Ops should reimburse users, but only partially - if someone is too stupid to leave 0.5+ BTC on pool ran by two (doesn´t matter how honest) guys, where no one can expect robust security platform, deserves nothing more than loose it. During 6 months of mining I lost coins in various scams (Unocs, Orbit Coin, PhenixEx..) and I learned one thing - You are on enemy territory and if You loose, it was by your mistake so blame no one but You.
aTriz and nearmiss did great job here, so stop complain and try to be supportive.
The only person stupid here is you... Be supportive for a bunch of f... amateurs. I WANT MY FUCKING MONEY BACK
Glad you are being so mature about all this, we can tell who are the adults in the room!
For what it's worth, I don't expect HCows to reimburse me for any of my losses. No pool is insured against any kind of losses...this isn't the bank, there's no FDIC and we all know this -- whether we choose to accept it or not is another story. This isn't Coinbase or something where I've got an upfront understanding of the safety/security of my coins...no pool mananger out there would be crazy enough insure against losses. If a pool owner decides to reimburse some/all of their members' losses that's a different story.
That being said, I think that the team at HCows will have to work extra hard to regain trust of the pool members in order to keep things going forward.
I consider this nothing more than 1 more lesson learned in the new world of crypto. As individuals we can choose to bitch and moan but it won't change a thing. Going forward I would like to ask us all to try and remain somewhat professional about this and see what the HCows team does next...the ball is in their court.