The Myth of Slack

in Hive Improvement4 years ago (edited)

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There's a constant flow of misinformation regarding some Slack that may or may not exists (many are not sure) and is a super secret squirrel club homebase. Supposedly, everything that's decided on Hive goes on there. And probably some things that aren't decided but who knows.

This is all false. This is not how Hive communication works.

Causes and Background of the Myth

Before Hive became its own chain, Steemit Inc ran a Slack channel. All invites needed Ned's approval and everything that was said there had to be kept top secret. Steemit Inc held this Slack and access to it over the heads of many investors, users, project owners, witnesses, and virtually everyone else.

It actively perpetuated this idea that:

  • access to the Slack gave one legitimacy
  • access to the Slack was the only way to communicate with large stakeholders
  • access to the Slack was a privilege and without it no project could succeed
  • if someone said something in Slack about your project, that was "the community" speaking

In short, it was about privileged access but the reigns of that privilege were held by the same company that later orchestrated a 51% attack on the very public blockchain it vowed to support.

People in Steemit's Slack had to always offer positive constructive criticism and nothing negative was to ever be said. It was a good Slack for endlessly politely debating in circles. I was personally invited by Ned and then banned by him for getting an invite for my partner. I was reinstated much later on.

The problem with that Slack is that it always had that air of "if you're not a member then you're project is worthless" around it. There was no layered solution to communication - just the Slack. And that started the legend and the artificially amplified status of the Mythical Slack.

Hive Communication

There are three distinct and equal targeted areas of group communication for Hive that I am in the position to speak for and will cover in this post. These targeted areas run in parallel to myriad other Hive chats and platforms.

Hive Discord

The 'main' Hive discord is meant to be a point of information and discussion for virtually everyone on Hive. Since Discord can hold the largest amount of people, this is a significant server with many rooms, channels and active users. It is actively used by project developers to ask questions, by content creators to chat with each other, and by anyone and everyone. Many witnesses, large stakeholders and core developers are active there and make a point to make themselves accessible. The main usergroup colors work like this: red are those who organize and always keep abreast of all developments, yellow are the information points who can answer most questions, green are all the different developers in the ecosystem. The Discord is also bridged with https://openhive.chat (which shares the above description save for usergroups).

Hive Slack

The Slack was put in place after coworking and collaboration among Hive development contributors and witnesses became impossible in Telegram. It is meant to be used to facilitate work on Hive and Hive alone. It is not used for personal projects or general interest topics. This Slack is a "free" version, meaning it has a 10,000 message limit before auto-deleting. Due to this, it must be kept on topic, although people do like to partake in idle chatter. It is assumed and expected that everyone there is working on Hive. Its commonly used to discuss exchange listings, outreach topics, various projects, some anti-abuse, status updates and similar.

Hive Mattermost

Due to the fact that Slack auto-deletes messages, all core blockchain and critical infrastructure discussion was moved to a self-hosted Mattermost. This chat is 99% development talk and most of you would find it about as interesting as watching mold grow. Mattermost is kept very professional and succinct to allow people to have focused discussions on technical topics. Due to the fact that security-related topics come up, confidentiality is important. Virtually everything discussed there you can see on the Hive repository, found here: https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive and can also be heard/followed up in the @hiveio blog updates and the bi-weekly development discussions.

Operation of Chats

The Hive chats are freedom of speech chats. We don't force polite speech on people. We don't tell people what they can or can't say. We don't make people communicate in various unnatural ways. People like to go off-topic during quiet times but when push comes to shove, the purpose is for everyone to focus and work on Hive. Many users do not overlap between the topical chats, particularly if they are busy developers.

Topics Not Covered in Chats

Topics around the promotion or lobbying for voting, either for posts, for witnesses, or for DHF proposals are not part of any of the chats. Lobbying is highly discouraged because the best place for it is on chain.

"Leaks"

There are technically no leaks because the chats are not meant to be super secret. That being said, sharing quotes and screenshots is discouraged because it takes the statement out of context. We have had an incident in the past where a quote was maliciously shared in order to trigger a response in another person. The sharer specifically selected something negative but omitted many positive messages that followed. Such cases are regarded as a matter of integrity.

Teamworking

The purpose of the chats, as already mentioned, is to facilitate decentralized teamworking and collaboration. Communication for such an expansive ecosystem is always a challenge. The three chats augment the set of communication tools that Hive contributors have created and maintain. They are not thee chats but are just chats.

Administration of Chats

I am the creator of the above chats. That being said, I am not a sole operator. I have a partner operator on both Slack and Mattermost (different people). On Discord, unfortunately, there is only one owner possible.

The Discord chat is a free-for-all. Invites to Slack and Mattermost are requested and granted on a need basis. The by-invite chats are, as aforementioned, for coworking and collaboration purposes. They are not for anyone's entertainment, random browsing, personal promotion or anything of the sort. We treat everyone equally, irrespective if they're in the rooms or not.

Removal or temporary separation of users is a very hard decision to make but it does have to be made. I have volunteered to take on this role (no, I am far from being the sole decision-maker). It's very difficult, it's not fun, and I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. But ultimately it is likely myself who is pushing the button because for every tool, there has to be an operator. I'm not a large stakeholder and I'm not hiding the fact that I'm in this role. Every time I act must be in the interest of Hive as a whole.

Can these chats be better? Of course. Everything can always be improved upon. Nothing human-made exists in this world that cannot be made better.

There are also many other chats that are part of the Hive ecosystem. It would be impossible and unfair for me to try to list them all here, but perhaps readers can link or describe them in comments below.

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What myth do you think you toppled with this post?

What you described here is exactly what everyone had in mind. Everyone knowing about it hardly makes it secret and slack members can derive great value for themselves from their membership, as we have seen already. Exclusive job opportunities, developing trust and connections with major stake holders and witnesses.

Getting your "name" known is one of the biggest obstacles on HIVE each one of us has to overcome. The slack "establishes you", its like a badge you carry around no matter how much you might want to disagree..
There are numerous benefits of being in the slack group. Its actually the most beneficial group you can be part of on HIVE. Besides opportunity, you are a part of the decision making process.
There is also a correlation between getting funded and being in the slack group. I actually see it as almost a prerequisite for getting funded with the DAO.

I'm not answering you and I don't expect to get a reply from you. I'm talking generally with everyone:

All decisions are made on the official gitlab or on the chain. All you have to do is to check posts by @blocktrades as usually, he posts everything there.

We understand that there is no 1 person making decisions. The more stake you have, the more you should be in the part of making a decision. You can't ignore the large stakeholders and in the meantime, you can't trust a person who is not in the game to decide for the game's future.

Also, you can't force people to participate in a development work or help make decisions. For instance, we can't force @freedom to join a discord group and help us develop the chain. The work is voluntary.

Anyone willing to help the Hive is more than welcome. I'm not the person to make decisions about this topic or anything else. But we can agree as a whole community to trust the votes of the community. The top witnesses are elected by stakeholders, whether you like it or not, they (not all of them and not just top 20) are usually the voluntary workers around here.

Instead of insulting people that are working, look at the stakeholders who choose them. Go ask voters why they vote. Just want to remind the average users who just use Hive as a social media that there are people with more stake than them.

My point is, if you are not aware of ongoing developments and discussions, probably you are just an end-user who just uses Hive as a social media and doesn't participate in the necessary areas. You can't expect people to listen to you and do the free work for you. That's how our world works around here.

If you want to work for free, visit the official GitLab. OR, set up a proposal and see whether stakeholders want to pay for your skills or not.

Don't attack the people who do the work. They are chosen by stakeholders.

You should have picked another comment to write this "general response" to.

What exactly did you counter with this comment? Im sorry, but what youre arguing has nothing to do with me or anyone i know that holds the same position.

Who am i insulting? Im precisely questioning stakeholder behavior.

Im attacking unfair behavior, stupid behavior (cryptofinally drama), wasteful spending, etc.

htedoh da ti posaljem poruku na twiteru al ne mogu. zanima me tvoje misljenje o ovoj zajebanciji jer zaista zelim da vidim drugu stranu. mozda sam pod uticajem ovog sranja koje se desava u okolini pa ne vidim nesto sto bi trebalo da vidim. zasto mi njena prica deluje kao da mi moj voljeni precednik ili premijer pricaju sa tv-a, jer neko ko je skoro 2 godine na platformi, i imao je ozbiljnu podrsku u glasovima, a nikad u zivotu nije kliknuo na upvote, cak ni na komentare u svojim postovima mi ne deluje iskreno u prici o podrsci platformi i ljubavi prema istoj.

Totalno je nebitno za sta i kako koristi platformu. Ako ne vota to ostaje u reward poolu.
Ona je neki influencer i to dosta poznat sa skoro 50k followera. Tribamo takve ljude jer je twitter bitan. Jako malo je takvih i ona je jedna od vecih na twitteru. Potjerati je odavde je najgluplja stvar sta mozemo napravit.

taj deo je ok, i nemam nista protiv, nego mi je prica o ljubavi i brizi malo 🤢 verovatno sam previse osetljiv :D

"Read the transcript":

All decisions are made on the official gitlab or on the chain. All you have to do is to check posts by @blocktrades as usually, he posts everything there.

I mean, how much clearer does it get?

& btw, the post actually does explain "EVERYTHING"

Not sure what part isn't clearly explained.

Apart from conspiracy theories and assumptions, is there anything to back your hear say and allegations?

Unlike Steem, there is no King Dick called "Ned" or his centralized stake all with a centralized jurisdiction entity that can and did serve as a loophole in the ecosystem.

What was the case on Steem, is literally nothing even remotely close to what is "The GO" on Hive.

Why don't you take a gander at Gitlab and compare it to Steem.

Why don't you read what is out there on the relevant channels of communications.

Seriously, make an effort before coming to unfounded and totally bogus conclusions.

No, no they are not made on github. That is preposterous. A framework is set up beforehand and ideas are discussed before they get on Github (might not happen in slack, but does between those from slack), which is understandable and is the case with all and any change with any project, otherwise there would be a lot of wasted time.

conspiracy theories

Not a single conspiracy theory.

Unlike Steem, there is no King Dick called "Ned"

Sure, but there are many "Baron Dicks" as we just saw with the CF drama.

Seriously, make an effort before coming to unfounded and totally bogus conclusions.

Not a single thing i said is unfounded, its highly logical and can be seen world around when it comes to any societal structure. There is always a core group of people in any and all organization and these structures always lean towards centralization.
Hive the blockchain might be decentralized but "the slack" in relation to the wider community is a centralized point of power. There is no denying and you can twist it any way you want. You can call it "necessary" like guilty parties did in this post but its a fact.

Im not here to criticize its existence. That would be silly because i realize its necessity. Im here to criticize actions of the individuals in it. Their unfair behavior among other things.
All in order that it gets improved over time.

I have no horse in this race outside the wish HIVE "does better".

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as long as it doesnt become a circle jerk :))

Just say what you're actually trying to say straight out. You are upset about Justine getting funded through the DHF for exchange listings. She is putting in long hours in negotiations and has gotten all the paid listings down to zero. She jumped into the role without being funded originally in order to help Hive but it's a full-time role. If you want the job for yourself, put in for it. We have a community for these types of postings.

Your "correlation" is BS and I can prove it. I have a proposal out right now, 50 days old now. I own the Slack. Is my proposal funded?

Your "correlation" is BS and I can prove it. I have a proposal out right now, 50 days old now. I own the Slack. Is my proposal funded?

Where did i say being in the slack guarantees funding? Please show me. I said it higly increases your chances and is almost a must if you want a shot at getting funded. It doesnt guarantee it, but increases the chance.
You countered an argument i did not make.

You are upset about Justine getting funded through the DHF for exchange listings

Sure, among other things. I thought that was incredibly obvious to absolutely everyone by now. I said it a 100 times and continue to say it.

She jumped into the role

She cornered a job no one else outside the group had a chance to get. (is that decentralized?)
She had no qualifications or experience but managed to get the whale support that gave her the legitimacy to move forward. Whale and witness support from the slack group. Many exchanges talk to either major stake holders or project leaders to allow a listing.
Then the amount of 30k was preposterous along side that.
See what the issue is?
This was nontransparent, excessive and unfair.

If you want the job for yourself, put in for it.

Lets not be ridiculous. The amount of criticism ive sent towards you lot automatically disqualifies me for anything like that. At one point i considered running a witness actually, it was right about before the Justine drama. I had to make a choice, either say whats right or run a witness. It could not have been both. I chose the first thing.

This is your poor attempt at making the claim: "Oh, but you too can get it, you just need to put in for it." That is not true and you know it.
Another guy put in for it but you didnt like him.

There are many other jobs. The job didn't exist beforehand. It's not like we sat down and made a job description and then hired a person for it. She literally just started listing, just like developers just start developing things like Keychain. Listing isn't easy. I used to attempt to list STEEM and failed many times. It's not just a matter of chatting with a stakeholder and filling out a form. There are AMAs, discussions, technical provisions, market provisions, etc. Constantly getting on the case of one person out of many who has proposals out is absurd. You're overthinking everything about this and if you want to get funded for something you're doing, start doing it and then write up your proposal.

Youre missing the point. And its not only her ive been talking about. Netousos 2 overlapping proposals are another example.
The lack of funding for proposals out of the core dev team as well.

I dont have to make a proposal to see an issue, i can look at others in the list that are struggling to get over the return proposal.
DAO needs a revamp and we need to work on inclusivity.

On her getting the listing... Its basically secretary work and plenty of us have attempted it with Steem, myself included. My argument is that the community is the one that deserves almost all the recognition for the listings. So many listings in such a short amount of time due to our constant pressure and being featured everywhere on twitter and in crypto news for a fairly long time.

The fact we havent been listed in almost 3 months anywhere while shes been working on listings after the split and the huge surge of interest that happened shows that she is no "miracle worker" that did what me or you could not. It was the community effort and the network effect and the fact we were "hot stuff".
Now, if she made a proposal and said she would work for a year on listings and she wanted to get payed, id consider that. (id say no, because she has 0 experience and 0 qualifications and there are far better choices, but it would be worth considering.)
The way this was handled was poor and the amount was excessive and demonstrated a lack of any standard.

It is not secretary work. If you want secretary work I'll give you some data entry to do.

What better choices are there? No one has experience and qualifications in exchange listing. There is no course you take. You just go with what you learned in mainstream business and roll with it.

No one has experience and qualifications in exchange listing.

Didnt you just say it yourself just a sentence above that indeed you can have plenty of experience?

" I'll give you some DATA ENTRY to do." Thats a legit job thats been around for ages. Working through various communication channels, data entry is a job a secretary does.
Working with exchanges on this or with legacy systems makes very little difference.

Look at this jealous, pathetic bitch. You’re such a little fucking cuck.

Thanks, GP, it's a thankless task, but it will be your statue that we tear down when the final crash occurs,...

We’re decentralised community

Great seeing you representing Hive on Twitter by the way, some of the best posts out there.

Thank you.

It's never a solo effort and everyone is contributing and we collectively making huge progress on Twitter to bring long-term value to our Hive.

We want to know are there Aliens in that secret slack? 😱 Do you guys know who really killed JFK? But most importantly

Are any plans of going to the moon being work there? 🌑🚀

No, but there's presently an off-topic discussion about garlic.

So, no aliens but yes to vampires 😲

Thanks for the info and transparency.

Cheers

Having been part of the steemit slack for a few years (and now the above mentioned slacks). Part of the myth were true, it was near impossible to contact the steemit team outside of said slack and by extension to receive a delegation.
This is no longer the case, slack is mostly people arguing about random stuff (threads of 500+ messages on whether climate change is real or not for instance) or sharing interesting posts.

Mattermost is where all the important dev conversations happen, but as gp said, if you're not a dev yourself, it's like watching people who don't speak your language. It's very uninteresting, for instance the last discussion was on how we should organize the javascript and python repositories and pipelines to generate (or not) some specific files in order to increase security of libraries.

Usually my use of those channels is like this:

I read everything every day on mattermost to be up to date with all the dev talks.

Slack is where lighthearted discussions happen, so I read it when I'm bored every 2-3 days.

Discord is the same but with 50x the people, I don't hang out there often because I can't keep up with the amount of messages (I'm kind of a completionist, I like to read everything), but whenever I get pinged I'll read the message and reply.

There are technically no leaks because the chats are not meant to be super secret.

That's called real decentralization. 👍

If you do not know, THEFT OF CODE is a common thing in the world.

Hence if anyone did start telling all the other blockchains what code is being written up that would put Hive (the chain) at risk.

It is the first and foremost duty of EVERY witness to ensure the existential security and existence of Hive (the chain).

After that come all the "wish lists" which are all debatable, no matter who's wish lists they may be.

So, where are the decisions labeled, "this feature/update is being added by community input" when I've seen no onchain posts asking for such input?

I've seen this statement many times in @blocktrades and a few other lead developer updates, but never a source for where this input originated from...

Gitlab. Keep up with it.

No thanks, I have enough accounts. So, the Community has not truly been consulted. Good to know...

It's not possible to put all the code on the chain. Look at the Gitlab and see the Issues https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive No post is going to convey everything that's part of the code and that's being discussed.

We don't need to see the code to give our opinion on new proposed features and other changes...

How about this, open the Gitlab link and go over to the whitepaper, then click the link mentioned there. You can send your opinion to that one through any means you wish.

I've been encouraging such on-chain conversations to take place in a community called "Hive Improvement", so that they are easy to find. Which as a side note, is where this current post is located.

Here's one such post, which is relevant to my recent such statement about the rate at which Hive in hive.fund will be converted to HBD:
https://hive.blog/hive-102930/@howo/public-debate-at-which-rate-should-the-non-airdropped-stake-be-converted-to-hbd

I've read most of your articles and rarely if ever do I see you ask the community much. I do see you explaining what you and your small group are doing though.

I'm not even sure which "small group" you're referring to. Do you mean the devs that work for my company? Or other devs? I don't actually usually write about what other devs are doing, instead I generally leave that to them to do. My last post did mention some work done by other devs, because they are also people working on tasks directly related to the release of the core code, and their work has some bearing on the timeline for the release itself.

There's two separate things here: discussing what to do, and discussing what's being done or has been done recently. I do post about both, but most of the time I post about the latter, because that is what tends to consume most of my time.

When I'm posting about ideas about things to do for Hive, I usually post in "Hive Improvements". When I post about dev work we're doing, I usually post in "Hive Devs". If I'm writing something more in the way of blockchain theory, and not actively soliciting ideas for Hive, I usually post on my own blog.

They all show up in trending,so where you post isn't relevent, but you verified my last comment.

Well, it's certainly still relevant, as posts don't last more than a few days on trending.

As for public input, that can and is done via the public channels, i.e. Discord, hive.blog, PeakD and most importantly when talking about the code, Gitlab.

How much input from people who are not witnesses or coders is on these channels of communications isn't dependent on those doing the work. It is the individual responsibility of each and every stakeholder to be active.

There isn't nor shall there be anyone going around whipping people and forcing them to be active in any communications.

I mean, seriously, each of us needs to look in the mirror as far as what we do or don't do in terms of our own efforts to be informed, constructive contributors and proactive in what we do.

Lol, nice spin😂

So, the answer is; the community wasn't asked!

Source for the onchain discussion please?

No, what I stated are FACTS.

Backed by the Gitlab Repo and if you were to subscribe to it, you may actually fall over backwards with just how many email notifications you will get daily.

You won't even need to go to Gitlab, it will all be delivered to your inbox.

So, the only people putting a "spin" on things are those that haven't even tried to follow anything anywhere, but "assume" things, simply because they themselves are not prepared to even try and get to the FACTS.

FACTS vs opinions and emotions.

I choose FACTS.

I thought so, git isn't Hive and the convo should be HERE... So it seems, you shouldn't even have weighed in on my comment, because you don't possess the info I asked for nor are you in a high enough position here.

Judging from your posts, you simply have a very subjective opinion about everything and rarely are on topic.😛

Well, maybe you should try and learn a thing or two about things before commenting on them.

i.e. Where coders work their magic!

i.e. Gitlab, Github

I guess all coders need to do things how you want them to do it and not how all the professionals do it.

Enjoy the day.

& likewise, you can NEVER put a spin on the following FACT:

"The primary job description of a witness is to ensure the existential security of the blockchain."

That far outweighs any "opinions" or "emotions".

In fact, emotions need to be set aside when that primary role and responsibility is put to the test.

I rest my case.

But you can feel free to waffle on, you have every right to do so.

Nope, coders are NOT the Hive Community... They are a SMALL FRACTION of it!

Anyway, not one of your replies were on topic.(talk about waffling on)

If witnesses are being called the community, then that's misleading. Quit saying 'community' and call it what it is!

Congratulations @guiltyparties! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :

Your post generated a lot of interactions and was the most commented of the day

You can view your badges on your board And compare to others on the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word STOP

To support your work, I also upvoted your post!

Do not miss the last post from @hivebuzz:

Introducing the HiveBuzz API for applications and websites

It's not a privileged slack.
That's why most of us can't get in.
We are too privileged :-)

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Those actively running and contributing to the ecosystem with (but not limited to) witness nodes, RPC nodes, seed nodes all of the most active coders contributing to the coding that is done on Hive are all in there and that is the purpose of such a communications center.

To ensure that there is an effective means of communications for those who are vital to the existential security of the blockchain.

Would for example a team of people involved with building a new 'engineering project' need a place to work together in an environment that is exclusively concentrated on the set tasks at hand?

Yes.

Well, that is exactly what those communications channels are. Nothing more, nor less than a means for effective communications among people in the relevant branches and departments of Hive.

Ok, so basically, I won't get in haha.

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Very helpful. Thank you