⭐ Merited by JollyGood (1)
It’s a lot different these days without these mentioned users around, but said sting operation made waves between powerful cliques so strongly the ripples can still be seen to this day..
I think that is overly melodramatic. “Powerful”? “Waves”? All this DT, rank, and merit stuff has the grandiose false importance of a schoolyard popularity contest between children. Poor children: Anyone who has significant BTC would be unlikely to care about these cliques.
As I have mentioned before, Lauda repeatedly urged me to quit the forum altogether. She regarded me as an underachiever, and she was deeply critical of me for this: “Stop wasting time.” After the time she spent striving with single-minded devotion to try to help foster a healthy community here, she herself was increasingly frustrated and pessimistic for the reasons inferred by Agbe’s analysis. Any positive change was blocked by what she privately called “the enablers”: Not the obvious scammers and trolls, not the unpopular people, but the game-players, the manipulative influence peddlers—their backroom politics, their public currying of favour.
Wherever she is now, I hope that she moved onto more productive endeavours. And I hope that no ill fate befell her, as seems to be implied by OP here. And I also hope that—well, let’s put it this way: I have spent the past few years being haunted by the thought that she may have done a real “Goodbye, world!” over that plagiarism thing, which both she and I considered much worse than that admittedly ill-advised sting operation. I have graphically hinted at this before. I don’t think that’s likely—but I don’t think it’s terribly unlikely, either.
With due apologies for being so morose, Eddie—Black Sabbath, and all. In a few days, I will return only to my normal level of pessimism.
I do dream of what could have been...
1 month Kitty admin and this place will be booming with innovation again. 
Anyway, I am surprised that The Pharmacist brought up that sting operation in response to jamyr. At the time, jamyr commented on the thread where the sting operation blew up:
I have respect with Lauda and it will remain that way even if he's done something legally wrong, for me, what matters is youre doing something that is morally right.
So...
Which is exactly why no one except Quickseller and a handful of angry trolls/scammers that Lauda negged care about these accusations against Lauda. Staff doesn't care. People on DT generally don't care. That's because Lauda owned up to the screw up in judgement with the sting operation, [...]
(Corrected because Quickseller made peace with Lauda. So now, only trolls/scammers care about it.)
You got what you wanted. Lauda is no longer a staff member. You can lock this thread now.
WowThis will hurt the forum. Lauda was one of the most active staff members.
TMAN was together with Lauda in the same controversy. I don’t think he will mind my pointing that out, since he was always one of her strongest defenders about that (and otherwise).
Posted while I was looking for an appropriate nonexistent-kitty pic I will edit into the above; with quoting changed to avoid top-posting:
It’s a lot different these days without these mentioned users around, but said sting operation made waves between powerful cliques so strongly the ripples can still be seen to this day..
Not having several members around now is making this forum a different place altogether but after making a statement such as that you have to name names please... which operation were you referring to?
Why should he name names? It is well-known. The matter was sufficiently well-settled that the target of the sting blanked his own post about it.
Lauda was fired from her forum staff position over this—a big blow to her, only two months after she came in second in an unofficial election for the community to suggest a new Global Moderator. She suffered years of trolling over it. Over five years after, almost three years after she disappeared, there is no need to rehash the matter. I am surprised that The Pharmacist brought it up.