OK, thank you for the responses. I have signatures disabled, so I was not aware that he was offering escrow service. This explain why SaltySpitoon and Theymos did not allow me to use the important announcements section to offer escrow service. Now I am sure that Theymos conspired with John K to establish a false sense of trust among the forum users. Once John K came out of scene, SaltySpitoon came in. Both are now conspiring together to deter the competition. Every piece of the puzzle is starting to fit together. Anyone reading SaltySpitoon post history will discover that he is always defending Theymos actions. It is also interesting to note that SaltySpitoon was promoted from staff directly to global moderator without any merit. This indicate that Theymos put him in a important position to instigate (again) a false sense of trust among the forum users. Keep in mind that John K was also a global moderator and that was essential to people trust him. So at this point it is obvious that SaltySpitoon has replaced John K.
No, you weren't allowed to use it for the reason that Theymos said, Important announcements are available to Staff/VIP/Donators to post in, but it is for things that are generally significant to Bitcoin as a whole, IE MTGox shutting down, or QT updates and the likes, its not for anyone to advertise their own businesses. I have not replaced John K, nor do I wish to. I wont accept large escrow amounts that I couldn't pay off if something happened to the coins, as I dont want to risk my reputation on any sort of error that I could make.
I defend Theymos because I like the guy and trust his judgements, however if you haven't noticed I have been critical in his new forum decisions. One of the reasons that I like Theymos, is he doesn't care if people question him (including staff) he like myself is open to any argument, and doesn't hold grudges when people question him or go against whatever plans he has. I'm an incredibly neutral person on most things, which is why I got the job as the Alt Coin moderator in the first place about a year and a half ago (November 2012), because I could fairly deal with the squabbling between coins that I may have had some sort of bias towards. I was promoted to Global Mod a bit after a year of working in the busiest section on BTCTalk, maintaining a generally positive history of handling situations responsibly, and fixing my mistakes responsibly. John K was a global moderator far before myself, and was promoted to Administrator before I became a global mod.
I don't do anywhere near the volume of escrow deals as John K, and the main reason people use my service is because I tend to be available for a large part of the day, and actively communicate with the people I'm working with to make sure everything is transparent for all parties. I gained what starting reputation I had by trading metals and buying/selling various other things on the forum. I started doing escrow for my friends before I became a moderator, and I am a large advocate of the escrow system (check most of my sales threads or threads where I buy things, I ask to use the service of another escrow agent) and I'm not dilusional by the sheer fact that my reputation has a calulated value that people shouldn't feel comfortable having me hold as well, and it is well below 100 BTC.
Nope I do not, nor would I advise escrowing 100 BTC through my services. The only real trust is mathmatical logic, it has little to do with past performance.
I advise anyone looking for an escrow service to avoid agents which are not willing to identify themselves.
Agreed.