I added a system of badges to SMF a while ago, though only two are defined now. Here are the current badges:

Bitcoin expert	Dev&Tech only. People with this badge know enough about the Bitcoin network to reimplement something very like it from scratch. They are capable of intelligently discussing the Bitcoin network: current protocol, possible attacks, proposed changes, etc. Criteria: Recommendation by an existing Bitcoin expert or core dev and approval by a forum administrator.
Bitcoin-Qt core developer	Dev&Tech only. These are the core developers of Satoshi's Bitcoin client. They are listed here. Core developers are among the top contributors to Bitcoin-Qt, and they are all bitcoin experts, though they don't also get that badge.

A core dev does not "outrank" a bitcoin expert (or vice-versa), and it's possible for someone without a badge to contribute meaningfully to a discussion with experts and core devs.

Right. There's no harm in it, anyway.

OK, I increased it to 2.5.

Notice that I have changed the minimum increment:

The forum sells ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page. About 25% of ad income goes to the forum moderators as thanks for all of their work. (There are many moderators, so each moderator gets only a small amount -- moderators should be seen as volunteers, not employees.) The rest is stored in the forum's treasury (verifiably), where it sits until the forum needs it.

Ads are allowed to contain any non-annoying HTML/CSS style. No images, JavaScript, or animation (no marquee or blinking). Ads must appear 3 or fewer lines tall in my browser. Ads will be prefixed with "Advertisement:". Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. Ads may be rejected for other reasons.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Seven of the slots are for sale here. Ads appear only on topic pages with more than one post, and only for people using the default theme.

The ad lasts at least 7 days starting from when I put it up. (However, if you look at the ad history you'll see that ads frequently get 1-2 extra days, but this is random and definitely not guaranteed.)

Stats

Exact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Ad blocking

Hero members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads. I don't expect many people to use this option. These people don't increase the impression counts for your ads.

I try to bypass Adblock Plus filters as much as possible, though this is not guaranteed. It is difficult or impossible for ABP filters to block the ad space itself without blocking posts. However, filters can match against the URLs in your links, your CSS classes and style attributes, and the HTML structure of your ads.

To prevent matches against URLs: I have some JavaScript which fixes links blocked by ABP. You must tell me if you want this for your ads. When someone with ABP and JavaScript enabled views your ads, your links are changed to a special randomized bitcointalk.org URL which redirects to your site when visited. People without ABP are unaffected, even if they don't have JavaScript enabled. The downsides are:
- ABP users will see the redirection link when they hover over the link, even if they disable ABP for the forum.
- Getting referral stats might become even more difficult.
- Some users might get a warning when redirecting from https to http.

To prevent matching on CSS classes/styles: Don't use inline CSS. I can give your ad a CSS class that is randomized on each pageload, but you must request this.

To prevent matching against your HTML structure: Use only one <a> and no other tags if possible. If your ads get blocked because of matching done on something inside of your ad, you are responsible for noticing this and giving me new ad HTML.

Auction rules

Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in BTC per slot. You must state the max number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all seven slots are filled.

So if someone bids for 7 slots @ 5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 7 slots. If the two highest bids are 7 slots @ 4 BTC and 1 slot @ 5 BTC, then the first person will get 6 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 5" means 2 slots for 5 BTC each. Not 2 slots for 5 BTC total.

- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however.
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.05.
- The bidding starts at 0.50.
- I will end the auction at an arbitrary time no more than 12 days from now. (I will probably end the auction 1-3 days before the ads are scheduled to go up.)
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.
- Bids are considered invalid and will be ignored if they do not specify both a price and a max quantity, or if they could not possibly win any slots

If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done. I also post periodic status updates which should help make things clear.

You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else.

Auction ended. Final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
2 4.75 CEX
3 4.75 betcointm
2 4.5 BOOKMAKER

I have temporarily disabled this feature unless you are logged in. It is very expensive. I plan to make it less expensive soon, but this requires many changes.

The code of Bitcoin-Qt is the only complete protocol reference. If your protocol-related behavior doesn't exactly match the behavior of Bitcoin-Qt, even if you accurately follow the protocol specification on the wiki, then you are wrong.

Can this be made into portable JS without any additional JS libraries? I'll add it to bitcointalk.org.

The proxy is supposed to follow redirects at least once. Is that a multiple-redirect?

There was one purge of inactive accounts a long time ago, and it used to be policy to delete the accounts of spammers. But accounts are almost never deleted nowadays.

Note that I reserve the right to reuse old account numbers. I've done this at least once.

That image is offline:
http://www.rtcons.com/wall/16067.14.small.png?1=2

Actually check images before complaining about the proxy... If the proxy says that it's an invalid image, then it just might be an invalid image.

Images must be less than 1.5MB. Resize or compress your image.

bitcointalk.org now runs its own image proxy. GIFs will work now, and images will not be cached. However, images that don't load completely after a few seconds will still not work, and invalid URLs in [img] tags are less likely to work than before. Images must not be larger than 1.5 MB. You are only allowed to download so many images via the proxy before you're banned for a while, but no one acting reasonably should run into this. The proxy can't be used except through posts. Old image URLs will expire after a few months.

Is it fixed now?

I created that certificate (same public key as the bitcointalk.org cert, actually), but it obviously shouldn't be served for bitcointalk.org. I don't see it served for bitcointalk.org, though. Maybe your browsers aren't sending a Host header or something? I will figure out how to change the default cert back to the bitcointalk.org one.

Your block.sh isn't a valid executable. It needs to start with a #! line or be executed by a shell explicitly.

The number of reports is the raw number of reports, but the percentage only updates when the report is processed by a moderator.

I changed some things. Hopefully it's improved now.