Topic: Are the mods getting paid from this forum? - page 9. (Read 10724 times)

I was trolled for taking 6 months to actually design, produce and ship the Bitcoin Magazine. BFL is trolled for not having shipped regularly for what, 9 months? The forum has been receiving donations for 12 months, and now have hundreds of thousands of dollars. I don't think anyone cares about a trust system (a flawed one at that as no one can post rebuttals to spammed feedback or submit it for removal).

I think it's time the guise of "forum software creation" is no longer used to ask for funds until some forum software generation has actually begun development (I'm not aware of any). Either that, or the donations should be sent back and advertising revenue should be used instead. That would show a lot more integrity given the lack of transparency.

We moderate far more than you might think. In the past day, we've received about 50 unique reports and we have to research every one of them. When only one mod is online, they can easily only have time to handle just the reports, and we're still expected to find stuff on our own that wasn't reported. Trust me, it's an actual job.

As far as upgrades go, theymos has done pretty well so far. Most recently, he added the trust system. He should seriously be paying himself just for that, but so far he really hasn't been* (as far as I know?).

*Not counting his mod payments to himself, which is for his moderating, not forum upgrades.

I think we cross-posted, echoing the same concerns but, once again, I used more words than you to accomplish the same task. Ever thought about publishing a magazine?  

As I've already stated, I DON'T have the red-ass toward ANY mod OR admin. And, I'm not complaining.

The OP was such as to confirm what I discovered is true and open up a discussion, which it has.

I honestly have no problem with any mod or admin getting paid, but the action was taken under the pretense that that was not the case, whereupon donations were accepted under that pretense. That's the problem, and it shouldn't have occurred.


Again, I'm not crying!

I believe that theymos does have a fine algorithm in place to compensate the mods accordingly.

Taxing my memory, I believe that improving the forum's back end was in the works, hence one the main reasons advertising was put in place. I believe there's a thread addressing this very issue, but I have not concerned myself with it.

I believe as a whole that the majority of the mods are not influenced by being paid to correctly perform their duties. But, I have seen it raised a myriad of times that theymos may be influenced by BFL, something that I have never weighed in on with the exception of now. I will only become part of such a discussion if some nefarious activity becomes overwhelming.

I firmly believe that theymos should have made some type of announcement prior to taking action. I'm 100% sure that I would have supported such action if I would have seen such a thread. I'm am 100% behind the mods/admin getting paid, but this enlightenment came at the expense of wondering what else is happening behind the scenes we are not aware of. The blockchain may hold a clue.

I'm curious as to why the ad money resides in various wallets, moved many times to perhaps cloak its origins.

~Bruno K~

Yes, well, no one said anything about wanting an iron fist. Transparency is crucial though to a community of tin-foil hatter libertarians who love cryptography and value privacy over integrity.

The topic here is where that money comes from (scams, scammy companies buying advertisements using funds they defrauded from users, etc), and what it goes to (it claims to go to creating software but goes to whomever Theymos wants to give a Christmas present to apparently). This is all fine and dandy of course, if there were some kind of announcement or disclaimer someplace. I for one would never buy advertising space if I knew the funds from which benefit some moderators who ignore my pleas for moderation, harass me because of their personal opinions of me, and not to the actual development of forum software now 12 months after said "project" was started.

That aint no shit either. As far as i can tell they hardly even moderate anything, let alone do any upgrades. this place is a dump compared to most forums. they need to hire a competent secondary admin to clean this place up. A person like me would rule this place with an iron fist.

Paying moderators regularly is fine (not really the norm on forums, but what the hey). Paying them "because Theymos wanted to reward them" brings into question the true intentions of these advertising campaigns that are earmarked "creation of good forum software". An announcement and disclaimer would have sufficed. If we're left to just "figure it out", what else are we expected to "figure out" that will later be discovered? This reminds me of how the forum's hosting changes hands without notice.

No need to defend the payments, more transparency would be fine fellas.

The mods have been doing everything in their power to keep this forum running smoothly. Many of them are likely spending hours a day moderating these forums and they deserve some form of compensation. I do think the forum could have been more transparent with this by editing the advertisement auction thread to mention that a fraction of ads will go to mods.

+1 I love your sarcasm  

Perhaps theymos should incorporate, make this a subscription only board and get it over with.

Also: Under which legislation is the forum? How many taxes?

Hey Phinn, Be a man dude, don't cry
You did spent alot time here but you also spent alot time on spamming this forum with useless posts.
(Do not make me post your 1-2 word posts), Moderators are getting paid to clean your and others shit.
they are getting paid to moderate and run this forum properly.

However it's still not running properly,alot moderators are lazy and have "we are not your nanny" attitude. I think theymos should give chance to new peoples to become moderator.

Wtf, phinn... Do you think the payments make a difference on how we do our work?

Currently, I'm out over $100K due to InstaWallet, Bitcoinica and three leather products of which I paid my Brother-in-Law for, but the hero member buyers backed out of the deals.

I've put mega hours into the Bitcoin thingy and this forum, and haven't ever considered wanting compensation for my efforts, one of which is protecting people form scammers.

I have never solicit person donations for my efforts.

If I didn't stumble upon this revelation, how much longer would it have been before it was was brought to light by the powers that be? It's already been two months of payments paid out, and up to the creation of this thread, we've all been under the impression that all the mods were performing their duties gratis.

To be clear, I do not have the red-ass toward any mod or admin, but to be fair to the rest of the community, this just doesn't smell right. It smells worse when you see where the money has been coming from and where some it has been going.

I'll leave it up to another brave soul to explore the blockchain themselves and report their findings.

Suffice to say, this saddens me.

~Bruno K~

I wrote something very similar, but Maged posted a bit faster than me .

Wrapping it up:
- Bitcointalk mods are in no way employees of the forum.
- Personally, these payments allow me to spend more time on the forum.

Just to clarify, I've been specifically watching to make sure that none of the other mods gave that impression ever since this was implemented. None of us did. However, it would also be inappropriate for us to bring the matter up because how much a person is paid is private information and we didn't want to artificially increase the amount of people who were trying to become mods. Mods that only mod because they get paid are the worst mods that a community can have. I am proud to say that the only thing getting paid has done for me is allow me to spend more time here instead of working other jobs. I like you guys 

As far as the BFL situation, here's my stance on it: My opinion on them has always been the same regardless of whether I get paid or not. If you look at my posts before April, you'll see that. Also, I don't really care that BFL sometimes pays for ads, because if BFL didn't get ads, someone else would. They'd just pay slightly less. That's how auctions work. The price that people pay for ads here isn't even all that outrageous. If you look around at other sites this size, you'll find that our ad prices are actually very competitive for what you get.

That said, we don't even get a fixed percentage of the ad revenue. Our pay is based only on our performance, so if the forum brings in less money one month and we have the same amount of work as the last month, we'll still get paid what we got paid the last month. Fortunately, the amount of work we do is directly correlated to how many people use this forum which is directly related to our ad revenue. Interestingly, this same effect tends to keep ad revenue in BTC fairly stable, since the size of this forum is indirectly related to bitcoin price

Last time I checked non profits, foundations, and government also have employees.  By the nature of the relationship (a % of sales revenue) the mods are more like independent contractors then employees.

That's only 20 times more than my login time and I'm still a total n00b.

There's a taint analysis tool on Blockchain.info.

The sad part is is that I wasn't even digging into this when I found it. I was researching something totally unrelated, then stumbled upon some taint coins via Google and one link later I found the URL on the OP.

Somebody's moving a heck of a lot of taint coins according to the BlockChain.

Does somebody know of a better address explorer that may be visual? Tracing back an address via 100's of clicks is too tedious.

Well, well now, I just can't seem to sleep without shit blowing up overnight. I need to get some caffeine pills. lol

I was just joking. I don't really want to be a mod. It's entirely too much like a full time job and I gave those up years ago. I do think it would have been a better idea to announce this when it was implemented instead of waiting for someone to dig it up just to stop any suspicion. Not many people that have been here for any period of time would deny the mods a few bucks considering all that we see them do.