New website feedback

Uncletone: I had included a screenshot of the pipeline loans page, which I deleted.

However, given that SS now openly shows this level of information to anyone (without a logon) on the new website, then maybe the guidelines need updating?

awk: SS's new website 'policy' of plastering their borrowers details onto the www has been discussed in several places on this forum now. The board admin will not be changing their policy and making special exception for SS anytime soon. There is a reasonable chance that SS will change this before we change the rules. 

That is not standing by the rules, it is ignoring an inconvenient but important part of them: "unless either the borrower themselves or the P2x platform have already made that information publicly accessible (e.g. on a website not needing a log in or sign up)". Kindly follow the forum rules and cease any removing of information published by the platform or just don't assume rule-breaking and instead ask for clarification.

If you are in doubt, just ask the poster to provide the relevant link and it is likely that in most cases you will find that posters will start to do so as a matter of routine, making it easy to check. I certainly hope thatposters will do so, since moderator time has value, not just poster time, as I know from long experience myself as a moderator and board operator.

For example, this post by me is clearly not breaking any forum rules when I mention Walrow Farm, Somerset, a live SavingStream loan or when I mention that Lapland Sack Company, The Stripes Company, Moo Free, Laird Hats, Hackney Brewery and Newton Farm Foods are all borrowers from Funding Circle because Funding Circle has named them in public.

It does not require any sort of special exception for SavingStream's new site, it just requires moderators doing the moderation task properly. Though posters can make life considerably easier for moderators by including links in the post to make it easier for moderators to verify that the information has been published by the platform.

The mentions in this post are not harmful to borrowers or platforms. Far from it, they are helpful in publicising the businesses and their loans to further their commercial interests.

I recognise that it can be inconvenient to not follow a blanket no name rule but that's not actually what the forum rules say and not what they should say, because it's an incorrect balance of the discussion and privacy/debt collection issues.

In that case it is not the borrower name which is the issue but the calling the borrower a muppet and removing the muppet word would be the correct moderation response. Along with a please don't write posts that could defame borrowers request to the poster. It's impolite at best to phrase things in such ways when it's fine instead to simply say that you're not convinced by the business model or whatever.

However, the wouldn't touch with a bargepole with reasons is part of what this place is for, provided the poster actually gives cogent reasons that other posters can consider and agree with or contradict. We all know, I hope, that one person's bargepole loan is another persons I'll have some of that loan.

It's pretty way out there to get moderators liable for posts not made by them. Never say never in law but it's not the way most jurisdictions rule, particularly not the ones that are likely to be relevant to posts here. Rather, the relevant jurisdictions recognise that a message board has messages posted to it that aren't pre-approved and that the site operator is not properly to be held liable for such content.*

*Though I had the very dubious pleasure of moderating a board when sound legal advice was not to moderate post content at all, lest the act of moderating anything cause an obligation to moderate everything without fault. This was in the period after Cubby v CompuServe had been apparently overruled by the US Supreme Court in Stratton Oakmont v Prodigy to make hosts liable, prior to CompuServe and other ISPs getting that legally reversed via section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. All US law that applied to me at the relevant times but being used by UK courts as precedent in their own decisions prior to UK-specific law.

Many of the moderators have experience with a platform that had already done so: Zopa for a subset of its loans, if I recall correctly how public one of my own loan applications there was. . However, that information didn't make it easy to actually identify the borrower and the Savingstream information does make it much easier than it was in the Zopa case. And of course we know that both SavingStream and the borrowers will know that planning information can be looked up so have to be content with that when making it public.

The don't name unless made public balance is an important one and while don't name ignoring the unless made public part is easier for moderators, the best way to respond is to tell posters to provide the evidence link and clear statement in their posts, not to remove rule-compliant content from posts. That way posters aren't more restricted than intended and moderators get the appropriate help in doing their moderation task from the posters.

There's really no need for a change, the rules already cover it. It just seems that some mods are reluctant to use the actual rules and ask posters to say why the information is public rather than going with the easier remove names on sight approach that's not really doing the mod task properly.

A general rule for message boards is that there are many readers for each post so it's good practice for a poster to link directly to information to make life as easy as possible for the readers. So if I was writing PBL068 I'd automatically go ahead and link that to the loan details page if there was a public one, just as I've done many times for private links to say Bondora that only a Bondora customer could follow successfully. I'd expect that a high percentage of posters would do the same and it also reduces the chance of misunderstanding which loan is meant.

There's no demon aspect in naming borrowers when borrowers and platforms are content to be named, it's just that in most cases we've become used to neither wanting that and in most cases it's still so.

savingstream, on the Pipelines Loan page would it be possible to indicate whether or not the valuation document and development prospectus were available?  At the moment you have to check each loan to see.