which country the server that hosts this forum is located?

edit: seems to be NL but if the company is US-based that might not be enough

So, what will they do? Arrest everyone? Like they did with Pirate and all the other american scammers?
oh, wait...  ::)

You guys sure like to bend over to the US gubermint... Need vaseline?

If this forum is just a business, one that has deceptive business practices and misrepresents their intentions, then there is no reason to support the business any longer.

The exact same answer you should've gotten everytime you came to this forum to present your crazy business ideas.
Oh, well, you can always go back to your friend Vladimirs' forum.

Not now but who knows what they come up with in the future.


No, I'm not that type of person and I'm glad that I don't live there and don't have to hear people worrying with any PhinSen crap etc.

I've never been involved in "deceptive business practices", and whatever mistakes my companies or I have made, I've always made up for them, keeping transparency and customer interests above my own.


Vladimir's integrity matches Theymos' in this instance. I wouldn't want to have a forum with either one of them in charge any longer. In the past 2 years I've learned that despite my constant mistakes and few manic episodes, I have more integrity than most of the people I've worked with. Many of the "leaders" in this community have fallen to greed, are slaves to paranoia, cannot accept criticism or admit their faults and mistakes, and continue to try and excuse their shady business practices in any way that benefits them.

This last episode, finding out that BFL ad money goes to pay moderators who are kicked out for mocking BFL and are not able to give BFL a scammer tag, is just one of a long history of accepted acts pf corruption. Eventually everyone will need to stand up for what they believe in and ask questions, and for me that was this week. Rather than dismiss everything as being ramblings of jealous people, why not ask yourself what you have to lose from accusations being true?

All I can see is more evidence that his community needs to start seriously considering developing an actual non-profit forum of its own aside from this business.

I still remember some Ellet vaporware that magically appeared the same day the bitcoincard thing was announced. Where's the Ellet, Matt? Posting about vaporware and how well it was going just to screw up a potential competitor screams of deceptive business practices and misrepresentation to me.
You're still here, and hell, most people would still do business with you, despite whatever they say contrary to that. I think you should be thankful not everyone is so unforgiving as you.

The Ellet was being designed 3 months before "Bitcoincard" ever made any announcements. There were 3 prototypes, each smaller and sleeker than the previous. One prototype video was put up on Youtube as well, but but funding had been a problem (costs about a million bucks for a run of 50,000 of them). With the advances of technology and taking what we learned since then, the old Ellet model no longer makes sense (Apple and Google will end up capturing that market themselves). There were thousands of dollars invested into the Ellet by generous people in the community. Despite being defrauded and spending most of the funds on development of prototypes and design by the company, I personally paid back each and every investor out of my own pocket. Talk about integrity.

Ironically, that is what "Bitcoincard" did. Where is their product? And yes, I agree that my presentation was off (I seem to remember apologizing for that publicly too).

If you mean "unforgiving", I am thankful there are sane people (mostly), but that doesn't stop me from constantly pushing for something better. Integrity does not take a vacation when you are not affected personally by something. Real integrity calls you to seek out and shed light on deception and corruption. You have always seemed like a rebel of sorts, disinterested in being a part of a corrupt system. In this instance however, it seems you're defending the corruption (Maged too). It's disappointing to me that a normal user of the forum needs to call this out, and that other moderators who make waves are kicked out.

oops, that's it. :)


wait, wut? who? I hope you're not talking about DiabloD3, because his behaviour went way past "making waves".
AFAIK, "making waves" is still allowed and welcomed in here, as long as you don't use your moderation powers to only get your view out and silence any other opposite views.

Truth is, there will never be a point in time when everybody is happy. We all have our own views on what is right and wrong, etc..

This this this. Frequently there are situations where you will have to annoy / piss off either group A or group B. BFL ads is a good one - ban BFL ads, 'censorship'. Don't ban BFL ads, support 'scams'.

I'm amazed to see that this forum doesn't have any privacy policy, not even a set of rules & regulations.

Please back up your claim and get the fuck out. You will not be missed. However I bet you are just trolling.

Both of you.

Pot calling the kettle black?

you give him to much credit.

I've noticed. He seems to honestly think he's fooling people... or just in denial.

Blizzard MVP here. That's absolutely wrong. Anyone that has any power in Blizzard games or on their forum are paid employees. Unpaid mods on big sites/games elsewhere are also usually low quality overall because you need to get so many of them to prevent burnout.

I'm about four pages behind in this thread, so apologies if this has been addressed.

This post reminded me of something. Theymos doesn't own it. Mt Gox does. The only way theymos would be able to transfer monies as he's done is through the blessing of Mt Gox.

What is going on here? (opted to not use all caps, but am desiring an explanation if one is available)

Back to reading this enlightening thread some dude created.

The server was owned by MT.Gox some time ago, but as of now the server is hosted by Private Internet Access. I'd think that MT.Gox has nothing to do with us now.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andrew-lee/38/46b/b4b



http://apt.thebigboss.org/onepackage.php?bundleid=com.mtgoxlive.trader&db=


From rasengan (Andrew Lee)


Looks to me to be a VERY complex organizational structure (COS, for short).

Talk about a COS.

http://www.bizapedia.com/in/BITCOIN-FOUNDATION-INC.html

Stop it Bruno. Theymos said they moved it and I believe him (why lie about that). This just looks silly now.

rasengan had something to do with MtGox Live, which was later acquired by MtGox. PIA is not owned by MtGox.

I think the intent of my two posts above was missed.

not entirely. i understood it.

Honestly, I wouldn't call it "getting paid to moderate" the majority of the moderators get like $10-20 in Bitcoins per month, its more of a tip than an official paycheck. Of course the people like Theymos that spend 169 hours per week working get paid more, but its far from an organized business where you get paid an hourly wage, or salary. Its like, do you tell the IRS about the $20 you spend per month paying the neighbor boy to mow your grass? Probably not, because its fairly insignificant. Its more of a thank you for helping out, and allows a few mods to spend the bitcoins on an indulgence that they wouldn't normally tap their savings for.

The forum's server is actually hosted by nforce.nl. I'm not sure how easy it would be for the US government to force PIA to do anything regarding the server. They aren't really the forum's ISP. The server is a gift from PIA to the forum. They don't have root access or anything, though because they pay the bills, they probably have ultimate control over the server in the eyes of nforce.nl. Maybe this situation could be improved.

I missed it. What were you implying with the walls of text?

Hey, bud!

Again, the issue is not that the mods shouldn't get paid, but that it wasn't disclosed to the 100K+ members on this board who firmly believed that what they do was for gratis, thus hopefully non-bias. Unfortunately, that has now come into question, albeit not by me (currently, but...).

A handful of mods of been kind to me in the past, as well as theymos, sans the two unexpected vacations, with hopefully not a permanent vacation in the works, otherwise I may have to re-fire up Nikki-T-B.  ;D


Google "2885 Sanford Ave SW" bitcoin (using quotes for the address), keeping the name Andrew Lee in mind.

Did you notice my post above where I shown that AL was asked point-blank if he developed a site and his reply was with a negative, yet it's proven that he was mistaken?

Did you see where Andrew Lee registered the Bitcoin Foundation Inc.?

Did you see that AL owns PIA?

Would you like to see what the BBB thinks about the pseudonyms that AL uses?

Would you like to know of the other hosting sites that AL operates?

Agreed.

Mtgox Live was developed by coderrr, I believe. rasengan was involved in some other way.

Ok, but I don't see any problem with that. http://www.howtoacceptbitcoin.com/2012/10/pay-privately-to-surf-privately.html?m=1 (http://www.howtoacceptbitcoin.com/2012/10/pay-privately-to-surf-privately.html?m=1)

That was never my concern anyway so carry on with your walls of text there buddy.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andrew-lee/38/46b/b4b

I went to Karaoke with Andrew a few weeks ago and he had told me about that. He basically sold that site to MtGox. I don't think he is connected to MtGox at all, but that doesn't have anything to do with the major concerns which (again) are:

• Soliciting donations from the community under the guise of creating a new forum (and never even starting said development)
• Gathering now 6000 BTC under the guise of creating a new forum and not spending on said purpose, instead spending it to pay whom Theymos wants to pay (without notice of any kind to the community before or after receiving and spending said funds)
• Developing a broken reputation system that encourages spam, extortion and removes the right to defend from the victims of such, in order to avoid giving BFL a scammer tag all while allowing BFL to continue to fund the forum with advertising revenue despite their consistent fraud

Yes, the forum is a for-profit company that is just unregistered. We have proven this in this thread already.
Yes, Theymos is free to do whatever he wants on his website. It is "none of our business".
Yes, it is a lie to continue soliciting donations under the guise of creating a new forum and the lies need to stop.
Yes, it would be better for the reputation of this for-profit unregistered company if more transparent announcements were made about what is going on with all the riches the community bestowed open it out of good will (and under the guise of something that is 12 months late).

You can argue and shoe shine this turd all you want, but without transparency, without a fair reputation management system that allows for rebuttals and petitions for removal, and most importantly, without both a clear explanation of where funds are going (no sleezy wording) before soliciting them, and actual progress on said intentions, there is no reason to support this business. All we're apparently doing is enabling laziness, taking away our right to vote further with our money (they don't need anymore), etc.

edit: Yes, it is absolutely fine to pay moderators if you must, although there is no need to on this server, with hundreds of willing trustworthy parties interested in contributing their time to a good cause. That is a different complaint for a different thread though.

Thanks to theymos and the mods for clearing this up. I certainly agree with the general consensus that the mods deserve payment for their efforts.

To those who are complaining about a lack of transparency; they have been completely transparent here, giving exact details as soon as they were asked. theymos even very clearly answered the question about the board's ownership.


"other useful purposes"

Paying a reasonable amount to admins and mods is exactly something everyone should expect when reading this phrase.

Well, there's also donations (https://bitcointalk.org/donate.html) of course, which I'm sure many people now feel they made mistakes giving as the funds did not go to the purpose advertised now after 12 months.

I agree with you that if you don't want to support the business of bitcointalk.org, you shouldn't buy ads, but I think it goes a bit beyond that, down to lending credibility by even using it. I'm pondering the right thing to do right now. If it were just this, I could excuse it perhaps, but that dirty broken reputation system that is basically a toy for slander is borderline last straw.

I strongly support Matthew's decision to leave the forum forever in protest of these mod payments. What a hero.


Right.

Where did I say otherwise? The issue with donations is different than the issue with ad space. The issue with ad space is that it's not only opaque, it's downright misleading. No one cares if the mods are paid, they care that it's not mentioned and instead it claims it's for use in creating a forum (which isn't happening). The issue with donations is that it mislead people to donate large amounts of money (6000 bitcoins) in order to do something that was never done, in 12 months time, and instead of doing that more funds are continuously collected.

Basically, Theymos is guilty of what BFL is guilty for. Accepting shitloads of money on promise to deliver, and not only not delivering, but continuing to find reasons for needing money (despite having an insanely large surplus of it, hundreds of times what is needed for the proposed use). I question his integrity by not addressing and admitting this. Where is the new forum software Theymos? Don't you think it's dishonest to solicit money from the community for a "good cause" and then just sit on the money and never "get around" to using the money for the intended purpose? Don't you think lying about what you'll do in order to get donations is a type of scamming? People didn't donate so they could make you rich. They donated so that the new forum could be created.

I thought people were donating 50 btc so they could have those cute little colored half gold circles under their names and be able to view the juicy staff only forum where they exchange seedy sex crazed nymphet photos.

I remember posts by Theymos requesting to hire someone familiar with SMF for coding and upgrades but I don't remember that being a contingency or promise for donations. Are you sure you got that one right Matt?

You said it right there, not even a few pages ago, after it had already been clarified that donation were not being used. I know you have a grudge against theymos because you disagree with his decisions regarding your scammer/untrustworthy tag, but you aren't doing yourself any favors by proving him right.

Two that immediately come to mind (there are entire threads about this though).

@BadBear: We already confirmed from Theymos that donations are not used for paying mods. Why are you confused about that or what I said? Please scroll up to this post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=234009.msg2497069#msg2497069) and re-read it. No where am I saying that that is the problem, nor is paying mods a problem. Donations and ad purchases were solicited to "create a new forum", 12 months later still nothing, nothing but a surplus of funds. Asking for funds from the community for a purpose and never bothering with that purpose is not only misleading, it could be argued as fraudulent, like a charity asking for donations for a specific purpose and instead spending it on something else or never spending the money. This is 2013, we have higher standards now. Where is the new forum?

Why are we discussing donations then?

Silly me, and I thought this thread was about mod payments, not bitching that donations aren't being used fast enough.

Carry on  ::).

That is why the same address was used for both the donations and the ad revenue to show transparency, but later the funds were moved prior to ModGate (couldn't think of a better term--feel free to use it). Then they were all moved again to finally settle in wallets theymos has recently been kind enough to share with us.

Speaking of ModGate, Bitcoin is overdue for a break-in (read hack).

From the same thread, a feature was suggested that theymos shot down as being...I'll let you read it.


I guess we'll never see anything like that implemented unless, of course, the scammer tag thingy interferes with ad revenue.

Phin, that was in 2011, lots has changed for BTC since then.

I plead Matthew! It's all his fault.  ;D

Makes sense to me. Besides, Andrew Lee's only connection to Mt Gox is co-developing a Droid app, of which he denied doing, of which Mt Gox purchased outright said app from the same guy who just so happened to own a hosting company to fill the hosting needs of BitcoinTalk previously hosted by Mt Gox, of which donations and ad revenue were amassed to pay for future upgrades, of which some of the funds were paid to mods under the radar, which leads me to the conclusion that a lot of of-whiching was taking place.

I'm sure there's nothing nefarious about the following, but allow me to present it nonetheless.

http://www.cubewhois.com/bitcoinfoundation.org


http://who.godaddy.com/whois.aspx?domain=tuxdev.com&prog_id=GoDaddy


https://secure.in.gov/sos/online_corps/GetImage.aspx

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5509/9064395785_92d949358a.jpg
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7443/9066634282_cbec1a40c5.jpg
Note the date on top and the name and address at the bottom.
Offered up as proof that Andrew Lee (and family) still live at that
address or, at the very least, AL is able to receive mail there.
I can easily provide proof that Andrew Lee has used this address
fairly recently.

As I've clearly shown, the Carmel, Indiana, address of which Andrew Lee still uses as a residence has been used as a mailing address for the following: The Bitcoin Foundation; Mt Gox; London Trust Media; and  Private Internet Access, of which provides hosting for BitcoinTalk.

Please Jehovah, don't let there be two different Andrew Lee's causing me to make possibly two mistakes in one day, and the day just started for me.

So what i'm understanding here is that 1 person owns the domain, one person owns the hosting, and one person owns the hosting? isnt that what theymos already stated?

Nah, I'm looking at his father's (who owns that very nice house) business website and it's done by "London Trust" all right.

London trust media aka Private internet access is providing free hosting to bitcointalk?
If yes, why theymos said he's paying for hosting https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=234009.msg2480445#msg2480445

If they are getting paid, why bitcointalk have their name& link in bottom.

The hosting payments should be from a long time ago - I think we've stopped paying for hosting since Mt.Gox hosted us. (and PIA afterwards)

Old hosting bills and other expenses (SSL certs, etc.).

I concur, for that's what I concluded when I first seen it, hence not making an issue of it.