Can someone highlight how this forum earns money to pay for its services like paying for the hosting services etc.?
The forum asked for donation years ago and the fund is big with price of Bitcoin now. Theymos said as a head admin that the forum does not need more donation when the community discussed that the required BTC to get VIP or donator badge should be reduced. theymos emphasizes that it is a Bitcoin forum so donation will be in Bitcoin.
I am holding too much money for the forum. This is contrary to the forum's otherwise decentralized structure. I'd like to get some extremely trustworthy people to hold smaller chunks of the forum's money (maybe 250-500 BTC per person).
- More money is better than less money. I'm not going to turn down donations when people want to donate. (Though when asked, I often recommend that people not donate.) I'm not going to stop selling ads even though the forum probably has "enough" money. It's not bad for the forum to have extra money. It will be used on something useful at some point. If you don't like this, don't donate.
- More than half of the forum's money is from ads, not donations.
- During the school year, I am a full time student. I barely have time to administrate the forum.
- When I do have time, there are many interesting/important/fun things that compete for my attention. I don't spend all day working on the forum. I've certainly not been working full-time for 12 months on vaporware forum software...
Hidden links to donation and advertisement.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | Hidden pages/ features | | | Usecase descriptions | | |
| | Forum donation | | | | | |
| | Donate | | | Info on forum donators (donators - 10 BTC, VIP - 50 BTC). Honorable cases are not included | | |
| | Ads | | | | | |
| | adinfo | | | Get information on current ad slots (9 main slots and 1 factoid slot) | | |
| | adstats | | | lists ~exact impression counts for ads | | |
Secondly this forum is created by satoshi but he is no more active. So who actually is the true administrator of this forum?
Forum history- 2009 - 2011
- satoshi created the forum and was a head admin
- 2011 to 2012
- 2012
- theymos took over the head admin position and he is the head admin of the forum so far, together with Cyrus.
- I don't know since when Cyrus became the second head admin of the forum. I only remembered he was promoted from a global moderator.
- Domain name
- Cobra & theymos have access to the domain name
- Since April 2020, only theymos has access to it.
It's surprising how well-documented history can become totally forgotten... Satoshi created the forum on Nov 22, 2009, and was head administrator until almost 2011. Then Sirius was head administrator until 2012, which is when I took over.
Cobra also owns the bitcointalk.org domain name. I consider the forum to be basically owned by or at least dedicated to the Bitcoin community, though; I don't call anyone an owner of the forum.
That wiki article is kind of terrible...
There was a period where both Sirius and I were active administrators. For convenience, I reckon Jan 1, 2012 as when I became head administrator, though it was actually a gradual transition starting before and ending after that.
The story of how I became head admin is actually pretty boring. Moderators were needed, so I was made a global moderator. Then admins were needed, so I was made an admin. Then over time the other admins slowly lost interest and resigned until I was the only one left. I guess most of the people who were around here to see this have more-or-less left the community now. That's a bit sad.
It's not entirely clear, but for simplicity I usually say that I became head admin at the beginning of 2011, a little over a year after the forum was created.
The forum was originally located at bitcoin.org/smf, then forum.bitcoin.org (hence the redirect), and finally bitcointalk.org. Fun fact: The name "bitcointalk" was invented by Jeff Garzik, and he's the one who bought the domain.
Domain accessBitcointalk.org:
- Cobra has ultimate control over the domain name. I have access to the domain name settings.
- I run the server. Cobra has no access to the database or server.
- The BTC is held by myself and the treasurers. Cobra has no access.
Satoshi created both bitcoin.org and this forum, which was originally at
bitcoin.org/smf. Later, the forum got its own domain name, but due to this history, bitcoin.org and bitcointalk.org have traditionally been linked, and for quite some time Cøbra and I have together managed the domain names. However, Cøbra has never had much involvement in bitcointalk.org's operation, and I haven't involved myself in bitcoin.org for a couple of years, so the linkage between the two no longer really made made any sense. Therefore, we decided to separate the domains: I no longer have any access to the bitcoin.org domain name, and Cøbra no longer has any access to the bitcointalk.org domain name. The two sites should be viewed as totally separate, which
in practice they have been for years.
There will be no changes whatsoever on bitcointalk.org due to this, and I'd assume that the same will be true of bitcoin.org. The
bitcoin.org open-source project has been advancing steadily, and I hope and expect that it will continue to do so thanks to the efforts of its contributors.
Thanks to Cøbra for handling much of bitcointalk.org's domain-name-related work in the past.