Having moderated a few forums, I can confirm that when you thread spilt or delete the OP from a topic which has responses, the first post after the deletion/split shows as the OP.  Putting "thread split" (or OP deleted) in the title of the newly created thread helps make clear what has happened.

I think it is partly about the platform. Lenders aren't supposed to contact defaulters directly (assuming they even have reliable contact information for the defaulter) and BTCJam itself can't really bring any meaningful consequences to bear on defaulters (oh noes - they might not let you list again).  There are reasons why BTCJam is such a magnet for people who are poor credit risks, and the way it's set up is one of them. 

Without access to the original PMs, you can't be sure they haven't been edited.  Quoting people helps preserve the communication record although the introduction of self-moderated threads pretty much means that people need to open duplicates to ensure the record is preserved.

And FFS, what's with people borrowing and lending in BTC while the price is exploding.  Don't fucking borrow in BTC unless you take a possible price explosion into account and can cover it and don't fucking lend in BTC unless you're sure that the borrower can repay even if the price explodes.

Do we really have to go through multiple cycles of debt default before people start getting this?  I thought we were trying to avoid the mistakes made in conventional lending markets.

The problem is that as a moderator it's your job to enforce the forum rules and only the forum rules.  There is no forum rule against posting personal information and theymos has refused to remove personal information in the past.

Your thread was not a self-moderated thread (from which the OP can delete posts for any reason they like).  You used your moderator powers to remove information/delete posts from it and other threads.  You may not think this was "wrong", but you weren't enforcing forum rules when you used your moderator powers to remove content to which you objected.

There cannot be one set of rules for users and another set for moderators.  If you can't limit your use of moderator powers to enforcing actual forum rules then you should step down as a moderator.  Whether I believe your behaviour in respect to the Avalon was appropriate is irrelevant.  Your behaviour in respect to the posts regarding that issue is unacceptable and an abuse of the power with which you were entrusted.

Not finding the explanation given in either of these threads satisfactory.  Mods should not be able to remove negative comments against them - especially those accusing them of behaving improperly in business dealings.  If they truly believe that a post about them should be removed, they should be required to report it to other mods/theymos.

Regardless of my opinion about the original issue, I believe there was a blatant abuse of moderator power in this instance and such abuses need to be prevented in the future.

To be honest, I see a lot more of this type of "early adopter envy" within Bitcoin communities than I do outside of them.  It also extends to mining.  There's a subset of people who regard it as "just not fair" that acquiring substantial amounts of BTC is no longer as easy as it was even a couple of years ago.  They perceive the risks they would need to take in order to "get into Bitcoin" now as higher than the risks taken by early adopters.

Many people convince themselves that "given the chance" they would not only have been early adopters (whether of BTC, Google stock or some other new kid on the investment block) but they would have held onto their investments through the ups and down as well, when that's likely not the reality.  It's not an exclusively Bitcoin thing.

"Unearned" income is becoming an important contributor to financial security for many people who will never "get ahead" with the money they earn from their jobs.  People look to dabbling in real estate, playing the stock market, precious metals, and other types of investments to propel them across socio-economic barriers and give them a shot at the middle class and beyond.  Investments are never risk free, even if they may appear so in hindsight.  You can't "get lucky" unless you have skin in the game.

I see a certain desperation in some people in respect of Bitcoin.  They view it as their only path to financial well-being.  Counting on any one type of investment to secure your financial future can be very dangerous, but I don't see the problem as being Bitcoin itself but rather a particular attitude - if Bitcoin didn't exist these people would be regarding some other investment in the same manner.  Some people seem to have a talent for losing money on everything they touch and they're often the people who can least afford to lose it.  Those people will likely lose money on Bitcoin (I'm convinced they'd manage to lose money on Berkshire Hathaway stock).

Honestly, I think you need to stop worrying about whether people believe you "deserve" whatever you've made out of Bitcoin and just enjoy the benefits it's brought you.  Money doesn't care where it came from.

And if they're moving funds from their normal cold storage wallet to another address to demonstrate that they still have control of the funds (which is more reassuring than a "don't worry" statement), then that's something they should be publicising.

What's worrying is that when the Instawallet vulnerability was made public last week they should have assumed that both Instawallet and Bitcoin-Central would become bigger targets and that people would start looking for more vulnerabilities in both services, so they should have been locked down hard while a security audit was conducted.  They should have been expecting a breach.

Sorry about that, it was StrongCoin's wallet hint which was made public.  There were discussions elsewhere last week regarding vulnerabilities of a number of wallet services.  The Instawallet vulnerability did display the user's wallet hint, though.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=159983.msg1691505#msg1691505

For about two weeks.  History shows that people repeatedly leave their funds with wallet services and exchanges no matter how many times those types of services lose user funds.  I doubt that is going to change any time soon.

If this is in any way connected to the vulnerability which was publicly discussed last week then Instawallet needs to explain why they didn't take the service offline until that vulnerability was fixed.  .

As far as I know, anyone who's logged in on reddit can create a sub-reddit and there's no "probation" period you need to serve first.

If you'd searched the forums you'd know that there have been issues with PayPal and eBay for a couple of years and that people who think they've found a loophole and decide to use those services anyway usually end up with their accounts locked.

Just want to remind everyone that dooglus was not part of WBX, so he's truly gone above and beyond in trying to ensure that WBX users receive some return.

The "surprise" seems to be coming from the fact that it's only happening with one wafer - the one which was packaged.  It hasn't occurred with the tests they ran on the raw chips.  The question is whether wafers 3-6 will have the same problem - if they do, exactly why the packaged chips are having the problem and the raw chips aren't needs to be identified.

I vaguely recall Yifu predicting early this year that BFL would encounter this issue and I'm curious about why he thought this was the case. Also, were those who commented on the images of the packaged chips and said that the fill job was crappy seeing something which could be contributing to this issue?

That BFL is having issues shouldn't be surprising - the point of testing is to discover and resolve issues.  The problem stems more from them having consistently underestimated the time it will take them to solve any given issue.  I doubt they can realistically estimate when this one might be resolved and when "revised" units will be available - and that's a critical question because the bulk of their orders won't be filled from Batch 1 and 2.

Avalon Batch 2 is due to start shipping 15 April. 

It's not known how many BFL units will ship in Batch 1 or how many TH because of the power problems they're having, but they have a maximum of 5,000 chips and it sounds like they're going to have to underclock a significant number.

There's no realistic estimate for when BFL's Batch 2 (which still need 5 layers completed, then bumping, dicing, packaging etc) and bulk batch will be ready to ship, but it's highly unlikely to be before Avalon's Batch 2.

I'd be reluctant to sell an Avalon Batch 2 order when it's extremely unlikely that BFL will iron out its problems and start shipping its own Batch 2 before 15 April.

Are you in the US?  If so, CoinLab should be servicing you before the 30 day period is up.

I'd like to know whether this probation period is still going to apply once CoinLab starts servicing US/Canadian accounts but CoinLab's silence is deafening right now.

Only BFL knows how many of each unit they're going to make from the first 5,000 chips.  Based on the wait list thread, it's probably not going to fill more than the first few days orders even if Josh doesn't take any of the units he ordered - but some of the people who ordered in those first few days may choose to wait until the power problems are solved.

BFL is only sticking the boards in their cases for the first batch so they can probably ship fairly fast once they receive the boards.  What might slow things down a bit is the administrative stuff.  I don't see how it's going to be viable to stick with the 1/3 shipping plan now and FIFO is going to be complicated by some people choosing to wait rather than accept low spec units.  Plus people need to return their FPGAs.
Let's hope customer service is on the ball so there are no clusterfucks on their part.

I wonder whether the lifetime warranty will apply to any units which are shipped sub-spec.

https://twitter.com/BFL_News

Obviously if they have to ship multiple units to meet the hashrate, fewer Batch 1 orders will be filled from the first 5,000 chips.

And some charity's going to be 1000 BTC better off.

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/content/123-bfl-offers-1000-btc-charity-if-they-miss-their-power-targets.html#comments

Oh the horror.  Gay people use Bitcoin.  So do furries.  So do drug users.  So do pornographers.  No doubt some paedophiles do as well.

You might want to live in a world where only white heterosexual libertarians are associated with Bitcoin but it's not the reality.  If you want to believe it is, maybe you should set up a Bitcoin sub-forum on Stormfront 'cos you don't get to control who or what Bitcoin is associated with.  I'd prefer it wasn't associated with bigotry, but your post dashes that hope.

Do you care when people are trying to talk up the price because they want to pump and dump or only when they're trying to talk it down?

Do you care that the lag on MtGox means the market can't respond in real time?

Who fucking cares?  If you're making your decisions about buying or selling based on what's posted here, on reddit or on twitter, then maybe you're way out of your league speculating in the first place.

The market will always have people trying to drive the price up and it will always have people trying to drive the price down - it's the nature of the beast.  Get over it.