New website feedback

Yes, I was "tinkering" when it all kicked off.  One minute I was deciding which shrapnel to sell to zero out a £100 deficit from a small purchase when suddenly, rather than -£100 the balance said -£1131.  First I thought I'd accidentally bought something (given my 1 in 4 success rate, this would have been a miracle), then I thought it must be a system error, but it turned out to be PBL66 going live.

Just thinking about it, I didnt get a text (my mobile number is correct in my account) - did anyone?

oldgrumpy - is there a definition of bot somewhere on the forum? I think many people use that term but have no idea what it is. They think of it as universal boogie man to blame for everything.

In my understanding a bot is an automated piece of software that will use HTTP requests (there is no API in SS AFAIK) to simulate web browser actions the user would make to buy/sell/do anything else.

I'm, speaking from my own experience (written many of such bots in my days) you can write it in a way it will be indistinguishable from "normal" user. It will just be much quicker in its actions. I don't think SS could detect a bot if they tried. And even if they could I'd like them to focus first on fixing the site than worry about bots. Bots are not the problem, they are just a trigger that reveals the problem.  

So in my mind the bot works like this:
1 send some HTTP POST requests to authenticate
2 run and infinite loop and inside:
  a) refresh loans page every second (or less)
  b) parse HTML and detect new loan
  c) if there is new loan detect max bid, url and send HTTP POST to simulate a bid
3 wash, rinse, repeat

In AC it is bit more difficult as they use javascript to show loans lists. 

To prevent bots you'd need a captcha or text authentication FOR EVERY TRANSACTION. But this is still not 100% bulletproof.

I don't have a problem with people using bots, if someone made effort to write one let him have his/hers rewards. 

I personally use a plugin in Chrome (half-bot?) called Page Monitor, that was suggested to me by the wise men here. So once the page is updated I got Cuckoo alert and can go to a page and make my bid. But even with this many time someone beats me. That adds some fun to the game.

But I think pre-funding is a great tool that is capable of solving all the problems. But atm everyone is gaming it setting their pre-funding to 10x the amount they want and selling the surplus if there is any. First it was 2 times, then 4, now 10, soon will be 20, 50, 100. So it should be reimplemented to how it was originally intended and presented to investors. Not everyone gets the same percentage but there will be a threshold calculated that everyone gets:

if total_prefunding > loan_amount: your_investment = total_prefunding / number_of_users, else: your_investment = your_prefunding.
It can be tweaked later, so part of the amount is distributed using formula above, what remains using current formula.

Very interesting post investboy. I support the idea of the prefunding and I know that there are people who are investing more than they will need. In the last two PBL66 and PBL67 I got a small percentage of what I wanted. I do not see this as a hugh problem given that SM remains liquid. Within a short time I managed to top-up PBL67 although PBL66 is proving more tricky in this regard. I will get what I want in this loan too eventually.

The "gaming" you refer to is only happening on smaller loans and SavingStream have already tweaked the process to cap pre-funding requests to £20k on loans <£500k. There's no perfect way of running an allocation process where some users want to invest 100x (perhaps 500x) what others are looking for and some loans are 20-25x larger than others. The current process is working pretty well (IMO) and managing quickly to fill loans of all sizes whilst giving everyone a slice.

The simplest and IMO best solution is that prefunding is restricted to the amount of funds on the account. If the level of funds subsequently drops below the total prefunded then all prefunding is cancelled. It may mean having funds not earning interest for a few days, but this is amply compensated by getting 12% once invested.

Sorry, I do not agree with you. I prefer the system as it is now. Every one to their own, I suppose.

The way I see it the bot is you. From the server side code there is no difference. It uses your credentials to log in and because it hits the website constantly the session never expires. So in theory you can start it once, it logs in and then runs for eternity.