An interview with @timcliff via meet a whale...episode 9

Hello Steemians, I bring to you another episode of my interview in which I get to ask some technical Steem questions and also bring you closer to your witnesses. For this week's interview, I bring to you @timcliff, a man who has a great passion for the Steem blockchain, an hardworking Steemian, as well as a man who has generously donated for the @goldenproject community. Be sure to sit tight and grab a cup of coffee while reading through this great interview!

Meet @timcliff

Let's get started steemians!!!

@jamesmovic - who introduced you to steemit?

@timcliff - I was introduced to steemit by my brother.

@jamesmovic - what was your motive for joining?

@timcliff - I initially joined as an investor. I really liked the project and invested some of my own money into STEEM. Eventually I got drawn into actually using the platform.

@jamesmovic - what special side projects are you doing on the block chain, for example witnesses?

@timcliff - I am one of the Steem witnesses.
One of the main things I do is to moderate the #help channel of steem.chat. I review all of the reported issues every day to ensure that everyone is getting responded to. Over the past few months, I also did a lot of "exchange outreach" to try and contact various exchanges and ask that they list STEEM.
I am also involved in a lot of discussions with various stakeholders, witnesses, and developers about potential changes to the platform.

@jamesmovic - why do you think newbies should vote for a witness, you appear to be one of the top 30's how do they cast their vote for those not included in the top 30's?

@timcliff - I think it is good for new members to learn about how the platform works, and part of that is learning about the witnesses.
Voters should make informed decisions though. If a user doesn't know enough to decide who is a good vs. bad witness, then it is probably a better idea to "proxy" their witness votes to someone that they trust to make those decisions. Also, to vote for someone outside of the top 50, you just need to type their name in at the bottom of the witness page where the section is.

@jamesmovic - Mostly newbies get defrauded of their accounts via phishing sites, this which has become rampant in the last few days. what do you suggest is the best way of securing one's account?

@timcliff - Never enter any of your key information into a website that you do not trust 100%. Always check to make sure that when you are entering your key, that the website in the URL bar at the top is actually the site you think it is. Don't use your owner key / master password in cases where only your posting key will work.

@jamesmovic - Do you feel that the initiatives to combat phishing, spam, and plagiarism on the platform are having a good success rate?

@timcliff - There will always be bad actors, and some of them will succeed. As a community we should do our best to educate users on how to protect themselves and combat these types of bad behavior.

@jamesmovic - Besides reporting phishing and spam to @steemcleaners and @guard, is there anything which the average user can help to combat these things?

@tiimcliff - That is the best thing to do in my opinion.

@jamesmovic - what do you suggest should be the next step after ones account is hacked?

@timcliff - You should complete the "Stolen Accounts Recovery" right away, found in the steemit.com main menu. You will need to use the original email that you used to create the account, and your previous working password.

@jamesmovic - Are there any amount curators are meant to receive on one's payout, or does it depends on the payout. Do they choose the specific amount they want to receive?

@timcliff - The curation formula is explained on the FAQ page. It would probably be best if intersted users checked it out there.

@jamesmovic - since steemit is strictly meant for quality content, what do you have to say to users who vote self comments?

@timcliff - Self-voting itself is not bad. If you wrote a good comment, I don't see any issue with upvoting it. Upvoting content more than it is worth though is really the issue.
If content is upvoted more than it is worth, other users/stakeholders should downvote it.

@jamesmovic - Do you think it's a nice idea for newbies to join curation trails?

@timcliff - I prefer manually voting on the content I like, but users are free to do so if they wish.

@jamesmovic - The community is getting bigger all day with new users, Do you think there are enough delegations for their management?

@timcliff - Yes, there are enough delegations.

@jamesmovic - I recently saw a post payout flagged by steemcleaners, even without a plagiarized content,what do you think might be the cause?

@timcliff - I don't know. I'd need more details.
They generally do a pretty good job at identifying stuff that is abusive. If there are ever cases where they get something wrong, there is a #steemitabuse-appeals channel in steem.chat where people can go.

@jamesmovic - why am I always giving out a 100% upvote on all post I upvote? is there any specific way to reset this?

@timcliff - Until you reach a certain amount of Steem Power, all votes will be at 100%. If you use Busy.org (instead of steemit.com), I believe they will give you a slider to set the percent at less than 100% even before you reach that level.

@jamesmovic - what advice are you willing to give to newbies who are feeling dejected due to low upvote?

@timcliff - It can take a very long time and a lot of work to get noticed. Don't feel discouraged.
Whatever you are making is still likely more than if you were posting your material on some other website - like a personal blog or Facebook.

@jamesmovic - what's your take on this interview and do you have any advice to make it better?

@timcliff - Seems good to me..smiles
One suggestion would be if you wanted to learn a bit about the person you are interviewing, you may be able to come up with some more specific/interesting questions based on what they are into.

@timcliff has spoken on the need for all Steemians to cast their votes for the witnesses of their choice, and to "proxy" their votes if they are having a hard time in distinguishing a good witness from the other. If you truly believe in @timcliff's dream in making the community a better place, you can support him by casting your vote for @timcliff. If you are doing this for the first time, you can follow the procedures written in the image below.

Thank you all for taking your time to read through this interview, I'm pretty sure you learnt something today. You can get to read interviews with my previous guests here. You can also check out my video interview with @noisy by clicking on this link. see you all later!!