Are we supposed to give a Sad rating when a peer causes a force closure and won't replace the channel?

I have participated in several swaps now wherein one of my channel peers goes offline for long enough that an HTLC hits its deadline and forces my node to initiate unilateral closure of the channel. The way I see it, when this happens, it is the peer's fault since they were the one that didn't stay online to resolve the HTLC, and thus the onus is on them to replace the channel to continue satisfying the terms of the swap contract. I post the logs from my node showing that their node was at fault, and I request that they replace the channel. After a couple of weeks, if they still haven't done so, then I give them a Sad rating. Is this one of the intended rationales for giving a Sad rating? Because twice now my channel peers have retaliated by giving me a Sad rating as well, even though I did nothing wrong. The ratings system isn't very useful if I can't honestly give Sad ratings to my peers who renege on their promises without their giving me retaliatory Sad ratings in return. The net result is that I am discouraged from giving a Sad rating that reflects my peer's true behavior since I want to avoid receiving a Sad rating that is totally unjustified. I don't see my giving a justified Sad rating as valid justification for being rated Sad myself.

So would you please clarify when the Sad rating is intended to be used? Is it only when the peer is totally unresponsive, or is it whenever they are not upholding their end of the contract?

Thanks for your time.

2 Comments

LN+ Admin wrote 26 days ago

You can and should give a sad rating whenever they are not upholding their end of the contract. In some cases it's a technical issue and you can make a judgement call. But the idea for the rating is to assess how reliable is a node when entering a swap contract.

BCash_Is_Trash wrote 25 days ago

Thank you for the clarity. That's exactly what I thought and why I give Sad ratings when my peers don't uphold their obligations: I want to signal to other users that this person may not be entirely reliable. But then I end up also receiving the metaphorical scarlet letter indicating that *I* might not be entirely reliable, so it's a risky move. I guess there's no real solution here. Thanks again for confirming the intent.

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