I think the real problem here is:
People are trying to turn Bitcointalk into something it is not.
This is obvious just looking at the Altcoin board. Many calls to break it up into sub forums were denied by the admins, and rightfully so because this isn't an altcoin forum, it is a forum about Bitcoin specifically and should remain as such. Altcoins need to move out of mom and dads basement.
When Bitcoin was the only digital currency at the start, the forum made sense. There was only one coin to mine, one to trade, one to talk about. But this is not the cas e anymore, there is way too much subject matter packed in where it doesn't really belong. Each section of this is simply overgrown, and needs new places to congregate and focus on distinct subjects, or at least diversify into more general coin forums to create smaller communities. Bitcointalk is "too big to fail" and needs to break up
I in no way disrespect Bitcointalk or its operators with these thoughts, but the reality seems to be everyone in the crypto scene is trying to use Bitcointalk as a waystation for everything, and is now hindered by its own weight. Time to branch out and let Bitcointalk just be about Bitcoin itself again.
Bitcointalk.org either needs to evolve itself into something more broad, or face an exodus in the form of new communities branching out.
Though ad revenue and what is done with it can be a thorny subject, the simple matter is hosting isn't free and managing a large board can take a lot of time and effort to the point of being a part time job, I don't see harm in sharing a portion of the revenue as long as bills are paid and forum needs are taken care of first from those funds. But I think a proper donation bin should be enough for the community to support the board and keep it operating without pesky ads all over the place. In the case of BFL it became a big joke for them to still be advertised here a year late with their products with no admin interdiction. The nature of ads is bad to me anyway, if a maker of a product wants attention they should get involved with the community opposed to just paying for a little space and calling it a day.
Rule wise its pretty simple to me: act like an adult and things will be fine. Fail to do that, meet Mr. Banhammer. Another way to do this is not ban, but set up a forum jail as a punishment group for misbehaving, with certain jail time for each offense. 3 strikes and gone kind of thing? Just a thought. But it does seem like here people are allowed to get away with scamming, spamming, trolling, etc entirely too much, some areas of this place are a digital cesspool.
To that, I would be willing to donate the following resources to the project:VPS hosting package
Graphical design for logos, theme modification, etc.
I could have an SMF installation up and running in about 20 minutes and would happily do this for the community. I would digress direction of this board and setup to the OP as head admin, myself functioning as a back-end admin and forum mod mostly (I have other projects on my plate to which I wouldn't want to be the lead on this). Whatever allocation of donation funds deemed appropriate for hosting costs would be going to me
I'm here to help any way I can, let me know. And if I get banned for this, well, obviously I can go make my own