DC wasn't taking the piss. Some of us have spent years trying to explain the dangers of mining at a proportional pool, the pool failing at 0.43 * D shares solved being chief amongst them. Bitlc failing shouldn't come as a surprise.
Yup, you can see in this quote I knew about pool hopping (and was trying to get proportional fixed on the pool). For the longest time Jim couldn't be made to understand that pool hoppers profit at the expense of others:
...Stats are also randomly delayed, so that having good stats available can't be used against the pool. If you are mining and sending in accepted shares, then you get paid accurately for your work.
If
miners hoppers didn't withdraw their actual balance, kinda sucks, you are owed that money. I'm just making the same clarification that I have previously, in response to "we mined for two months":
if everyone moved all the mining power they have over and get this block killed it has to be almost dead we are almost at 2.2 mil shares
...(paraphrase: that's not how bitcoin works, dumb pool op)...
Also,
there is no reason to feel guilt shutting down a pool mid round - nobody found a block, so nobody gets paid. That's as simple as it gets.