Hi all,

I've been dropping hints left and right that something was upcoming today. Well, the title of this thread reveals it already. I'm celebrating my tenth anniversary today as your BOINC moderator. Sorry for the great amount of text to follow in a moment, but this cannot be written in just 140 characters.

It was the evening of a Friday, on the 28th of April 2006 that I emailed David with the following request:

Hi David,

I addressed this earlier, we do need a moderator on the BOINC forums. There's now more and more people on there using the board as their means to spread unwanted SPAM. If you can't find anyone else who wants to do it, I'll volunteer (Ageless, ID:8). I'm a moderator on the Primegrid forums as well, I know how to use the options.

Please, make someone a moderator.

Thank you.

Jord.

Rom answered me and asked if I wanted a separate account for this or my regular one. And then he made me a moderator.... at Seti@Home.

Yes, 10 years ago to this date, I was the first of the volunteer users to be a moderator on the Seti forums as well. Together with David and Eric we put down some ground rules, which over time evolved into the posting rules you see on the left when posting. I also asked for the separate moderator email list that the report post mails go to, and to which you can email when you have a complaint. This so people can email one place and not 12 people's email addresses separately. Yep, all things you have me to thank for. Or curse, of course. :-)

Seeing how I still wasn't a moderator at the BOINC forums an hour after Rom told me I was, I asked again. He noticed his mistake and made me a moderator at the BOINC forums as well.

So here I was, the first user-moderator on the BOINC forums. Over time I have used the account to stop spam on these forums, banish a couple of users who didn't want to listen, get crap & insults thrown at that you don't really want to know about, but above all I am still here and not going anywhere.

Over all this time, there are some of you who have made these forums your home as well. Some more than others, others only during Seti maintenance or when special things happen, but a home to return to anyway. Despite your differences and quarrels elsewhere.

From day one, despite those rules, I decided to do things differently here. The Seti moderating stint didn't work out so well, that was more stress than a leisure cruise. So instead of the strict 13 rule that was enforced over there, I was going for a more leisure adult rule, and allow you a lot. You're all adults, or so I hope, so go on and have a discussion like adults, no matter how heated that can be at times.

Which in my humble opinion works fine.

I stroll -well, honestly I skim-read- through some of those threads at times and then read -after the fact- things like "I hope you approve of me saying this, Jord". The whole discussion has been sitting there like that for over a week then, or longer even. I do then wonder why you wouldn't be allowed to say that, what strict forum do you feel these are? Or was it something you got moderated for elsewhere?

So, anyway, you now know the story of how this little ugly duckling became your handsome BOINC moderator. I'm not leaving. If BOINC wants to continue another 10 years, I'm going to be here. Well, if forums are at least still the way to go in another 10 years.
Over these past ten years I kicked some (bad) habits, like drinking (17 August 2008) and smoking (3 October 2012), now I am trying to overcome the extra weight that added. I've grown from just a lowly moderator on these boards to one with a couple extra buttons and an extra title (administrator), I write a lot of the BOINC user documentation (wiki) and since some time do the Dutch translations for everything. In this time we have seen BOINC evolve from BOINC 5.4.5 (anyone remember what that looked like?) on CPU only to what it is now with all kinds of GPUs and coprocessor support, which can run on big PCs, Macs, Android and single board computers. I do wonder what's going to be added in the future.

So come join in the festivities:
- there's a bouncy castle at the back.
- the band plays all the hits from 2006.
- all drinks at the bar cost just $2.006

Thank you:
- David Anderson, thank you for giving us BOINC, without which there wouldn't have been these forums. Thank you also for your trust in me in all these years. I know you get all the complaint emails about me, but apparently no one ever says he can do better than me, because I'm still here. :-)
- Rom Walton, thank you for the mishap at the time which cost me a lot of added stress and my first grey hairs. But also for your friendship, and listening and advice at all the right times.
- Charlie Fenton, thank you for teaching me how BOINC does things on a Mac and helping me write a lot of the documentation.
- Kathryn Marks, my co-moderator. Not sure since when she's a moderator here, but I feel it was within the first year after me. She'll probably be able to tell that. Kath, thank you for your friendship and for jumping in here at times I cannot be here for whatever reasons. Always in the background, ey? :-)
- Christian Beer, thank you for sharing your back-end knowledge where needed. Although I tried, it wasn't something I could easily get to grips with. Yes, there are still things in overall BOINC that I don't know how they work.
- everyone who has made these forums their home, you're too many to call by name. Thank you for making these boards a lively forum. Thank you all of the help desk gurus who voluntarily help people with their BOINC problems, despite the crap you sometimes get thrown back at you.
- thank you everyone who has posted on these forums once or more times in the past 10 years. Without you, we wouldn't be here.

So Jord, what was with the images of the balls?
Well, that was a distraction, really. :-)
OK, at first I tried to make balloons through some of my programs, but quickly found out that LibreOffice's Draw is more limited than OpenOffice Draw ever was. So I decided to just add more balls, and some strings, and eventually some text. But because the original image is 550x400 pixels, and the one I show in my signature is only 120x99, I could easily add text. No matter how much you zoomed in, you wouldn't be able to read it. As Anniet found out. :-)

Here's the final image, with the text as it show in 120p in my signature here and at Seti:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5fw2k88a1aw5djg/festivities.png?dl=0

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Congratulations.

Gosh.

Congratulations. I'm running a horrible migraine so you'll excuse me if I just give you a hug and a kiss (if any reader wonders, then you've not been around long enough to know who I am and who I started out as) and spare us lots of words.

I must confess I did try to read the words on your sig over at seti and did as well find out that you couldn't quite make out the text no matter how big you made it.
But since I was waiting for you to post what it was all about, I decided to wait some more ;)

So all the best and many more years and all that.

Prost (with non-alcoholic bubbly)

Oh.

*absorb news*

That's a much better reason for a celebration than any I came up with...

CONGRATULATIONS!


And thank you! You know... for all your hard work, and for all that putting up with us all :)

Think this calls for a toasted marshmallow...

*consider the options available* will need to start a small fire for that...

Have a lovely day everyone! Hope your migraine goes soon, William.

I'm now also official BOINC news, yay! :-)

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Congratz Jord

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Pluto will always be a planet to me.

Congrats on not going nuts! Or have you? :)

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Yay Jord! It's a pleasure and an honor to work with you. Enjoy your day.

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Kathryn :o)

We don't always agree but your 100% straight-forward attitude towards things is appreciated.

Congratulations and here's too many more years!

Blurf

Congratulations and thank you for your "Ageless" dedication to keeping things clean and "PG" rated at worst!

Congratulations and many thanks on the 10th anniversary of your volunteer work as a forum moderator for BOINC. Your efforts have been invaluable in helping BOINC to succeed and meet the needs of both the BOINC user community and the science it supports.

Making the news is not always a reason for congratulation, Sir, but you have done a fine job of doing just that. :-) Well done and thank you for your hard work. The tribute in the news thread is indeed an accolade to be proud of.

Rod

I guess that's also why some of here and over there haven't dared say anything yet.

Oi Ageless, you're a right knobhead aren't you?

Lol :)

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Ah, so it was you who lured those 7 spammers to these forums this morning. Next time get a bunch with more brains, so they don't post their crap in the threads where a moderator is celebrating his 10th anniversary.

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Wow 10 years that must be a record specially if you've managed to keep your sanity during that time

Ah, so it was you who lured those 7 spammers to these forums this morning. Next time get a bunch with more brains, so they don't post their crap in the threads where a moderator is celebrating his 10th anniversary.

I thought everybody should be able to purchase some rhino horn.

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Glad you're happy to keep the poachers in business and stand by while a species get wiped out.

You're welcome.

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Congratulations on moderation.

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The mind is a weird and mysterious place

Congratz Jord :)

They say that moderation is the key to a long and happy life.

You wear it well, friend.