Open cbeams opened 6 years ago
cbeams
commented
6 years ago @alexej996, I've assigned you to this new role, as you have in fact been doing this kind of 'Support Staff' work in addition to your Forum Operator (#19) role. As mentioned in the description above, it would be good if we can get an additional couple people helping you with this work in a dedicated way. If there are frequent forum contributors you'd like to invite to take this on, please do!
cbeams
commented
6 years ago This month was all about support. With the timeout and transaction broadcast failure bugs in v0.6.3 and v0.6.4, we had around 60 total reimbursements to handle over the last month or so. In the process, we created the https://github.com/bisq-network/support repository, including the reimbursements project board at https://github.com/bisq-network/support/projects/1, all of which made a big difference in managing all this stuff. We came up with the process detailed in https://github.com/bisq-network/support#35 for how to deal with these reimbursements in a very efficient way, and in the end I think it's safe to say that users have been happy with the service they got. I've been keeping a collection of the heartfelt thank-you emails I've gotten after people got their reimbursements back. I have about a half-dozen now, which sort of makes it all worth it. I figure for every one of those I get, there's probably another few people at least who are really happy, but just didn't write anything about it. There have been zero upset or dissatisfied users in this process, so far as I know.
I won't be able to do support like that for much longer into the future, and hopefully we won't need it in such an intense way any time soon, but it's a good thing that we have systems and processes in place for dealing with this stuff if and when it does come back up. As Bisq really grows, we'll need people doing one kind of support or another all day long. It would be great to have some of those people get started now.
I've been thinking actually, that we might want to reach out via Twitter, Reddit, and elsewhere to up and coming Bitcoin developers who want to get their hands dirty with a real Bitcoin project by helping support its users. I still learn stuff every day when I do this work, it's an amazing education, really.
/cc bisq-network/compensation#35
cbeams
commented
6 years ago This month was much lighter support-wise, but there were still a handful of reimbursements to process, and I still haven't gotten to them. There were also several out-of-the ordinary support requests that took special handling from me and @ManfredKarrer.
In general, I struggled to keep on top of support issues this month, and I don't foresee the situation getting better. This role needs to be transitioned soon to people who can care for it.
By this time next month, I will get out a recruiting communication out about the opportunity of contributing support work for Bisq. In particular, I think we can reach out to smart and capable, technical people who are still relatively new to Bitcoin but want to get involved deeply with it. These people would have a lot to gain from doing support work for Bisq. They would be required to learn about Bisq (and therefore many aspects of Bitcoin) in a deep way—so deep that they end up being able to address virtually any problem that comes up for users. This would be an excellent, apprenticeship-style approach to building technical skills with Bitcoin. The ideal arrangement would be working with young developers who naturally evolve from doing support work to fixing simple bugs that they encounter in support issues, to taking on larger and larger development responsibilities, eventually training other new developers how to do support and transitioning themselves on to dedicated dev work.
/cc bisq-network/compensation#40
cbeams
commented
6 years ago From last month's update:
By this time next month, I will get out a recruiting communication out about the opportunity of contributing support work for Bisq.
I sent out the following tweets to this effect, and we'll see what comes of them. About 10 people joined our Slack workspace right afterward, and some conversations have started.
From https://twitter.com/bisq_network/status/981216134220468224:
Otherwise, support efforts were fairly light this month. There have been 10 or so new reimbursement issues, and I'll issue the next batch reimbursement for them in bisq-network/support#76 later this week.
Many thanks to @alexej996 for continuing to do excellent first-line support on the Bisq Forum. I very rarely have to check anything there myself these days.
/cc bisq-network/compensation#57
cbeams
commented
6 years ago @cbeams serviced a batch reimbursement (bisq-network/support#76) this month.
@alexej996 continues to do first-line support via the Bisq Forum, and for the most part, I never see escalations, which I take to mean that he fully resolves most issues that come up there.
@alexej996, going forward I'd like to draw a clean separation between the Forum Operator role (#19) and the Support Staff role. You're playing both of these roles, and you've been reporting on the Forum Operator role every month, which is great, but could you begin reporting here every month too? I think what we want to see in from reporting on this role is information about how many support requests we're getting every month, what kind of common issues people are running into, etc. I realize this isn't very specific what I'm saying here, and we can talk further about it, but my main point is that since you're actually our main support staff right now, it would be good to have you reporting on how it's going here, and helping raise awareness about what's missing / what's trending / what we need.
I'd like to have you take the primary position here, and I'll take a backseat as secondary, and stop doing monthly reports on my side. Let me know if this works for you, thanks.
/cc bisq-network/compensation#68
alexej996
commented
6 years ago Sure. I will think of something when it comes to writing monthly reports for this role in the future. Most likely I will follow your advice on it. :+1:
cbeams
commented
6 years ago Thanks, @alexej996. I've updated the description to reflect that you're primary now.
cbeams
commented
6 years ago See my comments on this role in the context of @alexej996's current monthly compensation request at https://github.com/bisq-network/compensation/issues/60#issuecomment-387336154
alexej996
commented
6 years ago One of most common issues users always seemed to have on the forum are timeouts when taking offers and lost trading fees as a result. Since these times of issues are handled and refunded by Chris, I usually just advise them to contact him, although Manfred stepped in for one of these this month.
There were multiple users on the forum getting exceptions regarding duplicate transactions in their wallets. Manfred also assisted on this one and these users seemed to recover their funds successfully.
There were some general questions about some payment methods on the forum this month that @alfsbs agreed to answer, since I wasn't familiar with them. He was really helpful about this.
We also had users trying to recover their funds from their older Bisq wallets that used Dash as a base currency. We also had some people asking general questions about development and running on CentOS. Users also seem to be asking for some features commonly, such as fiat fixed offers and chatting between traders. There is also one user on reddit asking about identity verification during the dispute process and why it is necessary, I wasn't really able to answer that question for him as I am generally not that familiar with the fiat side of things.
ghost
commented
6 years ago Hello support staff !, Just to let you know that, if you agree, since I have anyway the https://bisq.community/ and Slack tabs always open, I could try to help with the few I'm able (which is indeed few atm). I'm in the GMT+1 timezone, I'm usually on (or not far away) my computers in the 07:00-20:00 interval. If you find it useful, we may advertise here when we are absent (or in a private agenda somewhere), in order to insure there is always somebody present ? For my part, I'm afk always on monday 08:00-13:00 GMT+1.
alexej996
commented
6 years ago That sounds great to me :) Come and help out whenever you can and you can request a compensation at the end of the month.
I don't really have any specific times I am not available, but I am usually around in the 12:00-02:00 GMT interval.
cbeams
commented
6 years ago As a general note to @HarryMacfinned and anyone else who wishes to perform support services in the future, there's really no permission required. Simply help people out in whichever forums and channels you choose, and then submit a compensation request at the end of the month with links to your work. The first few times around, you'll want to be explicit in your compensation requests, linking to as many of your support interactions as possible. As the months go by, and you build a reputation, it will be less necessary to link to everything, and you can start to report more in the aggregate, much as @alexej996 does now. In the beginning, though, everyone will want to know whether the kind of support you're providing is the kind of support we as stakeholders want to reward with BSQ, so folks will want to review your links as a way of figuring that out.
alexej996
commented
6 years ago We had some pricenode issues at the beginning of this month. But they were resolved rather quickly.
On 13th of June the Bitcoin network started to experience some transaction backlog issues. This caused some temporary unconfirmed transactions during beginning of the trades. Users just needed to wait a bit longer than usual to get them confirmed. I assume that eventually these problems were solved by dynamic mining fees once the fee prediction service caught up with the state of the mempool.
We had a Zelle chargeback on 25th. Manfred was quick to respond and investigate the issue. The trading peer's onion address and Zelle account was quickly blocked and users were warned on the forum about the issue.
@alfsbs was helpful as always about payment methods. This month we have a new very helpful user on the forum, :+1: Homrad was helpful on the forum, as well as on Slack this month and was quick to respond to user's questions.
alexej996
commented
5 years ago Not a lot of activity this month. Mostly some unique questions about usage of Bisq. We don't have timeout issues any more, seems like the new version of Bisq fixed these bugs. Cheers to the dev team about that! :+1:
@ManfredKarrer has been helping out considerably this month. @HarryMacfinned continues to provide help on the Slack and forum.
In conclusion, it has been quite a relaxing month for support. It is very manageable currently to provide support to any user that requests help.
ghost
commented
5 years ago I survey : the discourse forum, the slack (all channels), github, freenode, and reddit. I tried to reduce as much as possible the answering delay for the questions, because I think this is useful in helping the usability of Bisq. A great part of the first support is reassuring users, before detailing technical points. Users know they are not alone. I’m formally present 07:00-20:00 GMT. The full coverage with other intervenants is roughly 07:00-24:00 GMT which seems to satisfactorily cover the greatest part of Bisq’s users (BTC/EUR is our biggest pair).
Numbers : ~25 support/discourse, ~15/slack, 3/IRC, 8/reddit, 2/github. Total : 53 (+10/june) I point that the reddit number concerns only the last week of july. So maybe there is potential there. (I try to notice the support demands day by day, but atm I don’t see any real strong pattern emerging.) Activity summary : https://bisq.community/u/Homard/activity https://www.reddit.com/user/Dieter_von_Bisq/comments/ (Slack has no summary, neither GH for the comments, neither the Freenode IRC.)
Some little things to add (relatively to previous month) :
See also @alexej996 2018.07 report above which I fully support. I rereaded @cbeams own 2018.01 report (and others), and I agree that, even if demanding, support (and guidance in Bisqland) are very educative tasks.
cbeams
commented
5 years ago I've updated the description of this issue for accuracy and I've removed myself and @ManfredKarrer as assignees from this issue. Anyone is free to provide support staff services; there's no need for anyone other than @alexej996 (as primary owner of the role) to be assigned, as the only real duty of the role is to do monthly reports here. Everything else is just providing support, which again, anyone can do as much or little as they like. Thanks, all.
alexej996
commented
5 years ago We had a common question popping up about compiling a rpm package for Fedora Linux this month. Instead of dealing with this issue users usually just unpack the deb file and install Bisq that way. It would be useful to provide some easier way for users to deal with this in future. Last user that asked about this suggested for the solution to be added to FAQ page at least, since the problem is easy to fix, although perhaps some installation script might be easier for users if someone comes up with it. Compiling an rpm package would be ideal, but it doesn't seem like anyone currently knows how to do that well.
We also had some tray icon displaying problems on GNOME desktops, which I used to experience myself. Although it is not a critical problem by any means, it is something that UI devs might look into in the future.
@ManfredKarrer regularly provided support this month. It is good to have a dev look deeply into the issues that we can't provide much support for otherwise. @HarryMacfinned continues to provide support in many places, such as forum, reddit, Slack...
ghost
commented
5 years ago Numbers : ~25 support/discourse, ~8/slack, 8/github, + ~8/reddit. Total : 49 (-4/july)
Some people ask for support in reddit. When appropriate, I redirect them on the discourse forum. If not, I (and Alexej) answer directly there.
Activity summary: https://bisq.community/u/Homard/activity. (Slack has no summary, neither GH for the comments, neither the Freenode IRC.)
See also Alexej's report above (which I fully endorse).
Things to add (relatively to previous month) :
@m52go took the initiative to improve the docs based on some of the recurring themes poping in the support. Thanks for that. That's a very good thing imo, it helps Bisq to scale nicely and thus I hope this could be continued on a regular basis. I may/should myself help with that.
as said by Alexej, it's a good thing to have devs having an eye on the forum concerning bugs and deeper tricks.
I try absolutely to avoid people thinking that nobody cares about their issues/questions. So I may sometimes answer too rapidly. If it's bad policy, just tell me.
August 2018 BTC on Bisq : 357 BTC , July 2018 BTC on Bisq : 72 BTC. So a 5 fold increase in BTC traded ... but quite the same volume of support. Thanks of course to the devs improving the software, but also great thanks to the crypto/crypto trading which allows such scaling without multiplying the support also by 5 !
The few support required by crypto/crypto traders underlines in contrast the support needed for shitfiaters. Pareto is at work here, with peoples doing 1% of Bisq's volume requiring 90% of the support + being tedious, while at the same time xmrtraders do 90% of the volume and ask for 0 support. Few to do here, But I wanted to point it however.
Concerning Fedora. We may also suggest : https://snapcraft.io/bisq-desktop . I'm not entirely convinced with snaps, but it exists though.
(For some info missing here, see also my previous report(s))
ManfredKarrer
commented
5 years ago @alexej996 @HarryMacfinned Re Fedora Linux: Could you suggest a instruction text and we add it to the release page.
ghost
commented
5 years ago @ManfredKarrer yes, I will think on an instruction text. I'm however a bit annoyed to write an instruction text without testing. Do you think it's worth to install Fedora on a machine to test ? or not worth ? (I may do it, but it takes time and I don't like too much having different OS installed.)
I see on http://www.somsubhra.com/github-release-stats/?username=bitsquare&repository=bitsquare that the download numbers for *.deb are not so ugly, maybe Bisq could also attract user from the Fedora community ? ... serious peoples on crypto are all on Linux.
(-> https://distrowatch.com/ for the linux distros ranking)
ManfredKarrer
commented
5 years ago Would be good if a Fedora user could help testing the script.
ghost
commented
5 years ago Bisq coud offer BSQ bounty for testing installation on each of the top10 linux distros we don't list atm. Each bounty would imply:
It would not cost so much, but help bring new users. And maybe a 1st step for testers to become contributors.
ManfredKarrer
commented
5 years ago Good idea. Do you want to promote that? I would suggest a BSQ bounty of 25 BSQ. Of course only distros are interesting which do not work out of the box with our deb binary. And we should limit it to max 10 bounties (top distros as u mentioned).
alexej996
commented
5 years ago I contacted the user that requested this on the forum yesterday after your suggestion, but he hasn't responded and I don't think he logs in often.
I installed Fedora and I am downloading CentOS now. It seems like this should work on all systems:
cd ~/Downloads
mkdir tmp
cd tmp
ar x ../Bisq-64bit-0.8.0.deb
sudo tar Jxvf data.tar.xz
sudo cp -rp opt/Bisq /opt/Basically it is just extracting the deb file with "ar x ..." then unpack the data.tar.xz you get out of it which will create the opt directory with Bisq binary in it.
ManfredKarrer
commented
5 years ago Thanks! Ping me and @ripcurlx once its more tested, then we add it to the release notes.
ghost
commented
5 years ago @alexej996 , Should I take care about promoting bounties as suggested by Manfred, or do you want to do it ? Or it's not necessary if you make the install trials yourself ?
alexej996
commented
5 years ago I had some trouble with installing operating systems on VMs recently, probably some issues with virtualbox on my system.
I tested some installations on live systems and above steps worked just as expected. I would still create some bounties for testing, just in case. You can promote it if you want :+1:
ManfredKarrer
commented
5 years ago I will add the instruction to the release page with a note that it is not tested on all systems. People will/should report issues once they run into it. I think its not required that we make a bigger test-issue with bounties for that. There are plenty of bounty tasks in the GH issues for devs who want to join.
ghost
commented
5 years ago Numbers : ~20 support/discourse, ~12/slack, 8/github, 0/IRC : Total : 40 Activity summary: https://bisq.community/u/Homard/activity.
Copy/paste from a post from me in the #bisq-docs channel :
Being in the support cubicle since june, I feel I could (begin to) write a short doc :
- helping people to autodiagnose their issues,
- telling what information are useful for the support and help to help.
From the support side, we may sometimes refer to such a doc in order to standardize and ease things. (I also see that https://docs.bisq.network/#essentials has a "Support" item, but no associated link.) I however check here if initiating such a doc is felt as useful or not ?
alexej996
commented
5 years ago This month we had couple of users reporting trouble with installing Bisq on their raspberry pi 3. I assume the old scripts don't work anymore due to some dependencies getting broken, but couldn't look into it more closely, since I don't have one, unfortunately.
We had couple of users asking questions about altcoin listing as Chris noted in the proposal to change the listing fee requirements, but that seems to be resolved now.
I noticed some user asking questions about running Bisq over I2P this month, which I don't know much about, but have to admit that it sounds quite interesting and I hope I can look into it a bit in the future. Not sure if we can do something there, but there is always a possibility of course.
Other then some problems with BitcoinAverage showing a different BTC to CAD price then some other exchanges at that time and some usual usability questions about Bisq, we didn't have anything particular this month.
alexej996
commented
5 years ago Amount of support needed increased this month, which I assume is due to the overall growth of Bisq platform.
We had many new user questions, especially on reddit this month, as it seems that Bisq is picking up new user base these months.
There have been a couple of stuck trades throughout the month. Usually they end up being resolved with arbitration, but sometimes, when deposit tx doesn't get created, best we can do is refer them to ask for compensation of trading fees.
It is worth noting that there were a couple of users having trouble with connecting their Bisq clients to the Tor network, even though their general Tor traffic over Tor browser was working fine.
Overall, amount of support work grew quite naturally this month, I would say, with growth of the entire project. No outstanding specific issues arose that needed to be addressed this month.
ghost
commented
5 years ago I'll not add much to Alexej's report. I found that the first half of the month was rather usual. ... but the second half showed much more support questions. Especially the last days.
Correlation is not causation of course, but there is correlation with XMR volumes.
It seems me that there is also correlation with the measured number of timeouts (which would not be really surprising). -> https://github.com/bisq-network/roles/issues/10
(As already proposed, I'll be ok to begin a document helping self-support and helping to standardize our answers.)
ghost
commented
5 years ago I'll let it to Alex for the numbers on the forum, but it seems quite increasing a bit. And also on the slack and on the github. Which would seem quite normal given the continuing good numbers, which are not entirely due to XMR, but also concern fiat currencies.
It seems me also that we got quite a number of very new users this month.
Apart rare exceptions, users are quite comprehensive with Bisq issues. I find that quite noticeable. Seems to be like users able to pass over some UI + timeout issues because they are in fact mainly interested in the basic features (also of course because they are generally well reimbursed I guess !).
Among the usual worries :
Apart from that, browsing thru all the questions shows quite some diversity.
I wonder about means to reduce the % of untransmitted messages. I don't however know enough about the currently used algorithms. (I remember Napoleon sending 10 times the same message, but I presume such tricks are already in use ?)
(I continue to think that some self-support document would be useful in the long run, especially if/when the arbitrators may disappear.)
alexej996
commented
5 years ago There were quite few duplicate transaction errors this month. A lot more then usual. This usually has to be resolved by restoring from rolling wallet backups, as nothing else like deleting SPV chain file seems to help. Significant rise in these errors is quite inconsistent with general growth of user base and was persistent throughout whole month. Perhaps some investigation work would be useful if there were any changes in most recent release of Bisq that could increase likelihood of these errors occurring.
There were claims by some users that a bit more errors seemed to occur then usual since latest release of Bisq, but of course this could be very subjective.
This month we have a new arbitrator with address hvllnddukspprwt6.onion who had some disputes as usual that required users to get in contact with him/her outside of Bisq. Although I don't know if this new arbitrator is really new or an old arbitrator with a new address, I do think it would be useful if there was another way to contact him outside the app in case of bugs. It isn't necessary for all arbitrators to create an account on our support forum (although now our forum has an onion address as well and is possibly even easier to stay anonymous on it), it would be good if they had an email or something where we could contact them in these scenarios. Perhaps it should be a standard that new arbitrators in future let the support know of their alternative contact information over the forum, email or whatever do they like to use, just to decrease the likelihood of users feeling hopeless when bugs occur.
Other then that, there was quite a few regular questions and issues this month that were resolved with the help of arbitrators as usual, but nothing specific stood out.
alexej996
commented
5 years ago Due to a sudden drop in Bisq price, some users complained about low trade limits. Not much we can do here, I guess, except wait for a new version that might update these limits.
Otherwise there weren't much of specific issues this month, just general beginner questions about using Bisq.
In conclusion, it was a good month, with new Bisq releases sparking interest from the community.
ghost
commented
5 years ago There was activity on the support side at the beginning of the month (v0.9.0 was released on dec 3rd) but it decreased significantly (and was quite calm) for the 2nd half of the month. (At the same time, this december got ~2500 trades, which is a all time high)
One noticeable thing, immediately following v0.9.0, there is significant new trading with XRC (Bitcoin Rhodium). 280 trades for december as of today. However, this seems not to have a huge impact on the volume of asked questions.
This takes part of a tendency we observe since at least 2 or 3 months, ie the number of trades grows continuously, but hopefully the volume of asked questions doesn't grow as much.
Other points :
My activity on the forum can be seen here : https://bisq.community/u/Homard/activity (I was absent from time to time (and/or had bad connectivity) around xmas-new year)
alexej996
commented
5 years ago Some users still complaining about low trading limits, due to drop in BTC price.
We had an unusual issue where a user claimed that he receives timeout errors in a specific scenario every time. He claims that confirming the payment in a SEPA trade and starting a new trade in the same Bisq session (without restarting the app) causes timeout. I doubt it applies only to SEPA payment method and I am not sure if it is just a coincidence, but it sparked my interest due to past abundance of timeout issues.
We also had a lot of GRIN and Beam issues this month, as already noticed by arbitrators. A lot of users weren't aware that you needed to put your GRIN wallet in listen mode even when sending the payment.
ghost
commented
5 years ago Support activity is volatile (like every month) but continues to increase in average, especially on slack and on github. (This january 2019 is now the 4th month in a row were the number of trades exceeds 2000. [07/692, 08/926 , 09/978 , 10/2000 , 11/2300, 12/2500, 01/2300])
Noticeable was the release of v0.9.2 and v0.9.3 on january 8th. And also the new altcoin GRIN which generated a bunch of issues/questions. BEAM (also added in v0.9.3) didn't generate as much support need as GRIN.
My activity on the forum : https://bisq.community/u/Homard/activity (62 posts)
alexej996
commented
5 years ago This month was relatively usual when it comes to support. A little bit more perhaps due to users relating their issues with the new update, but nothing significant.
Multiple users complained about the low trade limit that was fixed in the new release.
We also had complaints about users getting stuck on the shutdown screen and having their clients not respond. During testing I encountered the same issue at one point, but simply force closing it didn't seem to do any harm. It does get users worried though, since the screen explicitly says not to close it during the shutdown.
In conclusion, most issues got solved this month without too much trouble form users.
ghost
commented
5 years ago Support activity was lower on the forum this month but continued to increase on slack and on github. (Since 2 months, we ask more often people to open issue on the github or to go to the slack, so this move is not too surprising).
On the altcoins front, GRIN being delisted, the (big) number of issues decreased also completely, together with the need for support. (February got also only a dozen XRC trades, which is much much less than in january)
It seems that v0.9.4 release doesn't bring specific issues. There are however still a bunch of Tor related issues which are not easy to solve. (Bisq's trade limits increased ... and complaints on this topic decreased to 0)
There are issues concerning "Stuck on 3/4 Hidden Service Published". This is under investigation.
Difficulties to communicate with arbitrators were mentionned in january, but this was quite non-existent this month.
In the last days, we have (on slack) several peoples mentioning things becoming tigher with their banks. I fear there is a general and continuous move at work behind all those annoyances. We'll see how that evolves.
My activity on the forum : https://bisq.community/u/Homard/activity (41 posts)
ManfredKarrer
commented
5 years ago @HarryMacfinned I added you as secondary role owner. I cannot assign you as you still have not accepted the GH invitation for being a contributor. Please check your Github account/email...
alexej996
commented
5 years ago No outstanding support needed this month. There were quite a few payment methods discussions this month, but nothing specific to Bisq software issues.
Recently we started having users complain about price being stuck on one of the price nodes that causing various issues with their clients. Hopefully that will be fixed soon.
ghost
commented
5 years ago Activity was strong on the forum this month. And also on the slack and github. A bunch of new interesting users/contributors.
Altcoins :
Banks :
(possible) scam/etc :
Payment methods : abra, usaa, were asked. Warning : there may be some lack of renewal in PM.
Technical issues :
v0.9.5 release : (march 6) doesn't seem to bring much specific issues.
Misc : There are many threads were the asker disappears without giving news. Seems increasing. Could be users coming from centralized exchanges and too baffled with Bisq (?).
My activity on the forum : https://bisq.community/u/Homard/activity (56 posts)
ghost
commented
5 years ago Activity was very heavy on the forum this month. And also on the slack (https://github.com/bisq-network/roles/issues/23) and github. Alas mainly due to the running chargeback scam(s).
Numbers from the forum
| Categories | 5/1 | 5/1 |
|---|---|---|
| Support | 1170 | 47 |
| Development | 188 | 8 |
| Uncategorized | 172 | 4 |
| Payment methods | 170 | 7 |
| Trading | 167 | 7 |
| Altcoins | 113 | 8 |
| Promotion | 111 | 1 |
| Bisq DAO | 31 | 4 |
| Site Feedback | 16 | 0 |
| Legal/Compliance | 9 | 0 |
| Politics | 7 | 0 |
(See Alexej's report for the forum raw numbers : https://github.com/bisq-network/roles/issues/19)
The support category is (as always) the most active. Dozens of posts about the scam. (The scam began end of march it seems). One problem is the appli error messages being too large, which makes hard to separate technical issues (mainly timeouts) from protection measures. The scam occupied most of the discussions, letting few place to deal properly with usual issues. I find that the users were/are quite comprehensive.
I got several questions which I was not able to fully answer because I myself had not enough detailed information concerning the scam. Some questions had to be redirected on Manfred. Maybe it could be useful that @manfredkarrer gives more information to the support ?
There were few questions concerning the DAO. Maybe it's simply because the UI is well done ;-)
The usual update message not being relayed on windows is also a problem (which will probably persist some time).
Due to the scam, april was really not a pleasant month for helping with the support. For my part I find it questionable to have to dedicate so much energy (+ legal risks + reimbursements) on a trading segment (fiats) which represented 6% of the total volume on Bisq this month. 6% of volume brought, ~90% of support consumed. On the same time, there was one (1) question concerning Monero, which was 91.5% of this month's volume (15 times more). This is a trend which is now present since more than 6 months. There is a question of balance which arises imo. Numbers tell us also that altcoin trading scales well on Bisq atm. Which can alas not be said for fiat trading.
Probably that things will improve with the next release due to the good work of the developers. But, on the long term, I fear that working with traditional banks will become harder and harder. And they will not help. 120% of the efforts to work with slippery banks are on Bisq's side. That's a lot imo for a small team. It's also trying to do business with somebody who not only doesn't want but who profits from each occasion to hurt.
My activity on the forum : https://bisq.community/u/Homard/activity (94 posts) I had also several private discussions, mainly about the scam. I was also more present on /r/bisq this month (and I'll continue).
Btw, the present issue is still taggeg help wanted , if the present trend should continue this way, for my part I would be happy to see other contributors joining the support staff.
alexej996
commented
5 years ago Unfortunately I was busy last few weeks and wasn't at my PC to make a report for April at beginning of this month. I did write down the issues we had during April while providing support on the forum and Slack.
There was a sudden rise in BTC fees at a very beginning of April that caused some issues for Bisq users. However around 12th of April the real issues began for out users when chargebacks started to take place. Luckily devs responded quite quickly and released 3 new versions since then.
Last two of releases limited newer users to smaller trade limits. Of course this confused and annoyed some users and brought a lot of questions on the forum and other platforms.
There where also general questions in April on how to buy BSQ, as currently you need to copy your BSQ address from one screen to the other to create an Altcoin account to start trading BSQ. Perhaps in future this could be automated, as BSQ and BTC are only wallets Bisq supports. Trading between these two currencies can be made very simple which would benefit the DAO and stability of BSQ price.
Also I would like to note that a user named huey was really helpful on the forum during last month. Providing support to new users and anyone with any issues with Bisq.
alexej996
commented
5 years ago We had a couple of reports of crashes of the application on different systems this cycle. Logs were either not helpful or not existent according to users experiencing these crashes. We had reports of crashes on Windows and Mac.
We had multiple requests since new design was introduced in Bisq to allow for change to darker theme and to increase the font in the application. Users claim that it is easier on the eyes and that current theme can be exceptionally hard for visually impaired.
I think it is important to note that many users have been requesting a feature to allow single offer to accept multiple payment methods for quite some time now.
We also seem to be having same issue with BitAvarage and Iranian currency price as we did with Venezuelan. These countries seem to be having official exchange rates that are widely different than realistic ones which makes offers in Bisq jump out of limit of distance from market price. Seems like sometimes countries that need Bisq the most can't use it. Last time, I believe, this was fixed by removing price providers for currency and this should probably be done for Iranian national currency as well as soon as possible.
In conclusion I would say that this cycle we had moderate amount of different issues, but more than few were critical for those users, making it impossible to use Bisq at the moment.
ghost
commented
5 years ago Activity was quite similar as for the previous cycle. And also on the slack and github.
Numbers of threads in the forum
| Categories | May 1st | May | June 8th | Cycle2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Support | 1170 | 47 | 1230 | 60 |
| Development | 188 | 8 | 197 | 11 |
| Uncategorized | 172 | 4 | 175 | 3 |
| Payment methods | 170 | 7 | 176 | 6 |
| Trading | 167 | 7 | 174 | 7 |
| Altcoins | 113 | 8 | 114 | 1 |
| Promotion | 111 | 1 | 115 | 4 |
| Bisq DAO | 31 | 4 | 36 | 5 |
| Site Feedback | 16 | 0 | 18 | 2 |
| Legal/Compliance | 9 | 0 | 11 | 2 |
| Politics | 7 | 0 | 7 | 0 |
(See Alexej's report for the forum raw numbers : https://github.com/bisq-network/roles/issues/19)
The support category is (as always) the most active.
Noticeable posts on forum/github/slack :
As always, there is still a bunch of threads where, after asking his question, the initial poster never comes back.
Reading the forum/github/slack daily, the concerns about scalability remain the same as always. There is no improvement on this side (quite the opposite). It's not only a chicken and egg problem imo, but also a question of deadly embrace at work. Largely due to the doctrine about chargebacks, no new payment method has eg been added since months. It's a small erosion, but still an erosion.
My activity on the forum : https://bisq.community/u/Homard/activity (73 posts) I was absent (without internet) from 09/05 to 15/05. Reddit is regularly blocking access via the torbrowser, that's why I'm not present there.
ghost
commented
5 years ago Activity decreased compared to the previous cycle. And so on the slack and github. I don't have numbers for past year, so I have no idea if this is cyclical (summertime activity) or else. (Notice however that the numbers for Cycle2 were for 38 days).
Numbers of threads in the forum
| Categories | May 1st | May | June 8th | Cycle2 | July 8th | Cycle3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Support | 1170 | 47 | 1230 | 60 | 1270 | 40 |
| Development | 188 | 8 | 197 | 11 | 201 | 4 |
| Uncategorized | 172 | 4 | 175 | 3 | 174 | -1 |
| Payment methods | 170 | 7 | 176 | 6 | 182 | 6 |
| Trading | 167 | 7 | 174 | 7 | 177 | 3 |
| Altcoins | 113 | 8 | 114 | 1 | 116 | 2 |
| Promotion | 111 | 1 | 115 | 4 | 116 | 1 |
| Bisq DAO | 31 | 4 | 36 | 5 | 36 | 0 |
| Site Feedback | 16 | 0 | 18 | 2 | 18 | 0 |
| Legal/Compliance | 9 | 0 | 11 | 2 | 13 | 2 |
| Politics | 7 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 7 | 0 |
| Sums | 86 | 101 | 58 |
(See Alexej's report for the forum raw numbers : https://github.com/bisq-network/roles/issues/19)
The support category is (as always) the most active.
Noticeable posts on forum/github/slack :
See also Alexej's own report for this cycle
The concerns about scalability remain imo inchanged.
My activity on the forum : https://bisq.community/u/Homard/activity (60 posts - 686 posts overall) Reddit is still regularly blocking access via the torbrowser, that's why I'm not present there.
huey735
commented
5 years ago On this 3rd cycle I paid attention to our social media/forums and started to provide support. I exclude threads where I contributed but my contribution wasn't substantial.
My handlers are:
https://bisq.community/t/how-does-account-age-verification-work/7867 https://bisq.community/t/sent-from-wrong-address-help-please/7898 https://bisq.community/t/western-union-in-the-same-country-only/7941 https://bisq.community/t/btc-substracted-from-my-account-but-offer-was-never-taken/7943 https://bisq.community/t/how-is-this-possible-mining-fees/7966 https://bisq.community/t/accidentally-set-wrong-revolut-phone-number/8000 https://bisq.community/t/process-of-my-trade-dont-proceed-from-yesterday/8018 and follow up https://www.reddit.com/r/bisq/comments/cawusp/my_two_trades_which_i_took_more_than_24_hours_ago/etbr2ve?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x
https://www.reddit.com/r/bisq/comments/byl9f2/did_i_download_a_malware_version_of_bisq/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bisq/comments/byl3xp/bisq_security_question/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bisq/comments/bzihrm/help/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bisq/comments/bzrb9d/why_is_the_mining_fee_per_trade_8xx_percent/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bisq/comments/c0rzch/confirm_payment_receipt_on_bsq_blockchain_not/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bisq/comments/c3i0yk/high_mining_fees_on_bisq/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bisq/comments/c73q6o/bisq_on_raspberry_pi_4/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bisq/comments/c7gob4/taxa_de_minera%C3%A7%C3%A3o_muito_alta_o_que_inviabiliza_o/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bisq/comments/ca99se/ive_made_an_offer_for_selling_btc_alt/
https://bisq.community/t/other-partner-does-not-click-on-payment-sent/7917 https://bisq.community/t/how-can-i-deposit-cash-2/8007 https://bisq.community/t/how-to-fund-your-bisq/8005
https://www.reddit.com/r/bisq/comments/c6958v/every_time_i_try_to_use_bisq_it_stalls_as_its/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bisq/comments/c6qsan/how_do_money_orders_work_on_bisq/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bisq/comments/c9ek34/bisq_lost_a_utxo/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/c9ipq2/bisq_breaks_records_for_monthly_volume_in_june/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/c9yd5y/looking_for_a_new_way_to_buy_or_sell_bitcoin_try/ https://twitter.com/hhuey8/status/1147878740871041024 https://twitter.com/hhuey8/status/1146540749472882690 https://twitter.com/hhuey8/status/1146455771930124288 https://twitter.com/hhuey8/status/1146444320431575040 https://twitter.com/hhuey8/status/1147879190605246464 https://twitter.com/hhuey8/status/1147929172267982848
ghost
commented
4 years ago Activity increased a bit compared to the previous cycle. And so on the slack and github.
Numbers of threads (not just posts) in the forum
| Categories | June 8th | Cycle 2 | July 8th | Cycle 3 | August 8th | Cycle 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Support | 1230 | 60 | 1270 | 40 | 1315 | 45 |
| Development | 197 | 11 | 201 | 4 | 208 | 7 |
| Uncategorized | 175 | 3 | 174 | -1 | 182 | 12 |
| Payment methods | 176 | 6 | 182 | 6 | 186 | 4 |
| Trading | 174 | 7 | 177 | 3 | 181 | 4 |
| Altcoins | 114 | 1 | 116 | 2 | 117 | 1 |
| Promotion | 115 | 4 | 116 | 1 | 117 | 1 |
| Bisq DAO | 36 | 5 | 36 | 0 | 36 | 0 |
| Site Feedback | 18 | 2 | 18 | 0 | 21 | 3 |
| Legal/Compliance | 11 | 2 | 13 | 2 | 13 | 0 |
| Politics | 7 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 7 | 0 |
| Sums | 101 | 58 | 77 |
My activity on the forum : https://bisq.community/u/Homard/activity (77 posts - 763 posts overall)
(See Alexej's report for the forum raw numbers : https://github.com/bisq-network/roles/issues/19)
Noticeable posts on forum/github/slack :
See also other support report(s) for this cycle
Reddit is still regularly blocking access via the torbrowser, that's why I'm not present there.
Docs: https://bisq.wiki/Support_Agent Team: @bisq-network/l1-support-agents