What's with Hungercity again?

Whatever one may make of these Hunger City issues, and I suspect that we haven't seen the end of the story yet, this thread sure has remarkable legs.

Among the non-sticky threads, (preceded in the thread title with "Notice:" here at TTD), here in the technobabble forum, this thread has risen to #3 all-time in number of replies, and #4 in total views. A very similar thread on Hunger City, http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/...ad.php?t=88219 comes in as #7 and #6 respectively on both lists.
If one would add the numbers of these two like threads together, that figure would slot in as #2 on both counts, behind different #1 threads.

Wow! Well done to the many fine folks who have contributed to this work, it's been a team effort!

[direwolf-pgh]

ehh.. too many alias'

[daddyray]

too much is never enough

Originally Posted by direwolf-pgh

ehh.. too many alias'

Are you saying the number of replies are significantly inflated by posts from alias accounts? As staff, dwolf would know far better than I, but I don't recall, or on a quick peek see, many names with the telltale "0.00 up, 0.00 down 0.00 ratio" that I associate with most alias accounts. My methodology on determining, in my mind, who the alias log ins are could be deeply flawed, dunno, just a curiosity question, really.

[cajun_moon]

Are there actually any estimates as to how much money this guy ripped off of the members of HC? I stopped using it years ago, something about the way the site owner communicated and interacted with users smelled very fishy.

[Munichhilton]

Only ShaReef knows for sure...he never told us as staff anything about money...but then, I never asked. He was always pretty helpful in other routine matters until he disappeared leaving some to make decisions he should be responsible for...then after putting in all that time and energy that founders had he pulls the plug on the site for a third time!?!?

I'm over it...

Originally Posted by arfarf

Whatever one may make of these Hunger City issues, and I suspect that we haven't seen the end of the story yet, this thread sure has remarkable legs.

Among the non-sticky threads, (preceded in the thread title with "Notice:" here at TTD), here in the technobabble forum, this thread has risen to #3 all-time in number of replies, and #4 in total views. A very similar thread on Hunger City, http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/...ad.php?t=88219 comes in as #7 and #6 respectively on both lists.
If one would add the numbers of these two like threads together, that figure would slot in as #2 on both counts, behind different #1 threads.

Wow! Well done to the many fine folks who have contributed to this work, it's been a team effort!

Definite Hall of Fame material! Shame Technobabble doesn't have one, but there you go...

Originally Posted by cajun_moon

Are there actually any estimates as to how much money this guy ripped off of the members of HC? I stopped using it years ago, something about the way the site owner communicated and interacted with users smelled very fishy.

I think there are a handful of people who have an idea of how much money he took in during the shutdown before the most recent one. Since Shareef did not credit the donors, many donors wrote to staff to ask for their credit and, based on that (from what I understand) they were able to piece together a figure that was far more than Shareef alleged he had received but that, also, was likely less than the actual funds that he took in (since not everyone would have written in to ask for compensation and since it is possible that Shareef may have compensated some of them).

I have seen some figures and estimates, but I do not feel comfortable disseminating them here since my knowledge of the situation is indirect and because my memory has been muddled by drugs and alcohol.

I will go on record as writing that former staff members have claimed that enough money was taken in during the summer shutdown (the one before the last) to pay for the server bill for months in advance, and that, give the amount of money taken in during that shutdown, there was no reason that another shutdown should have happened again this soon (or ever).

[Eriksnow]

Originally Posted by Bugs

I have seen some figures and estimates, but I do not feel comfortable disseminating them here since my knowledge of the situation is indirect and because my memory has been muddled by drugs and alcohol.

I will go on record as writing that former staff members have claimed that enough money was taken in during the summer shutdown (the one before the last) to pay for the server bill for months in advance, and that, give the amount of money taken in during that shutdown, there was no reason that another shutdown should have happened again this soon (or ever).

An educated is guess is somewhere between 2000 and 4000 dollars. Only Shareef knows the exact amount of course. As Blindwilly previously wrote, him and 6 friends, alone, donated 700 dollars. And HC has thousands of members. I guess when Shareef saw the money coming in, he wanted to have it shut down for as long as possible since so many good hearts were thinking "my God, it could be up to ME to save the tracker". Me and 2 other founders recieved a LOT of "I have donated but not been credited" PMs for months afterwards

I would guess that the reason HC went down the last time was because of me changing the frontside and sent out mass PM where I wrote that people should *not* be donating anymore (which must have given Shareef a long nose! ). After all, the shutdown came the same day Shareef found out about the mass PM I had sent to all users (the day he logged in again).

By shutting it down, he'd stop all discussion about the donations, members-and-staff-in-between and also be the only one being able to make a statement about this (which was IT HAS COME TO MY ATTENTION THAT A MASS PM HAS BEEN SENT OUT ASKING PEOPLE NOT TO DONATE. THIS IS TOTALLY UNTRUE! THIS PERSON WILL BE FOUND....etc...etc)

BTW, I was thinking the same as arfarf when seeing that the frontpage of HC read "PLEASE NO DONATIONS UNTILL BEING INSTRUCTED[...] "..... he must have troubles with his paypal account due to complaints. No way would he say that otherwise......unless he actually agrees with my mass PM all of a sudden

(pardon my English)

[Eriksnow]

BTW, if Shareef only had been communicative and doing his share of the staff work, and also: don't take the site down and pretend he's broke.......none of this would have happened, even though plenty of us were suspective about him making some bucks of his site.

[Eriksnow]

Originally Posted by Vergeltungswaffe

Why are some of the fired ex-hungercity staff guys washing their dirty laundry here in public?

If you are asking me (which I suppose you are) , nothing of what I wrote above hasn't allready been written/discussed in public on other messageboards, either by senior uploaders with good knowledge or other HC staff members, so I don't think I did any crime with my post above. But in some ways, you are right, I shouldn't be commenting anymore here (and I won't) ; but Bugs post which I quoted made want to reply.

[daddyray]

there should be open discussion.....the aggrieved parties want to know what is going on....

[direwolf-pgh]

I deleted that post Erik. Vergeltungswaffe is either incredibly thick or trolling - perhaps both.
We thank you again for bringing these events to light and informing the trading community that Hungercity is a scam. Do not donate.

[daddyray]

on a side note I wonder how Grace would handled Rip?

[Munichhilton]

Dammit...force of habit...I just donated $3.42

What the hell is wrong with me!