Policy change for chat usage

[Steve Sokolowski]

I apologize for the number of policy announcements recently. We've been taking the opportunity to analyze the site and forums and decided last week to take a more aggressive stance in promoting good content, while discouraging content that doesn't provide value to our customers.

I'll be modifying the documentation to state that, effective tomorrow, one-line nonspecific chat messages indicating problems without any further explanation will be removed. Therefore, "the system is down" will be removed, but "my L3+ miners displayed an 'authorization refused because the static coin/algorithm combination is in error' message beginning at 8:30" is allowed. We've seen that the first type of complaint, despite often being recommended to submit a support ticket, rarely sees a ticket submitted, and the lack of information in the chat makes the complaint unactionable.

Thanks for your understanding, and feel free to comment about this new idea.

[Eyedol-X]

I understand the need for this change but to me this sounds like more moderation overhead unless you're making this change simply to state somewhere in policy that it's not allowed which in turn gives you "freedom" to delete any message that is not compliant with the policy any time you have the opportunity to do so.

[Steve Sokolowski]

I understand the need for this change but to me this sounds like more moderation overhead unless you're making this change simply to state somewhere in policy that it's not allowed which in turn gives you "freedom" to delete any message that is not compliant with the policy any time you have the opportunity to do so.

I agree that this change makes the rules stricter, but I also think that we want to strive towards a forum where the posts largely consist of useful, reasonably friendly content. That's in contrast to places like bitcointalk.org, where most of the posts are either flames, spam, Bitcoin Core propaganda, or one-liner "low-effort" posts.

Don't you agree that it would be better to have a forum that has very few quality posts than an "active" forum that is filled with spam and low-effort posts, many of which aren't true?

[Eyedol-X]

I understand the need for this change but to me this sounds like more moderation overhead unless you're making this change simply to state somewhere in policy that it's not allowed which in turn gives you "freedom" to delete any message that is not compliant with the policy any time you have the opportunity to do so.

I agree that this change makes the rules stricter, but I also think that we want to strive towards a forum where the posts largely consist of useful, reasonably friendly content. That's in contrast to places like bitcointalk.org, where most of the posts are either flames, spam, Bitcoin Core propaganda, or one-liner "low-effort" posts.

Don't you agree that it would be better to have a forum that has very few quality posts than an "active" forum that is filled with spam and low-effort posts, many of which aren't true?

To clarify, my comment was not in disagreement, it was from the stance of identifying the cost of such change. I agree with the change but unless you all are planning on staffing full time moderators round the clock, I'm not sure how much impact its going to have based upon observations of what happens here near every night lately.

[Steve Sokolowski]

I understand the need for this change but to me this sounds like more moderation overhead unless you're making this change simply to state somewhere in policy that it's not allowed which in turn gives you "freedom" to delete any message that is not compliant with the policy any time you have the opportunity to do so.

I agree that this change makes the rules stricter, but I also think that we want to strive towards a forum where the posts largely consist of useful, reasonably friendly content. That's in contrast to places like bitcointalk.org, where most of the posts are either flames, spam, Bitcoin Core propaganda, or one-liner "low-effort" posts.

Don't you agree that it would be better to have a forum that has very few quality posts than an "active" forum that is filled with spam and low-effort posts, many of which aren't true?

To clarify, my comment was not in disagreement, it was from the stance of identifying the cost of such change. I agree with the change but unless you all are planning on staffing full time moderators round the clock, I'm not sure how much impact its going to have based upon observations of what happens here near every night lately.

I'm still not sure why the spambot countermeasures are ineffective against those posts. The bots always seem to come when morning arrives in Russia, and there must be botnets there that are activated every morning to spam this and other forums. Since the posts are all easily deleted though, I don't understand the purpose, as every IP address is reported to the upstream provider by us, shrinking their botnet for no gain.

But getting back to this chat thing, the real issue here with this one isn't spam but the number of misleading posts there seem to be in the chat. For example, there are multiple posts reading "pool down" or something similar, when in fact the problem is limited to a specific customer. Those issues are best handled in a support ticket instead of confusing everyone into thinking there is a widespread issue.

That's why I think it's best to delete nonspecific posts like that and send a private message to the poster suggesting that a support ticket be created.

[Foxx]

myself pesonally, less moderation is better. certainly, there are instances of the pool being down. though i must admit that those episodes seem to be becoming less and less of late. if it keeps up, i may just bring some rigs back.

back to the moderation though. wouldn't it be better to rebut claims you disagrre with than to ban them? seems a bit Orwellian on it's surface.

[CSZiggy]

why bother, no one cares.

[Steve Sokolowski]

So if the pool was in fact down, would that chat message still get deleted?
Is the chat going to re-imagine its image to the people by trying to pretend there were never any legit issues or downtime ever?

I think you're blowing the issue out of proportion. It's common sense that if the pool was down, a message stating it's down wouldn't be deleted.

We're talking about the people who post "I'm having problems today" from zero-post accounts without any explanation of the issue or anything anyone can do to help. The goal is to reduce useless low-effort posts and comments that make the rest of the content more difficult to find.

There's no problem with saying "the miners I rented from X are getting port unreachable errors" or "my hashrate chart shows 30% less hashrate today than yesterday but the same miners are running."

[spauk]

myself pesonally, less moderation is better. certainly, there are instances of the pool being down. though i must admit that those episodes seem to be becoming less and less of late. if it keeps up, i may just bring some rigs back.

back to the moderation though. wouldn't it be better to rebut claims you disagrre with than to ban them? seems a bit Orwellian on it's surface.

Deletion of comments that don't meet the criteria isn't the same as a ban, which usually means to ban an account from posting (which is almost always used against only spam bots.) I don't think this issue was ever about censorship of claims prohashing disagrees with, even though they do have the right to moderate their forums how they see fit. From what I've seen they take pride in allowing free speech while condemning forum moderators of BCT who actually commit censorship.

I like the new policies, it should make it easier to find useful information.

[Foxx]

myself pesonally, less moderation is better. certainly, there are instances of the pool being down. though i must admit that those episodes seem to be becoming less and less of late. if it keeps up, i may just bring some rigs back.

back to the moderation though. wouldn't it be better to rebut claims you disagrre with than to ban them? seems a bit Orwellian on it's surface.

Deletion of comments that don't meet the criteria isn't the same as a ban, which usually means to ban an account from posting (which is almost always used against only spam bots.) I don't think this issue was ever about censorship of claims prohashing disagrees with, even though they do have the right to moderate their forums how they see fit. From what I've seen they take pride in allowing free speech while condemning forum moderators of BCT who actually commit censorship.

I like the new policies, it should make it easier to find useful information.

they are banning the structure of a certian kind of comment. one they deem to be 'lazy' and/or 'agenda' laden. the problem, from my perspective is, that it opens the door for arbitrary judgment and quite possibly capriciousness. again, from my perspective, censorship is a slippery slope.

as you say though, this is their sandbox and ultimately they will move the sand about as they desire.

just my 2 satoshi.