Users are frustrated by the lack of communication surrounding the new v0.4.16 shorting mechanics:
yea it would be nice to know things like this BEFORE or at least once they are implemented......idk maybe under some kind changes to this version or something like that.
I realize developer time is at a premium, but there should be some official announcement channel to tell us about the changes in upcoming Mandatory Upgrades [1], such as the new shorting mechanics.
I am aware of two existing channels for this purpose, but one of them does not mention short issues at all [2], and the other merely says "Revised consensus market engine shorting mechanics" [3].
If we want traders and investors to take our markets seriously and make investments in our ecosystem, we need to provide a channel to tell them about major changes like this one. Without requiring them to wade through many pages of irrelevant forum discussion, of which only a small handful of posts will contain accurate, up-to-date information.
IMHO such a channel should have an RSS feed and anyone should be able to submit improvements to the descriptions, but the description should be approved by the developers for accuracy, brevity and clarity before it can be posted. I like the idea of using a Github repo with version-controlled Markdown files and accepting pull requests. But a wiki, forum thread, or documentation file(s) in the main BitShares repo would also be reasonable choices.
My post in the pre-change discussion [4] or the help that I gave to the above frustrated user [5] contains the sort of description of the mechanics I'm thinking about. But before the project adopts content from either of those posts as an official or semi-official description of how the system works, I would want the description to be reviewed for accuracy by bytemaster, vikram or another developer who's actually written or reviewed the patches which implement the new mechanics.
[1] The term "Mandatory Upgrade" is preferred to "Hardfork" for marketing reasons.
[2]
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=7067.30[3]
https://github.com/dacsunlimited/bitsharesx/releases[4]
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=9029.msg117125#msg117125[5]
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=9159.msg118819#msg118819