Suggestions like this 'donation' have often been discussed in this forum, I give one example for you.
questions and suggestions.However, in order to do something useful for the community, I would like to propose an idea. Thanks to the moderators Bitcointalk does not turn into a spammed trash can. They are doing a great job! What if we organize a donation fund where anyone could make a voluntary donation. The funds will be used to reward the forum team. The funds distribution model is a topic for public discussion: either it will be a regular vote, payments on request, or an equal division between all moderators. I am deeply convinced that there are many worthy veteran (legendary) members on the forum who could be entrusted to hold this fund (possibly a multisig). I am ready to be the first one to make a contribution to this fund.
And at the same time the answer to your good idea, you can read below.
While others in the thread have already covered the most common ways to help the forum, I'll add a few more:
- If you have sMerit left over, merit high quality posts (especially if they were made by someone of a lower rank as that'll help them to rank up).
- If you have something to promote, bid on the forum's monthly ad auction thread. The link to the current auction thread can be found at the top of https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo. You both get to advertise and support the forum.
- If you don't mind ads, disable ad block. If the ad is promoting something that you're interested in, check it out. New paying customers coming in via the ads is a win-win-win for all parties involved: the user finds a service / website he needed, the service / website gets a return on their ad investment and Bitcointalk shows that its ads are effective at attracting customers. Don't randomly click on ads you couldn't care less about though - that helps no one.
- Offer services / goods on the forum. The marketplace boards (both regular and in the altcoin sections) are a big part of Bitcointalk. The more commercial activity there, the more likely business-minded users will choose Bitcointalk as their main platform for commerce.
However, as people have pointed out, there's a reason why Bitcointalk removed its donation address - it doesn't need financial support at the moment. As for mods, if you really want to gift a moderator (or any other user for that matter) some BTC, most moderators have a Bitcoin address in their profile. Click on their username and look for the "Bitcoin address:" field. If you're gonna pick a moderator to gift some BTC to, pick one of the dedicated board mods (who isn't a global moderator or admin).
Donations aren't needed. Theymos has said the forum has enough funds, but if the forum ever needed them they could just add things like more banner ads or more donator VIP ranks etc.
I hope you now understand and understand the 'why' donation is not needed here.