> But it maintained quality via community, and through a simple $10 barrier. One thing written-out of the official history. 10bux was introduced when SA had a

> But it maintained quality via community, and through a simple $10 barrier. One thing written-out of the official history. 10bux was introduced when SA had a wide variety of infringing bittorrent links in various subforums. Somehow, Lowtax shut this down before he got busted for it, but if anyone ever mentioned it for years afterward, insta-permaban. The idea that $10 was quality control developed later. The real rules had nothing do with "quality" and were always opaque and deeply political. Pretty much a Lord of the Flies scenario -- which was great if you loved internet drama, and they weren't coming after you. SA's business model was essentially semi-randomly banning people who would re-register. I haven't been back in more than ten years, so things might have changed. But to pretend they were trying to foster some great community ... no. Just no. Goons were acknowledgedly horrible people engaged in online barbarism.