Bitcoin Forum

Dear forum members!

I've registered on Bitcointalk a little more than 1 year ago. During that relatively short period of time I got acquainted with lots of wonderful people. Some of those people became my clients, some of them we've partnered with, and with some of the people we have found to be really like-minded.

Just like Bitcoin the forum is built on principles of decentralization and we can see it operating quite efficiently and flourishing. Besides that I have recently found out that Bitcointalk does not accept any donations (https://bitcointalk.org/donate.html), so I am imbued with even greater respect for it.

However, in order to do something useful for the community, I would like to propose an idea. Thanks to the moderators Bitcointalk does not turn into a spammed trash can. They are doing a great job! What if we organize a donation fund where anyone could make a voluntary donation. The funds will be used to reward the forum team. The funds distribution model is a topic for public discussion: either it will be a regular vote, payments on request, or an equal division between all moderators. I am deeply convinced that there are many worthy veteran (legendary) members on the forum who could be entrusted to hold this fund (possibly a multisig). I am ready to be the first one to make a contribution to this fund.

Thank you for your attention, any critics is welcome.

In de-center we trust!

If you are so eager to donate to Bitcointalk you can always buy copper membership and pay a small fee for that to show your appreciation.

Like they said:

As you can see I have already bought the copper membership. There is always something that you could do beyond that.

You ask for donations only when you need funds for something.
Simple.

Forum does not need donations anymore. If copper membership does not still suffice, you can just do just like what dkbit98 said.

There are many threads here in Meta that you can do your "contributions". It isn't always about the money.

• Report plagiarism (copy/paste) here. Mods: please give temp or permban as needed (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1926895.0)
• [Report] Ban Evasion [Requesting Admin/mod to check those and ban] (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5094661.0)
• Report Malware and Suspicious Links here so Mods can take Action ! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5182222.0)

While others in the thread have already covered the most common ways to help the forum, I'll add a few more:

• If you have sMerit left over, merit high quality posts (especially if they were made by someone of a lower rank as that'll help them to rank up).
• If you have something to promote, bid on the forum's monthly ad auction thread. The link to the current auction thread can be found at the top of https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo (https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo). You both get to advertise and support the forum.
• If you don't mind ads, disable ad block. If the ad is promoting something that you're interested in, check it out. New paying customers coming in via the ads is a win-win-win for all parties involved: the user finds a service / website he needed, the service / website gets a return on their ad investment and Bitcointalk shows that its ads are effective at attracting customers. Don't randomly click on ads you couldn't care less about though - that helps no one.
• Offer services / goods on the forum. The marketplace boards (both regular and in the altcoin sections) are a big part of Bitcointalk. The more commercial activity there, the more likely business-minded users will choose Bitcointalk as their main platform for commerce.

However, as people have pointed out, there's a reason why Bitcointalk removed its donation address - it doesn't need financial support at the moment. As for mods, if you really want to gift a moderator (or any other user for that matter) some BTC, most moderators have a Bitcoin address in their profile. Click on their username and look for the "Bitcoin address:" field. If you're gonna pick a moderator to gift some BTC to, pick one of the dedicated board mods (who isn't a global moderator or admin).

Donations aren't needed. Theymos has said the forum has enough funds, but if the forum ever needed them they could just add things like more banner ads or more donator VIP ranks etc.

As for the moderators, we get payments periodically from the forum which theymos facilitates. If you want to personally thank a staff user, then you can always contact them, and see if they would be willing to accept a donation. I'd personally feel a little weird though, since we are already given something for our job, and most of us quite like keep the place clean.

There's far better ways to contribute that donating to the staff in my opinion. A one off donation isn't likely to have a great impact on their motivation, however reporting more frequently is something which contributes to the forum overall rather than individuals. At the end of the day, the moderators are mostly handling reports which have been reported by the community. Without the community, the moderators wouldn't be as efficient. So, I'd like to see something that rewards the community overall for contributing. This is why I was in support with the badges which were proposed a while ago, as it would provide a small recognition for those that put in the time, and effort to make this place a little cleaner, without actually cutting out the larger workforce, since it is achievable by anyone, i.e a donation fund for just staff would be not recognizing the hard work some of the community do to report.

  

You can make a gift to the Moderators and Global Moderators when you hit the " Report to Moderator button " if you find some Spam , this helps the Forum.

If you really want to donate anything , do the donation to a charity project , there are a few , specialy in the Local boards too.
You can also make something like this if you want as El duderino_ (http://El duderino_) has done it here : GAME game *game* "GAME" QUARTER PREDICTIONS (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5096275.0) (just an example)

Maybe the goal is good, 'donations are given to members who excel in this forum'.

OP, the members here already have enough money for themselves both internally and globally, don't get me wrong about the replies from members here, Donation is not good, if it is not sincere, maybe you want to give, not necessarily other people agree with you, Donations given must have a strong reason, members here have experienced bad things about donations, it is precisely those who receive it who are not entitled to receive it.

However, if you have a kind heart, want to donate, you can donate some Btc to those who deserve it.
You can review below the eligible donations who received it.

1. Topic: Project Covid-19 : An approach to support the Bitcoin community (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5243099.0)

2. Topic: Project Covid-19: Supply to 50 (Now 70) families in Nigeria, Images {Donate👇} (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5252309.0)

Well donations are generally considered a good thing I would think. The issue is, not everyone would feel great about receiving them. Generally, charities are doing it for the poor or those that have experienced misfortune. A donation to a forum is to help aid the running costs usually, and donating to a specific rank, i.e moderators might have good intentions, but those receiving it might not feel great about accepting it.

I don't speak for all moderators or staff users, but I've said personally I'd feel a little weird about receiving a donation for the reasons stated above. However, I don't think I agree with you that donations need to be for a strong reason, there's plenty of examples of people donating Bitcoin for those that have been helpful answering their questions. Albeit, probably much more rare these days, a few years ago a lot of users had donation addresses.

I do think its a great idea in general, but I believe there are far more deserving things to focus on. Obviously, other moderators might be in a total different position to myself, and might actually have a need for the extra money. I appreciate the gesture nonetheless.

You have nice intentions and a dedication to help the forum, which is rare for newer members. As already mentioned, a fund for moderators may be superfluous, as the admins have already organized a reward scheme to encourage them, but there are a many other ways you can help out in your own way;
• Firstly by keeping the forum rules, this does the job of the mods for them, if you avoid spamming, plagiarizing, etc, you reduce the work load on the mods,
• Report rule breakers to the mods to help keep the forum clean,
• Encourage other members with support (kind words, advice, merits etc),
• If you really wish to donate, there are charities you can support both on and off the forum,

Also, since this forum is centered around Bitcoin, promoting its use in your locality, running a full node and promoting decentralization are all ways you can help Bitcoin adoption.

Sure, but why in the world would you want to do that (and no disrespect to you, mprep)?  It's not going to make the mods do any more moderation than they already are, and if it's not an anonymous donation it could be seen as a bribe--or could be a bribe, in fact. 

I've no idea how much Theymos pays the moderators here, but the forum certainly has enough money to pay them well if he chooses to do so.  Having a donation fund specifically for mods would be a waste of money.  Bitcointalk probably needs more moderators, given how much spam and how many shitposts slip through the cracks, and Theymos could hire more if he wanted to but apparently he doesn't.

By the way, the term "a modest proposal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal)" is supposed to refer to something written as satire, and I'm not sure if OP meant his post as such.  It didn't come across as satirical if that's what he was going for.

I think your proposal is a good one. The best support you can render here that I think will be beneficial to the forum and the mod will appraise you for is to assist providing Solution to people's problem. Like providing answer to people's question positively. This will diminish or dwindle drudgery of the mod.

Appreciate all the replies, your feedback is really valuable.


Thanks for elaborating on that, The Pharmacist. I am by no means aiming to encourage any particular moderator. I would like to underline again that I am impressed and thankful to the whole moderator team, not anyone in particular. The only idea is to have an impersonal and unbiased way to thank the mod team and let the public/mod team collectively decide how the funds is distributed. Quite sure there are lots of forum members who thought of encouraging the mod team just like me, but they did not have time/will to share their thoughts.

P.S. as for the "modest proposal" - I certainly did not mean to make my post satirical. Anyways, I have changed the title to avoid confusion ;)

The forum has all it takes and supporting the forum is only welcome in two ways;
1. Buy copper member and they will have some reserve of the payment made.
2. Make quality post in d forum. Outside this I don't think there is another way to support the forum.

Thanks everyone for the input and productive discussion.


Indeed as isaac_clarke22 has mentioned, the non-moderator part of the community is putting a great effort into reporting plagiarism, ban evasion and malware, making Bitcointalk a great place. It's impressive. I think that our discussion here brings us to a logical conclusion to create the donation fund for active community members, and not for the moderators. Any further thoughts on this?

P.S. I have adjusted the OP title as well.

That is weird as well. Members on Bitcointalk who want to can participate in signature campaigns and be paid for positing and being active on the forum. I think that is more than enough. And that is more than what many other forums and online communities offer. All members who have a decent knowledge about crypto and can express themselves in a professional manner wont have much trouble getting into a campaign if they wanted to.

The coins they get from their signature campaigns are one part of the reward structure. The other part are the merits they get rewarded when someone appreciates their posting efforts. 

Yes, I agree with your thinking about this idea as most older members will agree, but I can also accept that someone who is relatively new to the forum and doesn't understand how the forum works, have as you say weird ideas. What the OP does not know is that any good initiative can and will be abused, and we know what would happen if the forum started paying for every good reported post - some would turn it into a business and report everything that came to their eyes.

Some kind of reward for those who contribute to the forum in this way is certainly the reporter badge images, and I believe that would satisfy many, even more than if someone gave them a monetary reward.

Most of the people here are not social cases, they don't need to live from some donation fund, last time I checked this is not a socialist-communist forum, and you should stop thinking what other people need to do with their own money.
Helping forum by reporting plagiarism, spam and other crap is activity that is helping everyone and if you feel so generous you can find address of most forum members and send them you Bitcoin donation.

I would allow myself to disagree with you here. As some of the reputable forum members already mentioned above - all this should be impersonal and unbiased. Community must decide who will be encouraged - not me or any other particular user.

As Lucius also correctly noticed such initiatives can and will be abused - that's why distribution mechanism needs to be agreed upon.

I'm sure your heart is in the right place but I think it's just going to be too complicated to do. Who holds the funds and who decides on how to share them and based on what criteria? Once money is involved people will do things just for the monetary aspect of it and there are always ways to cheat or bend the rules etc. If people think someone deserves some money then send just them a tip, but most people probably don't want to give their money away even if it's to a good cause, but there are far better causes that could do with your money than bitcoin posters or reporters. I think if anyone was going to do something like this it should probably be theymos but if you wanted to try set thing thing up or organise it yourself there's nothing to stop you from doing so, just be careful if you're asking to hold on to the funds or make sure that it doesn't come across as begging or asking for donations.

Please enough with this empty talk, lead by example and send Bitcoin donation if you want so much.

It's a pity that some people are trying to find an evil intent in this whole discussion. I am making the first step to prove my intentions. Donation sent to the user I have not known of before this and isaac_clarke22 pointing to his thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=805820 I see a lot of dedication and effort which Lafu puts into this. TXid: 690b7f81978a3f5192d3c739666709700cb0496c4aa531e6dab8ae55f7649a69

I want to underline once again that this donation is not something I was aiming to achieve with this thread. My only goal is to create an unbiased, impersonal donation fund, where funds would be distributed within active and contributing members in a fair and decentralized way, just how we all like it with crypto!

That will become a popularity contest where the most popular become even more popular. If you introduce a voting system, we can already predict the possible winners or some of those who will be in the top 5.  You are looking at one of the most merited and most frequent posters earning most of the votes. It's like when a famous singer or movie star walks into a shop. They close the shop down so he can shop freely and he gets everything he likes for free. His rich ass doesn't have to pay for it.   

Or, you will witness another phenomenon where the biggest local forums will vote for a member from their own local. Battle of nations. 

Thank you for your donation , i really appreciate this kindness of you.
I confirm that i got the donation , but i will donate the half or the whole amount to an charity project .
So if anybody know a good charity project let me know it please.
Maybe i donate it also to the Bpip or other helpfull services that we all using here for Bitcointalk.
There are so many Users , Moderators and helpers here that making a lot of effort for helping new Users and others in here on there one way and the Forum.
All this Users are making there part to it that we have a great Forum , a Community with so much Information about everything that is Crypto related. They all deserv it .

When I got accepted in ChipMixer I asked the same question because I wanted to donate my first week's signature payment to a good cause. I got some decent responses in my thread Offering my avatar space for FREE and donating my 1st-week signature earnings (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5322962.0). 

There are several projects operated by Bitcointalk members, like Royse777's Project Covid - 19 or the Bitcointalk Charity Program by cabalism13. Have a look, it might help you further. I remember seeing a donation fund by someone who wanted to build rice farms in Vietnam if I a not mistaken. I tried to look for it, but I wasn't able to find the thread.

That's the beauty of a blockchain: addresses are in their profile, and any amount they receive is public.

The best way to avoid any abuse is by sending a donation directly to whoever you want. There's no need for a "middle man" forum community to decide who to donate to.

Again: the best way to decentralize donations is by omitting the fund, and making the donation directly.

Good point, I've seen that happen too. I can imagine most of the work Mods do happens quietly in the background.

I have a feeling like you are taking it personally. You shouldn't. It's nothing against you. People have evil intentions and will look to exploit every little thing that can be exploited. One should never generalize because not everyone is that same, but imagine you posted your private key in a public post by mistake instead of your address. What do you think how many people would try to sweep the funds and steal them, and how many people would make you aware of your mistake and ask you to correct it or send the coins to an address under their control and ask you how to return it to you? I think 2 or 3 out of 10 would do the right thing, the others wouldn't. Money corrupts people. :-\   

For sure , a lot of the Work is done by the Moderators and the Global Mods quietly behind what we see.
They doing an awesome work and job.

Thanks , i will looking at it and thinking about where i going to do the donation.
Probably i doing an amount to the Charity Program and an other Amount to the Bpip website and team.

Thanks your response.

Nothing personal, Pmalek ;) I certainly do agree with you that money corrupts people, you are spot on. I was only responding to dkbit98's post. I assume he is the one who took all of this personally, but it's ok.