Hello World!

Goodbye World!

2023-07-08T12:41:10.597Z

Hello everyone,

This will be the second and final everyone ping in this server, preceded by the opening of the server.

Since its inception, Hello World! was carefully planned to be a server Blizzy and I would own relating to general programming topics. We wanted to create a lively space free for everyone to talk in that wasn't toxic like we experienced in other communities when asking for help.

Throughout the 500+ days of Hello World! we've certainly achieved many of our goals. However, one of the ones we did not do well was creating an active space. After summer 2022, Blizzy and I started getting exponentially more work on other projects including school which resulted in us dedicating less time to Hello World!, and drawing activity down.

By now, you can probably see where this announcement is going. Hello World's last day and Bit's last operating day, will be Saturday, 15 July 2023 16:00 (in 7 days). Exactly 546 days after its opening on Saturday, 15 January 2022 16:00. We are not open to amending or cancelling this.

Goodbye World! @net-tech- & @Blizzy

From @Blizzy:

Just a quick word from me - to put some growth in perspective:

When I help co-found this server over 500 days ago with Net, I was a stressed out pre-law major who hated his career path. Thanks to all of you, especially for renewing my passions, I am already in the process of applying for my PhD in Intelligent Systems and Data Science. I'm attending an NLP conference next week. I'm creating new ways of reasoning in GPT models, unheard of by and from the world's largest research consortiums, as an individual student researcher. And I promise you, that's just the start. Hello World hallmarked a new era of pursuing my dreams - and that is 100% thanks to all of you.

Net and I have started new projects together as well in that time, from Bit to non-profits, communities to games, we've done a lot more because of some of the lessons we've learned from this server and its members. We're throwing in the towel as owners, but I sincerely hope we can remain friends with all of you - helping each other through one bug at a time.

Peter Dale Wimbrow Sr., in his piece The Man in the Glass, states "the fellow who's verdict counts most in your life / is the one staring back in the glass." For a long time, I had no clue what that meant, but various teams, people, and places have reaffirmed this image of myself and I now feel more confident starting my young career than ever. Hello World is largely to thank for that.

Thank you to everyone who I personally had the privilege to meet, help, and hopefully inspire. Feel free to keep in touch and share your victories with me and each other!

It's not goodbye; it's see you later,

Blizzy

Moderation Transparency Report Jan - Jun 2022

2022-07-21T14:48:59.974Z

Welcome to Hello World!'s transparency report. This report is the first one we've ever done, and the first one we'll be doing this year. One transparency report will also be made in December 2022 or January 2023. Each year gets two transparency reports, one from January to May/June and one from May/June to December. Due to various mistakes made in time management and scheduling by both Blizzy and me, this report is coming out in July 2022.

Definitions

A moderation action refers to a warning, mute, kick, or ban made by either our AutoModeration bots or our staff members.

A category refers to a category of rules. For example, our rules that disallow spam and advertising might be grouped into the category "Advertising and Spam".

List of rule categories

Raids -> User(s), or more likely, a group of automated spambots that join Hello World! and spam the DMs of members, spam our channels or attempt to overwhelm our moderation systems.

CSAM/NSFW -> User(s) who post Child Se*ual A*use Material (in Hello World! or otherwise) or users who post messages, media, emojis, or others that contain adult content or suggestive messages which suggest an s*x topic or action.

Advertising/Spam -> User(s) who post advertisements or promote their Discord server/services using improper channels or users who repeatedly post irrelevant or unsolicited messages in our channels in an attempt to disrupt conversation.

M.H.R (Malicious Help Requests)/Illegal Activity-> User(s) who ask for help with code that is malicious or users who participate in or promote illegal activity.

Other -> Anything that does not fit into the categories above.

Moderation action types by rule category

Data from January 1st. 2022 to May 21st. 2022.

From January 1st, 2022 to May 21st, 2022 we executed a total of 59 bans, 4 kicks, 0 mutes, and 5 warnings. This means that the total amount of moderation actions was 68. By comparing this to the member count at the time, 241 members, and adding the number of total moderation actions, 68, we get a total of 309 moderated and unmoderated users(241+68=309).

52% of all bans were violations related to raiding, the highest amount in the ban action category. We experienced one raid on May 4. 2022 and all raid accounts were banned which explains this high number. 12 bans, or 20% of all bans, were related to CSAM/NSFW. All bans in this category are from CSAM. The rest of the bans are 11 relating to asking for help with malicious code and/or participating in illegal activities.

There were 3 kicks relating to raids, these are also from the May 4th raid and were banned after they were kicked. There was only 1 kick - it was related to repeated advertising. 3 warns were issued for suggestive messages, 1 for advertising, and 1 uncategorized.

Moderation actions by rule category

There's not much for me to add here, you can see what rule categories were actioned with which punishment on the graph.

Closing Notes

Providing a comfortable environment where you can ask for coding help or chat without toxicity is the reason Blizzy and I started the server. In other code help servers, we experienced either toxic or useless answers, like redirecting to the documentation of a library even though we'd already looked through it and were unable to find an answer.

On a final note I'd like to thank our staff members, the moderators who keep the community an enjoyable place and moderate, voluntarily, day and night. Thank you for reading.

Archive: our revised policy on Discord Client Modifications and Self Bots

2022-07-21T12:09:20.736Z

This blog post was originally a message posted in #changelog in our Discord server on April 3rd, 2022. It has been uploaded here for archiving purposes.

Hello,

Under increasing cognizance, we have decided to change our policy and treatment of people using BetterDiscord or other similar client modification tools.

From today, harmless client modifications such as visual ones or those which help aid a disability will be allowed as long as the person is not encouraging others to install client modifications. Harmful client modifications or self-bots that store deleted messages or help spam/raid will not be allowed.

Users who have already been banned for using harmless client modifications before this will be unbanned.

Thank you.