As a Donator I can tell you that we have our own exclusive section of the forum (which controversially staff members are also able to participate in) and there are a few Donators such as myself that occasionally post things in there. A quick glance at that section looks like TradeFortress was that last VIP to post anything in there.
That sounds very interesting, an exclusive area. I did not know (and am fairly sure most of us did not know) that members that donated have their own private section of the forum. Why is/was it controversial for staff members to participate in that private section? Personally, if donors participated in a nefarious activity of any kind and it needed to intervention of a staff to lock or remove threads, or merge posts then maybe their presence was required.