Is there any section of the forum visible only to selected members like VIP?

[rosenbauer02]

I just wanted to ask this question to know more about how this forum is being managed and how they did some contacts, compilations of reports and update that might be put to record and will not be deleted for references too.

In every organization  there is always a room for how the rules will be implemented, imposed and how it will be acted. This may not be the forum members interest but due to the fact that forum has run and function too in a good manner so I was thinking that there is really a good structure in form of command and implementation of orders. Again, this is not a concern of every members to know everything about the forum but I had only ask this because I was amazed how it was being run if the forum has no organizational structure or personnel closely monitor the forum.

In my point of view that the forum composes of a group that can coduct a close door meeting. These members or personnel have personal knowledge to each other. Well, just saying about what my mind thinks.

What do you think?

Do these people manages the forum have personal knowledge to each other?

[Jawhead999]

Yes, there's

? - Child boards (Special, Staff Forum)

It's a board for staff above only, I also don't know what's the name and what's discussed there.

Another hidden features you can read here Hidden pages/ features on the forum

[FIFA worldcup]

Do these people manages the forum have personal knowledge to each other?

The personal stats page (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1161447;sa=statPanel ) is disabled for all the users.
Perhaps that part of the forum is visible only to admin or selected VIP Staff members 

[Upgrade00]

Perhaps that part of the forum is visible only to admin or selected VIP Staff members 

I do not think the member's statistics page is visible to any user (member or staff), they appear to have been disabled for being too expensive, along with some other stats which used to be updated regularly;

Collecting some of these stats became too expensive, so I had to disable some them. IIRC, I changed it so that topic read counts only count logged-in members, and some of the stats related on members online were totally disabled. I would like to enable them again, but it probably won't happen too soon.

Do these people manages the forum have personal knowledge to each other?

Yes, there are private boards which are only accessible to forum mods and staffs, where they deliberate on arions they take on the forum. There are also some hidden boards which are accessible to everyone, but not openly available.

[rosenbauer02]

Which means that they could possibly known theymos personally or even Satoshi.

I can't help thinking over of this one because who knows that someone might disclose some informations regarding on them. But to the looks of it which is more likely impossible to happen disclosing any of thier personal information.

Well, I just hope and see that they will get to show people behind the forum or any personalities involving the forum and the bitcoin system in the future thanking the bitcoin users for patronizing the bitcoin system or even gets awarded for the creation of the technology. People now seems different from the past where most of the newly grown up individual are already open for any new things that come up. This means that people will adopt to financial system in which they have the freedom to move without any restrictions coming from any third party like any of the government agencies watch.

I hope they will get ready for any show up? Well, just being a optimistic here. Who knows?

[Husires]

not every interaction or forum administration requires that all mod teams have personal knowledge of each other.
Signature campaigns involve a lot of money and yet nobody knows about others.
Satoshi himself did not know any one people in the forum.
There are some closed boards for some rank [Important Announcements Staff and VIP] [Ivory Tower Full member +] [Investigations]

[acroman08]

Which means that they could possibly known theymos personally or even Satoshi.

I can't help thinking over of this one because who knows that someone might disclose some informations regarding on them. But to the looks of it which is more likely impossible to happen disclosing any of thier personal information.

Well, I just hope and see that they will get to show people behind the forum or any personalities involving the forum and the bitcoin system in the future thanking the bitcoin users for patronizing the bitcoin system or even gets awarded for the creation of the technology. People now seems different from the past where most of the newly grown up individual are already open for any new things that come up. This means that people will adopt to financial system in which they have the freedom to move without any restrictions coming from any third party like any of the government agencies watch.

I hope they will get ready for any show up? Well, just being a optimistic here. Who knows?

some mod or staff knowing theymos? maybe,(the reason I said "maybe" because I remember there was a discussion where theymos was doxed or something but I am not sure whether the mods or staff have any idea who theymos is) but knowing satoshi? I doubt it.

[Halab]

some mod or staff knowing theymos? maybe,(the reason I said "maybe" because I remember there was a discussion where theymos was doxed or something but I am not sure whether the mods or staff have any idea who theymos is) but knowing satoshi? I doubt it.

True. We don't know any more about Theymos than you do. He doesn't share his dark secrets with us in a hidden section. Don't speculate too much. We sometimes get the privilege of testing April Fools a little early, that's all.
And we don't talk about our lives either. All I know is that mole0815 is German, malevolent is Polish, etc.., etc... and Mitchell is awesome .

[malevolent]

There are sections visible only to Staff members, and one made for Donators/VIP.

The personal stats page (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1161447;sa=statPanel ) is disabled for all the users.
Perhaps that part of the forum is visible only to admin or selected VIP Staff members 

No, it was disabled for performance reasons, similarly to the global forum stats page.

but I am not sure whether the mods or staff have any idea who theymos is) but knowing satoshi? I doubt it.

At least as far as his name goes, theymos has publicly disclosed it himself a very long time ago.

[Quickseller]

There are sections visible only to Staff members, and one made for Donators/VIP.

The personal stats page (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1161447;sa=statPanel ) is disabled for all the users.
Perhaps that part of the forum is visible only to admin or selected VIP Staff members 

No, it was disabled for performance reasons, similarly to the global forum stats page.

The admins can view the stats page, or they can at least do a DB query to get the information that is on the stats page.

[malevolent]

The admins can view the stats page, or they can at least do a DB query to get the information that is on the stats page.

Of course, but that's irrelevant to everyone else. I doubt if even Cyrus can see it, it's the accurate tracking part that is resource intensive and clearly didn't scale with forum growth, not page requests. If it did not get fixed to this day I imagine the effort to make it work must be disproportionate to perceived utility (and a lot things get tracked by other users anyway).

[Quickseller]

The admins can view the stats page, or they can at least do a DB query to get the information that is on the stats page.

Of course, but that's irrelevant to everyone else. I doubt if even Cyrus can see it, it's the accurate tracking part that is resource intensive and clearly didn't scale with forum growth, not page requests. If it did not get fixed to this day I imagine the effort to make it work must be disproportionate to perceived utility (and a lot things get tracked by other users anyway).

The information in the stats page doesn’t get “tracked”. Any time someone visits a stats page, the stats need to be calculated, and the calculations are very resource intensive. I don’t believe the cost of allowing people to visit the stats page a single time increases as the number of users increases, but rather that the cost is simply high and Theymos was probably trying to reduce server costs when he turned off access to the stats page.

[Kong Hey Pakboy]

Yes, there's

? - Child boards (Special, Staff Forum)

It's a board for staff above only, I also don't know what's the name and what's discussed there.

Another hidden features you can read here Hidden pages/ features on the forum

I didn't know a lot about this stuff and although I see some of them, I never consider them as secret or hidden. The features on that link was a treasure trove although I wouldn't necessarily say that all of them are secret or hidden, maybe a little exploration on some parts of the forum is enough to discover some the features.

[Caross]

Which means that they could possibly known theymos personally or even Satoshi.

I dont think so as the forum meet in not a physical meeting and as you know the anonymousity of the entire cryptocurrency space. It not necessarily means the staffs and moderators I mandated to know each other in persons.

[ShowOff]

OP, It looks like one of the forum staff has explained a little bit about what you asked in this post. Although it was possible for them to get to know each other, it was better not to speculate much about them. But for one reason or another, I don't think they ever met each other.

[malevolent]

The information in the stats page doesn’t get “tracked”. Any time someone visits a stats page, the stats need to be calculated, and the calculations are very resource intensive. I don’t believe the cost of allowing people to visit the stats page a single time increases as the number of users increases, but rather that the cost is simply high and Theymos was probably trying to reduce server costs when he turned off access to the stats page.

To be honest I don't know how it works in detail, but if it's resource intensive it really wouldn't make sense to have the forum's stats functions to run the same queries every time any user visits the stats page instead of once in a while and otherwise showing cached info.

[Quickseller]

The information in the stats page doesn’t get “tracked”. Any time someone visits a stats page, the stats need to be calculated, and the calculations are very resource intensive. I don’t believe the cost of allowing people to visit the stats page a single time increases as the number of users increases, but rather that the cost is simply high and Theymos was probably trying to reduce server costs when he turned off access to the stats page.

To be honest I don't know how it works in detail, but if it's resource intensive it really wouldn't make sense to have the forum's stats functions to run the same queries every time any user visits the stats page instead of once in a while and otherwise showing cached info.

The forum has over 3.2 million users, and probably 99.9% of those accounts will never have their stats page looked at by anyone, so creating cashed versions of the stats page would use more resources over the long run. It might make sense to keep a cashed version of an accounts page for up to a month, or however long, but this would open the forum to a DoS attack in which an attacker visits many accounts' stats page.

I might suggest that theymos calculate the cost of forum resources to visit one stats page, and allow people to view a single stats page after paying a LN invoice of the same amount.

[malevolent]

The forum has over 3.2 million users, and probably 99.9% of those accounts will never have their stats page looked at by anyone, so creating cashed versions of the stats page would use more resources over the long run. It might make sense to keep a cashed version of an accounts page for up to a month, or however long, but this would open the forum to a DoS attack in which an attacker visits many accounts' stats page.

*cached

I was thinking too much about the forum stats page where a lot of things are turned off, but yeah, user stats pages are different. Would be simpler if only logged-in users with at least 1 merit earned could see the pages and if they were aggressively rate-limited.

[onecall123]

Perhaps that part of the forum is visible only to admin or selected VIP Staff members  

I do not think the member's statistics page is visible to any user (member or staff), they appear to have been disabled for being too expensive, along with some other stats which used to be updated regularly;

Collecting some of these stats became too expensive, so I had to disable some them. IIRC, I changed it so that topic read counts only count logged-in members, and some of the stats related on members online were totally disabled. I would like to enable them again, but it probably won't happen too soon.

There's an error message on the member's statistics page and stated that User stats are disabled. Such a message force you to imagine that either user violate any rules or appear only some selected profiles. Back 2017 I can recall that I have utilized it and got summed up my posting statistics. Somehow I didn't aware of this update, appreciate it.

[Quickseller]

I can't imaging the cost of serving a single user stats page being very high. Oe option might be to allow copper members to view at most 50 user stats page per month, and perhaps create another member type that is allowed to view more user stats pages per month that might be a different price than a copper member. The majority of copper member stats page views would probably go unused.

One thing that theymos has done an especially poor job at is monetizing the forum. This is probably in part because he was such an early investor/adopter of bitcoin that he no longer needs to care about money, and has other priorities to advocate for. Special features is probably one additional means the forum could be monetized.

Improving the auction process for forum ads is another way the forum could generate additional revenue. Allowing advertisers to better target forum members would be a good first step in increasing revenue. Ditto with changing the metric that ads are displayed from "time" to "page_views"