Swap highlighted Discord room

[IstoraMandiri]

The original motivation for switching #1648 was bot spam on the legacy server, but that's no longer the case.

Recently the newer Discord server has seen essentially no activity, including from it's admins, while the legacy server remains the active hub of community discussion. With the recent Olympia events, it makes sense to point newcomers at the room where conversation actually happens.

This PR re-highlights the active server as Discord and demotes the newer invite to Olympia Discord, keeping it accessible but no longer the featured link.

Rel: #1675

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[brolal]

The original reason for moving away from the legacy Discord was not arbitrary, it was due to persistent moderation, security, and quality-control problems. This PR proposes reversing that decision, but it does not provide evidence that those underlying issues have actually been resolved.

The rationale appears to rely on “the legacy server is more active,” but activity alone is not a sufficient standard for making an unofficial or official community hub the primary entry point for newcomers.

There are several unresolved concerns:

1. Lack of active administration

The server does not appear to have consistently active administrators responsible for governance, moderation oversight, incident handling, or policy enforcement. A community hub without accountable leadership creates operational and reputational risk.

2. No demonstrated security improvements

The original migration was motivated by bot spam and abuse. This PR provides no concrete evidence that the legacy server now has:
- anti-spam systems
- verification gates
- automated moderation tooling
- scam detection
- account screening
- raid mitigation
- phishing protection
- moderator response procedures

Without evidence, the project is effectively being asked to “trust” that conditions improved.

3. Rules are not consistently enforced

Moderation appears inconsistent or absent. Community standards that are unenforced become meaningless in practice. This creates an environment where disruptive behavior becomes normalized.

4. Off-topic and low-signal discussions dominate

A large portion of discussion reportedly revolves around unrelated topics such as religion, conspiracies, politics, or personal arguments rather than Ethereum Classic, blockchain development, infrastructure, governance, or ecosystem growth.

A primary community hub should prioritize relevant, productive technical and ecosystem discussion.

5. Toxic behavior is tolerated

Insults, harassment, flamebait, and antagonistic behavior appear to be commonly tolerated. This discourages developers, researchers, newcomers, and professional contributors from participating.

6. Poor onboarding environment for newcomers

If newcomers are directed into an unmoderated or chaotic environment, the project risks:
- damaging first impressions
- losing developer interest
- reducing institutional credibility
- discouraging enterprise or research participation

7. Increased scam and impersonation risk

Unmoderated crypto communities are common targets for:
- fake support accounts
- phishing links
- wallet-drain scams
- impersonation attempts
- malicious downloads
- investment fraud

Promoting such a server as the primary community entry point exposes users to unnecessary risk.

This PR asks the project to reverse a prior safety-motivated decision, but it fails to provide evidence for every claim needed to justify that reversal.

- You fail to provide evidence of active moderation coverage.
- You fail to provide evidence of administrator availability.
- You fail to provide evidence of response-time expectations for spam, scams, harassment, or abuse.
- You fail to provide evidence of moderation logs showing consistent enforcement.
- You fail to provide evidence that spam incidents have been reduced.
- You fail to provide evidence that bot activity is under control.
- You fail to provide evidence that scam/phishing activity is being detected or removed.
- You fail to provide evidence of documented governance processes.
- You fail to provide evidence that community guidelines are actively enforced.
- You fail to provide evidence of security tooling, verification gates, anti-raid protection, or automated moderation systems.
- You fail to provide evidence that off-topic, abusive, or conspiratorial discussion is being moderated.
- You fail to provide evidence that newcomers are safer there now than they were when the original switch was made.

Given the stated philosophy of “don’t trust, verify,” the burden is on this PR to verify that the legacy server’s original problems have been resolved. This PR fails to do that.

8. Activity should not outweigh governance quality

An active but poorly moderated community is not automatically healthier than a smaller but well-governed one. Community quality matters more than message volume.

9. Reputational risk to Ethereum Classic

Prominently linking a Discord server as the primary community hub implicitly signals that the project considers it an acceptable and representative environment for newcomers, developers, investors, researchers, and ecosystem participants.

If that environment is characterized by scams, spam, abusive behavior, persistent off-topic discussion, conspiratorial content, weak moderation, or low-quality discourse, it directly harms the credibility and professionalism of the broader Ethereum Classic ecosystem.

Community infrastructure is part of the public face of the project. Directing users to an unmanaged or poorly moderated environment creates unnecessary reputational, security, and onboarding risk for Ethereum Classic as a whole.

In contrast, the newer Discord server already satisfies these minimum standards in a demonstrable and verifiable way, including:

• active moderation
• accountable governance
• stronger security practices
• topic-focused discussion
• safer onboarding for newcomers
• enforcement of community conduct standards

Unlike the legacy server, these conditions can be directly observed and verified rather than assumed.

Reverting the previous decision without comparable evidence from the legacy server would replace a verifiable moderation and security baseline with unsupported claims that “things are better now.”

This PR fails to justify reversing the previous decision.

The newer server already provides verifiable moderation, governance, security, and community standards. This PR provides no comparable evidence that the legacy server has resolved the issues that originally motivated the migration away from it.

Activity alone is not a substitute for moderation, security, governance, or community quality.

I therefore propose that this PR be rejected.

[chris-mercer]

The legacy server continues to exhibit the issues that motivated the original migration.
Recent observations:

Active scam and phishing content in the general channel, including shitcoin promotions and fraudulent investment schemes posted alongside regular discussion with no moderation action taken. Off-topic content dominates general discussion — unrelated security news, political content, and conspiratorial material rather than Ethereum Classic development, governance, or ecosystem discussion. No evidence of automated moderation, verification gates, anti-spam tooling, or scam detection in the legacy deprecated server.

Review of deprecated discord server. A scam post is present as the last message upon first look. Same conditions as when the server was deprecated:

The newer server maintains active automated protections. Attached screenshot shows the moderation log from the past 48 hours — Captcha.bot enforcing verification gates, kicking unverified accounts on time limit, and AutoMod quarantining suspicious username patterns. These protections operate continuously in the background. The absence of visible bot spam in the newer server is evidence of the protections working, not evidence that bots are not attempting to enter.

Current Discord logging catching bots:

All active ETC core development coordination, including Olympia client work, ECIP discussion, and ecosystem development, is occurring in the newer server.

Confirming @brolal's assessment. The burden of evidence remains on this PR to demonstrate that the legacy server's original problems have been resolved. No such evidence has been provided. The newer server provides verifiable, observable moderation and governance standards that the legacy server does not match.

This PR should be rejected.

[realcodywburns]

nack. the legacy discord is hazardous to users, without an admin capable of necessary administrative actions. recommend removing legacy server from web app to prevent confusion through deceptiv language

[brolal]

It is clear that the legacy Discord server presents potential risks and confusion for users. Because of this, I agree that it should be removed from the website.

However, before proceeding with the removal, it would be important to first ensure proper communication with the community through:

• A blog post explaining the reasons behind the decision and providing context on why the legacy Discord is being deprecated.
• Informative announcements on both Twitter/X handles to clearly communicate the change, its purpose, and any next steps for users.

This approach would help maintain transparency and minimize confusion during the transition.

@IstoraMandiri would you be able to help contribute to these tasks?

[mikeyb]

nack. the legacy discord is hazardous to users, without an admin capable of necessary administrative actions. recommend removing legacy server from web app to prevent confusion through deceptiv language

I'm a bit confused of your goals here.

Disclaimer

To be clear of what I represent, and have always represented in regards to Ethereum Classic, specifically to the community Discord server.

1. I am sole owner of the community Discord
2. I have set the server up in such a way administration and moderation is possible through restricted privileged access
3. I have always been open to promoting trusted members to moderator/admin

I am even open to handing over ownership of the community Discord, but I have yet to be asked. What I can assure you is I will never hand it over to a funded interest party. This is also why I believe I have been entrusted to keep the overall security of this server through the years.

umm wtf

What you are proposing is to erase the community history, from the earliest roots of ETC that still exist today. Ethereum Classic has always been under threat of subversion and this definitely feels like another attempt. Instead of asking for or coordinating a moderation team on the existing server, you fled to a new one and attempted to divert Discord user since.

Logical conclusion

As @chris-mercer succinctly points out:

All active ETC core development coordination, including Olympia client work, ECIP discussion, and ecosystem development, is occurring in the newer server.

So keep your dev & discussions on that server.

My vote

• Make the distinction clear between the two. I personally see this as a great separation, and not sure why you are pushing the change again.

• Update the labeling to be clear "Community Discord" vs. "Developer Discord"

• Make it obvious which is which

or...

• Get a moderation team together and propose using the existing historically accurate Discord server without gagging free speech. Ultimately the reason why you moved in the first place. Likely won't work out for you but I am certainly open to it.

Final thoughts

Stop trying to remove the community server from existence because you cannot control people. The historical value alone is worth keeping this server around for another decade.

[IstoraMandiri]

nack. the legacy discord is hazardous to users, without an admin capable of necessary administrative actions. recommend removing legacy server from web app to prevent confusion through deceptiv language

This is really disappointing to hear coming from you, @realcodywburns.

I urge you to not let your personal battle with Olympia cause you to lose sight of the bigger mission.

Update the labeling to be clear "Community Discord" vs. "Developer Discord"

I don't think "Developer Discord" accurately reflects the 'new' discord's name.

@mikeyb , you quoted:

All active ETC core development coordination, including Olympia client work, ECIP discussion, and ecosystem development, is occurring in the newer server.

But this is clearly not accurate just by looking at the new discord's dev channels. Notice the dates of the last messages- it's a ghost town.

[brolal]

@mikeyb

Your response reinforces several of the original concerns rather than resolving them.

You attempt to frame yourself as the protector of ETC community history, yet you avoid taking responsibility for the actual conditions that caused developers and contributors to leave the legacy server in the first place.

The migration did not happen because people wanted “control.” It happened because the server became increasingly difficult to treat as a serious, reliable, and professionally managed environment.

You state that you are the “sole owner” and that you intentionally retained centralized control over the server for years. That is not a defense, that is part of the problem.

If moderation quality, governance standards, onboarding quality, spam handling, and discussion standards degraded over time under your ownership, then responsibility ultimately falls on you.

You cannot simultaneously claim:

• full ownership,
• full control,
• long-term stewardship,
• and then avoid accountability for the state of the server.

You also acknowledge that:
“All active ETC core development coordination… is occurring in the newer server.”

That did not happen by accident.

Developers, researchers, and ecosystem contributors moved because the newer environment provided:

• more active governance,
• more focused discussion,
• stronger moderation,
• better operational management,
• and a more productive atmosphere.

Instead of addressing why that migration happened, your response tries to rewrite the narrative into:

• “subversion,”
• “erasing history,”
• or people wanting to “control speech.”

That is a deflection from the actual criticism.

Most importantly, you still fail to provide evidence against the concerns raised.

You do not demonstrate:

• active moderation coverage,
• administrator responsiveness,
• anti-spam enforcement,
• anti-scam protections,
• raid mitigation,
• moderation consistency,
• governance transparency,
• or enforcement of community standards.

You simply assert that things are acceptable while offering no verifiable proof.

Under ETC’s own “don’t trust, verify” philosophy, unsupported assurances are not enough.

You also attempt to portray the newer server as some illegitimate fork of the community, despite openly admitting that the actual active development ecosystem already operates there.

If the developers, contributors, and coordination efforts naturally moved elsewhere due to poor governance and low discussion quality, then blaming others for that outcome avoids the central issue: the legacy server lost trust because its leadership failed to maintain standards over time.

Historical existence alone is not a substitute for responsible administration.

A Discord server is not valuable simply because it is old. It must also be actively maintained, moderated, secured, and governed in a way that benefits the ecosystem today.

That is the responsibility of ownership.

And after all these years, you still have not demonstrated that responsibility was adequately fulfilled.

Please, lets proceed with the removal of the legacy discord server from the website.

[brolal]

@IstoraMandiri

This response again avoids the core issue: governance quality and administrative responsibility.

Calling concerns about moderation, security, and operational management a “personal battle” is dismissive and misleading.

The concerns raised are about whether the legacy Discord is an appropriate and safe primary public-facing community hub for Ethereum Classic users and newcomers.

Those concerns remain unanswered.

You suggest simply relabeling the servers as “Community Discord” vs “Developer Discord,” but that framing itself is deceptive because it implies the legacy server remains the central ETC community while the newer server is only for developers.

That is clearly not the reality.

The newer server contains:

active ecosystem coordination,
ECIP discussion,
contributor onboarding,
infrastructure discussion,
client coordination,
and moderation standards that are actually enforced.

Meanwhile, the legacy server continues to face longstanding concerns regarding:

inactive administration,
lack of operational accountability,
weak moderation,
off-topic noise,
tolerated toxicity,
and security risks common in unmanaged crypto communities.

The issue is not what label sounds nicer.

The issue is whether users are being directed into an environment that is responsibly governed.

You also attempt to dismiss the statement regarding active development coordination by pointing at message timestamps in individual channels and calling the newer server a “ghost town.”

That argument is superficial and ignores the broader point entirely.

A server having fewer meaningless messages does not make it less functional.

High-quality technical communities are often quieter precisely because discussions are more focused, moderated, and productive.

Message volume is not a proxy for governance quality.

An active but poorly managed server full of spam, conspiracies, hostility, and off-topic arguments is not healthier simply because more people are typing.

Most importantly, nobody has actually refuted the original concerns.

No evidence has been provided demonstrating:

active administrative oversight,
consistent moderation enforcement,
anti-scam protections,
incident response capability,
onboarding standards,
or meaningful governance improvements on the legacy server.

Instead, the discussion repeatedly shifts toward semantics, branding, and emotional framing.

The legacy server has not demonstrated active moderation, accountable governance, modern security protections, or a safe onboarding environment.

More importantly, repeated requests for evidence have gone unanswered.

No evidence has been provided showing:

active administrative oversight,
consistent moderation enforcement,
anti-spam or anti-scam protections,
incident response capability,
governance standards,
moderation accountability,
or meaningful operational improvements compared to the conditions that originally caused the migration away from the server.

Instead, the discussion repeatedly falls back to:

historical sentiment,
branding arguments,
accusations of “subversion,”
or comparisons based purely on message volume.

None of those address the actual concerns.

Under a “don’t trust, verify” standard, unsupported assurances are not enough.

At this point, continuing to prominently present the legacy Discord through official-facing ETC ecosystem resources is irresponsible and misleading to users.

The newer server already provides verifiable moderation, governance, operational oversight, and ecosystem coordination.

The legacy server does not.

The legacy Discord should therefore be removed from official-facing onboarding surfaces and ecosystem resources as soon as possible in order to prevent user confusion, reduce reputational risk, and avoid directing newcomers into an environment that has failed to demonstrate the minimum standards expected of a modern public crypto community.

[IstoraMandiri]

I have been banned from the new server for 7 days, apparently because I voiced my opinion on https://cc.ethereumclassic.org/calls/52/

This is a clear example of why we should not have only this server listed. Moderation is showing clear bias and not allowing open discussion.

[brolal]

These are some of the manipulative and potentially misleading statements made during Call 52 by both the host @IstoraMandiri and guests.

Examples include:

• framing disagreement as a “hostile takeover”
• presenting Olympia as a “done deal” before broad consensus existed
• claims of “censorship” without evidence presented
• describing the network as being “held hostage”
• repeated “step aside” and “game over” rhetoric aimed at delegitimizing dissent

I do not believe broadcasting this kind of rhetoric is in the best interest of ETC governance, constructive discussion, or community trust.

“This is basically like a line in the sand.”
Manipulative — frames a governance/process disagreement as a loyalty test or existential conflict.

“Hostile takeover.”
Manipulative / potentially deceitful — emotionally loaded accusation presented before evidence of actual hostile intent.

“Olympia was promoted as a done deal before consensus.”
Potentially deceitful — if consensus did not actually exist, presenting it as settled misleads the community.

“The authors have consistently promoted it as a done deal.”
Potentially deceitful — alleges coordinated misleading behavior without evidence shown in the transcript.

“Pushback was ignored or censored.”
Potentially deceitful — “censorship” is a severe accusation that is asserted, not demonstrated.

“Leveraging trusted privileges at CoinMarketCap and other social channels.”
Manipulative — implies abuse of institutional trust/access to sway perception.

“The network is being held hostage.”
Manipulative — fear/coercion framing that morally escalates disagreement into perceived extortion.

“Game over for Olympia.”
Manipulative — absolutist language intended to shut down further debate.

“No longer any credible path.”
Manipulative — delegitimizes opposition instead of addressing arguments.

“Come to the table, or step aside.”
Manipulative — false dichotomy implying only compliance or exclusion are acceptable.

“Re-engage in good faith, or step back.”
Manipulative — implicitly labels dissenters as acting in bad faith.

“The community is united.”
Potentially deceitful — misleading consensus framing during an active visible dispute.

“Filibustering doesn’t really help anyone.”
Manipulative — reframes dissent/procedural resistance as obstruction rather than legitimate disagreement.

“ETH… they’re going crazy, they’re gonna destroy everything themselves.”
Manipulative — fear-based catastrophic rhetoric without substantiation.

“Whoever controls the legal system owns the chain.”
Manipulative / exaggerated — overstates legal influence into total ownership/control.

“They are able to blacklist specific addresses.”
Potentially misleading — blends protocol capability, ecosystem influence, and social coordination in a way that may confuse listeners about technical realities.

“Step aside.”
Manipulative — exclusionary pressure tactic aimed at marginalizing dissenters.

“Good faith.”
Manipulative framing — repeatedly invoking “good faith” can imply opponents are morally illegitimate without proving misconduct.

“Done deal.”
Potentially deceitful consensus signaling — creates psychological inevitability around unresolved governance matters.

“No credible path forward.”
Manipulative — attempts to collapse negotiation space and manufacture inevitability.

[InArgentumVeritas]

well. it is hard to disagree with Istora on current situation.
Current situation is that small group people trying to implement things that 80 % of the network user base and miners dont accept and wont ever accept no matter how nice you wrap it in the colorful paper. When Istora is trying to show you the point he just gets neglected, silenced and punished for trying to find way forward without the great theft mechanism being implemented into core of the chain.
There were people on chain before you, so please try to respect the agreement they had made with the network and it's core principals, long before you were even here.
They didn't understand back then what community tries to communicate to them so much that they had to create new discord server where the voices weren't heard that well, even though we have to admit that Istora tried his best.
The legacy server stores ETC history, and just because of that it's worth keeping alive, I don't feel being endangered in there, is there anyone who feels endangered?
how deaf can you be to not hear that there's no agreement from userbase to the new great changes you bringing us here?

In the petition @
https://nolympia.dev/
where it says
The Olympia proposal (ECIPs 1111–1119) seeks to introduce a protocol-level treasury to Ethereum Classic by redirecting EIP-1559 base fees to an on-chain funding contract instead of burning them. This introduces a protocol-enforced tax on miners, and a complex governance system to redistribute these funds.

This contradicts ETC's core principles of immutability, decentralization, and resistance to capture that have defined the chain since its inception. A treasury embedded at the protocol layer violates protocol neutrality, a core principle outlined in ETC's founding documents, and introduces additional technical, legal, and political risk for the chain. It burdens all ETC stakeholders — miners, holders, and developers — to benefit a select few, unfairly changing the rules of the game after they were already agreed upon.

you clearly see that's there majority of mining power already signed to the petition(mining pools: F2Pool,Antpool,2Miners) on the network disapproving completely the changes, that's why you made a new box where you can broadcast freely your vision of our network, completely ignoring everyone before you, and after you.

NO OTHER ECIP EVER HAD 80%+ OF DISAGREEMENT AMONG THE MINERS
THAT'S WHY WE'RE TELLING YOU "THERE'S NO WAY FORWARD"

Please don't reply that i am manipulative; I am, as many others, observing from the sidelines, but that's just how I feel, and probably not just me. We all can clearly see who has the manipulative intentions, and why there was need of having new Discord where community can't speak it's mind freely.

Prove me wrong.

But before, acknowledge yourself again with:
https://ethereumclassic.org/why-classic/genesis

[chris-mercer]

A note for the record on this PR's review process:

@brolal reviewed this PR in opposition and, along with @realcodywburns (requesting changes on behalf of the website team), supported removing the legacy server link — sufficient review consensus under normal process. The server's unmaintained, deprecated state is documented above. On 5/24, while this PR remained open, the PR author removed @brolal from the Website team using his maintainer access. Documentation (timeline + mod log):
https://github.com/orgs/ethereumclassic/discussions/558#discussioncomment-17065801

A PR author removing a dissenting reviewer from the team responsible for reviewing his own open PR is noted here so the review record reflects it.