Script Moderation — Q & A

Dear Pine coders, please use this publication’s comments if you have questions or comments on script moderation. If you have a private inquiry, send a message to the PineCoders account.


Why do we moderate scripts?
The Public Library contains >100,000 scripts, with more than 20,000 added every year. It is paramount to preserve and nurture the usefulness of this huge repository used daily by millions of users speaking all languages. Both newcomers and seasoned traders should be able to rely on the indicators and strategies in our Public Library. Hence we need community rules to define appropriate criteria for scripts to maximize the Library’s value. We must also protect our users from scam and spam accounts that do not share our community values, misuse open-source scripts, or use the Public Library to self-promote or mislead other users.

Considerable efforts are deployed to make sure the Public Library continues to play its critical role in the TradingView landscape. The continued value users find in our community depends on it. Well-documented, original and quality scripts benefit both authors, whose work gets more visibility, and users who get better tools. Script moderation makes sense because it improves the TradingView experience for anybody who values learning and sharing in our community. Nobody is exempt from script moderation; even Pine Wizards and PineCoders have had their scripts moderated.

Note that we moderate publications—not people and, most of the time, not scripts. Most of the rules concern how scripts should be published and code reused, not the scripts themselves. While a Read Before You Publish popup reminds you to know the rules and prepare a proper description for your script before you publish, many authors do not read it and publish without being aware of rules. Many only find out there are rules when their script publication is moderated.

Having your script publication moderated is no reason to be personally offended; it's your publication that was moderated—not you. We understand that having your script publication moderated is not fun, but take it as a wake-up call rather than an insult. It's usually fairly simple to make a compliant publication and re-publish. If you have questions about your moderation, simply reply to the PM you receive. We'll gladly help if we can, and you will get answers faster than if you go through TV support because you will be dealing with moderators directly, where support will most probably redirect you in any case.


Why do some authors have problems with moderation?
• They think that a paid account entitles them to the right to publish and dispenses them of following the rules. Publishing scripts is not a right; it is a privilege granted to authors who respect and abide by our community’s rules.
• They can no longer sell their unrealistic or copied scripts on TradingView.
• They refuse to take the time to prepare helpful publications for traders.
• They can no longer make a career on TV by poaching original open-source code to build a reputation.

These authors luckily make up an infinitesimal proportion of all authors, but some try to make much noise by demonizing script moderation anywhere they can. Except for the intentionally misleading authors, it should be straightforward for the authors of moderated scripts to comply with rules, as thousands of other authors routinely do. We wonder why these authors choose instead to complain.

We contact all moderated authors and share daily with countless authors from the international TV community. Our experience is that the overwhelming majority of authors think it is quite natural that we have rules, as any strong community must. They not only respect but encourage our work, even when we moderate their publications. As long as most authors continue to support our work, we’ll happily take flack from the few who don’t.


Moderator Bias
Some authors complain that script moderation is biased. They are right! We are not robots—and that’s a good thing for both authors and traders. The nuances (or biases, if you prefer) we use when enforcing Script Publishing rules, however, actually have more to do with the context of each script’s analysis than with who is doing the moderation. Script moderators spend lots of time discussing the best ways to handle the many different situations we encounter. When faced with problematic cases, we resolve them together and record our conclusions so we can handle future similar cases in the same manner.

We are a team that acts in unison, using a well-defined code of conduct. This code of conduct’s strength stems from the many exceptions it allows. For example, we do not analyze open-source, protected, and invite-only scripts using the same criteria. Even when analyzing open-source scripts, we use different criteria when they are published by authors who also sell access to invite-only scripts. We do not handle first publications the same way we do the 100th publication of an author. We do not handle the 8th violation of rules the same way we handle the first. We are more lenient on English descriptions by authors from non-English speaking locales. These distinctions we make are clear biases, but they are voluntary and, we believe, necessary to achieve the best overall degree of fairness in the enforcement of rules. We believe that when dealing with creative work, adroitly used educated biases produce better outcomes than robotic and blind objectivity ever will.


Origins of the Script Publishing Rules
Users wrote most of House Rules, and Script Publishing rules are no exception; script authors wrote them! TradingView founders approved the rules, of course, but they are community-driven. We are always open to new ideas and suggestions from community members. As our environment evolves, so should our rules. The same applies to how we enforce them. Many of the exceptions and refinements used in rule enforcement were also implemented after suggestions from authors.


Script publishing help and docs
• To find out how to publish scripts and for a discussion of all your options, see the Pine User Manual page on Script Publishing.
• Be sure you read and understand the TradingView Script Publishing House Rules, which you agree to abide by when you create an account and publish a script on the platform.
• These are Tips for Authors, which provide more information to help you ensure your publications respect our rules.
• Script Vendors are subject to more obligations because they sell access to their invite-only scripts. They should have a good understanding of our Vendor Requirements.
• This is a blog post on script moderation, and the same content in the Help Center.
• alexgrover has a very good publication on Making A Good Indicator Description.


Tips
• To prepare a publication and validate that it will turn out the way you expect, use a private script as a draft. Contrary to public scripts, you can edit their title and description, so they can be used to test things. Once your private publication is perfect, then you can just copy its tagged description in a new public script’s description. That’s how we work to prepare our publications.
• Once you publish a script to the Public Library you will not be able to delete it or change its description or title, nor make it private, nor change its publication mode (open-source, protected, invite-only). Plan accordingly.
• We only moderate public scripts, i.e., scripts published in the Public Library. If you do not wish to share your scripts with the community, simply use your private copy from your personal repo through the Pine Editor, or publish your script privately. Know, however, that if you publish private scripts, you may NOT share their url in any public content on TV.
• Before you publish a script, make sure you can’t find published scripts doing the same thing. Also, use your script for a while. Put it through its paces and understand its behavior. This will give you time to streamline the code and settings before you publish it, and help you provide more useful information in your script’s description.
• As Pine coders, we constitute a tiny percentage of TradingView users, yet we have an enormous impact on the community’s trading activities. We thus have a responsibility to provide the traders with useful, original, and robust tools.
• As much as we try, moderators cannot see everything. If you come across script publications that violate our rules, please report them using the "Report This Script" flag. You will not be able to send a message with your report, but we will see it and will ask for more information if we cannot determine why you reported the script. Your collaboration in this is an important facet of moderation, and we appreciate it very much.


Who are these PineCoders guys?
We are a team of volunteers who do this because we love TradingView, of course, but also because we appreciate the incredible community here. We are not only experienced coders, but traders as well. As all serious Pine coders, we have learned Pine by reading the docs and seeking out and studying code from the best authors on the platform. We are grateful and, in turn, want to pay it back by contributing to the amazing projects that are TradingView and Pine. While some PineCoders members are fairly visible, many more contribute quietly, without any public recognition.

Script moderation is just one of the things PineCoders do. We also answer questions in forums, write educational docs and code, publish scripts and tools for Pine coders, and keep the coding community up to date on the constant evolution of Pine. We work with the TV Pine team daily to improve Pine for all Pine coders, but also for the impact this has on the extended, non-coding TradingView community. As openness, learning, and sharing are at the heart of TradingView; we strive to encourage the same values within the constantly growing community of Pine coders. See the PineCoders web site for more information. If you are a serious Pine coder interested in contributing to a PineCoders project, PM the PineCoders account. See you out there!