linkfanel

I don't own a KiwiSDR but I really feel the same frustration as you guys. I know how sometimes I struggle to get a slot on the one KiwiSDR that gets a good reception of the signal I'm trying to catch, so when I see in the user list slots taken for hours for stuff that I personally find pointless, I get a bit upset too. Sometimes I check and it's just static on that frequency in the middle of nowhere, sometimes I'm pretty sure that they're not even listening, that they're away from the computer but left the KiwiSDR open!

It's sure that some uses are a waste, like it was mentioned, commercial broadcasts also available on the web; unless you're checking radio propagation or something, but then you wouldn't keep it open continuously for extended amounts of time. But I don't think we should see restricting this as the only solution, that's pretty negative. Education works too. I know that maybe you don't want to go through such extremes, but maybe adding the web radio URL on the station tag would help steer people that way, who knows?

And again, as for the USAF HFGCS, or other channels, military or other, that operate on a fixed frequency round the clock, my approach for that is that if it's popular, someone should make an audio stream of it relayed on the web. That way, providing for bandwidth, any number of user can connect and listen to it at the same time, and only one receiver slot for everyone is ever tied down for it. So it's true that listening to HFGCS that way is not the best. However, that military network is indeed popular to some, because it carries strategic command messages (for example see http://eam.watch/). And people listen to it for hours because it's active all day and they're interested in monitoring all these messages.

And the fact that it would be automated, 24/7 and a machine, not even a human, doesn't mean it's a waste. It's actually smart, if they're recording. That way they can go back on the recording and spot on a spectrum view if and when there were any message, and recover them. Sometimes, for stations that are unpredictable and could transmit at any time within a span of hours, or maybe not at all, setting up these automated recordings is unfortunately the only practical way to monitor them, because there's no way to know. It might seem pointless but you'd be surprised at what random people try to achieve and how it actually does make sense.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the impression that you guys get angered by particular individuals. That strikes me, because the internet is big, and I don't think it's very healthy to focus on policing individual users. The internet is full of trolls and idiots and you just got to let it slide and ignore them, otherwise I don't think it's healthy; not because of the impact of starting a "war" with them, but because of the impact on yourself trying to control that.

And at the same time, I know you paid for it and it's yours, but I don't see the point of encouraging KiwiSDR owners to feel like God (or a judge, or Santa if you want) and give good points and bad points to users based on what use they make of the receiving slots offered to them. I know that policing to ensure fairness between users is necessary, but in what I see here there is also some policing of what users choose to listen to. Nobody forces you to share your KiwiSDR with the public, and thank you all for doing so, but if you share it it's for a reason; so that users can enjoy the service, and they're still the best judges of how they would enjoy it best. So I think it's healthy to let them appreciate that; and I know it does try my patience too sometimes, but it's a good thing. And frankly when I see KiwiSDRs with several slots taken by WSPR autorun sessions, I don't understand that either

I appreciate how using frequency filters could be a solution, however I feel that jamming crosses a line that shocks me. I can't condone that, come on, jamming is bad?? From a technical and administration point of view, blocking is what is done against disruptive and malevolent users. Fortunately that doesn't seem to be much of a problem on the KiwiSDR network. And blocking is rarely used as a fairness tool, because there are proper and better tools to manage resource fairness. The listening time accounting and daily quota by user look like good features to me. What is your experience with that?

I have just switched the markers on the map to use the new self-reported internal SNR scores. The logic is as follows: the HF-only self-reported score is used if available, if not the full-spectrum self-reported score is used instead, and if no self-reported score is available, the classic external score is used as fallback; this last case is mostly about receivers running an older version of the software.

Users choosing a receiver will benefit from up-to-date and instantly relevant scores, as by default self-reported scores are calculated every hour. As such you may notice how marker coloration now brightens up when nighttime comes and covers their area. HF-only scores are favored as it was pointed out that very strong MW bands tend to skew the scores. I don't especially like excluding signals below 1800 kHz, but a choice has to be made since it makes a significant difference in usefulness; and this is a shortwave receiver map, not just a map of remotes for commercial MW band broadcasts, so this is our editorial line.

Thanks to everyone involved for their contributions to the discussion, scoring code or monitoring framework. In the future I'm fine accepting as input whatever KiwiSDR receivers calculate and report as SNR score, so don't let the fact that the map uses those scores hinder further change or refinement about them :)