Moving to hive

timcliff (73) · 7 years ago (edited)

Hi Bernie. In general, I agree with the assessment that most of the top witnesses should be doing more. If we had all 20 top witnesses doing as much as @jesta, we would probably have a lot different marketcap.

There are a few in your list that I think are actually adding more value than what you have here, but I will leave it up to those individuals to defend themselves if they think it is necessary. (I do agree with more of your comments than I disagree with though..)

For myself, I do feel like I do a lot for the platform (I do run a full node, I am the moderator of the help channel of steem chat, I submit pull requests to condenser, faucet, and devportal repositories, etc.), but even with all of that, I never feel like I am doing enough.

Witnesses get paid a lot, but it is not a “stable/dependable” source of income. As a top witness, I could be voted out at any time, and there are factors that influence the STEEM price that are out of my control. Because of the “instability”, even though I am a top witness, I still hold a “real” job to be able to support my family. This is really unfortunate because after my full time job and a small amount of time to spend with my family each week, I only have a limited amount of time left in the week to spend on Steem. I really do try to do as much as I possibly can in the time I have, but IMO it still never seems like enough.

I know you will probably say that my “personal” life is really my problem to figure out, and for the amount of money involved I should find a way to “make it work” - which I do agree with. I had actually never even really considered that becoming a top witness was even a possibility when I started my campaign, but now that I am actually here (which I consider a huge honor), getting to a point where I can actually do this full time (without putting my family at severe risk) so that I can contribute more is a high priority of mine. I hope to get to that point very soon.

Having witnesses contribute to the blockchain is probably going to be one of the more difficult things to achieve. I agree that having more people (other than Steemit) making changes is something we really need to accomplish. The amount of people qualified to do that though (without breaking things) is probably quite small. Even for myself - I have a software development background, so I think it is something that I am technically capable of, but it would still be a significant challenge for me to actually develop something complicated by myself. Also, right now testing changes is a really big hurdle. Even if I were to develop a change to make a hardfork, I honestly don’t know how I would go about setting up an environment to be able to make sure it works before deploying it to the live network - which is 100% necessary in order for the change to be ‘safe’. I could submit a PR and rely on Steemit to test before merging, but for obvious reasons - this seems to be missing the whole point. I’ve talked to Vandeberg/Steemit about this, and they are working on putting together a test net. Once this is done, it will at least lower the barrier to entry for capable developers to work on changes. It would be great if 2018 could be the year we have our first community hardfork.

The real solution to the problem of underperforming witnesses though (IMO) is competition. When I started there were quite a few in the top 19 that I was pretty convinced were doing absolutely nothing. Since that time, people like @jesta, @netuoso, @followbtcnews, @aggroed, and myself have taken their place. You may still say that many of the ones that are still there (and even the new ones that have taken their places) are still doing very little compared to what they should be - but in my view that is just opportunity for someone who can contribute more to come along and push them out. I really would love to see more people come along and shake things up to create more competition for the top spots. It is definitely not easy to make it into a top position, and requires more than just “working hard”, but if someone comes along and starts adding significantly more value than the ones that are currently there - the stakeholders do seem to notice.

$12.07

littlescribe (65) · 7 years ago (edited)

I think this is spot on. Competition does more to spur quality work than anything else. There are some witnesses who are doing some pretty cool things, and they are climbing up the ranks, such as:

@ats-witness, who runs a full node all the time, has always only ever done things to contribute to the platform since I've seen him on here. He had a campaign against sock puppets at one time, which was largely successful. He started up a sports and poker league, and has developed a curation system exclusive to authentic users only, he used to do a crypto and steem market analysis, which did really well, and he's regularly (every day) curating good content and sponsoring contests and initiatives, and has done his fare share of flagging and anti-spam contributions.
@reggaemuffin is another great one. He is one of the largest contributor to anti-spam crusades that I am aware of. He regularly sponsors @steemflagrewards and @steemcleaners with delegated power and gifted SBD so they are able to flag down abusers as well as reward those who flag. He runs a full node, he is constantly posting updates in development, information, and other ideas that will make this platform a better place, he is busy interacting with the community, and he appears to have every intention of doing what it takes to be a good witness.
@cervantes has done huge things to engage the Spanish-speaking community all over the globe. He regularly interacts with followers and friends on steemit who take heed to his comments and posts, and he posts educational, informative, and helpful content on a daily basis. He curates well, he comments often for a witness, and he has excellent voting history.
@ura-soul appears to be interested in the platform. I'm not sure what will happen there. I don't know anything about him. But look forward to seeing him make good on some of his promises...

I know there are other great ones, but these are just the ones I know about personally and feel like I can attest to.

$2.00

stresskiller (61) · 7 years ago (edited)

@Qurator has just started as a witness and also runs a great community project , educating people how to use content properly instead of copy pasta, and we are still growing with +1000 members

$0.06

crimsonclad (66) · 7 years ago

When you say 'full nodes' here, do you mean public RPC nodes with all plugins enabled?

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littlescribe (65) · 7 years ago

I have no idea. It's just the echo chamber talking.

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sircork (64) · 7 years ago

As far as I know, and this is here say from someone pretty technical who told me "they checked recently", there are less than 3 "FULL" nodes with all plug ins enabled.

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gjones15 (52) · 7 years ago

@sircork wow... less than 3 full nodes out of.. 200+ witnesses on the entire blockchain? That's crazy... I guess that brings me to the question: Why so many witnesses?? And where/ how was/ is this number determined?

$1.18

sircork (64) · 7 years ago

Start by reading the white and blue papers.

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gjones15 (52) · 7 years ago

Thx

gjones15 (52) · 7 years ago (edited)

I read both blue and white paper. And while they were both interesting and informative, while also answering my question in part--they did not give any satisfactory explanation, reasoning , or justification for the actual breakdown of the witnesses, per se. For example: how many full-nodes are required to run the platform smoothly? It would seem, given the definition of full-node (i.e; a "miner" which oversees the blocks and "verifies" their addition to the ledger), that having only three witnesses performing this function seems s a bit dicey... There again,
there was little explanation regarding the procedure of the witnesses themselves. Also, if I read correctly, there are 200 "witnesses," yet, only 21 of them are actually mining the blockchain... the remaining 179 are merely waiting their turn, while simultaneously combining all of their "voting power" into the "21st" of the 21 miners as a "time shared" witness slot. There again, I could be mistaken, but that's how it looked to me..

From what I read: Blocks on the steemit blockchain are produced in "rounds." with anew block made every three seconds. Out of 200+ "Witnesses" or, steemit memebers eligible to be a witness, 20 of them are chosen as "block producers," while the remaining ~179 are folded into the 21st spot. From the white paper itself: "The 21 witnesses are shuffled every round." If this is the case, then those 21 witnesses are "shuffled" every three seconds?? That seems pretty wild.. Perhaps I'm missing something.

I really wish there were more transparency regarding the witnesses and their job/ role.

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stimialiti (60) · 7 years ago

Good to know.
I guess I will have to keep my guess about the identity of your source to myself, but I do take your words.

$0.98

proffit (58) · 7 years ago

You got a 21.28% upvote from @proffit courtesy of @stimialiti!

luckyvotes (38) · 7 years ago

You got a 15.38% upvote from @luckyvotes courtesy of @stimialiti!

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adriatik (51) · 7 years ago

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sleeplesswhale (39) · 7 years ago

You got a 15.38% upvote from @sleeplesswhale courtesy of @stimialiti!

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gjones15 (52) · 7 years ago

@crimsonclad, from what I understand, a "full-node" within the context of a blockchain mining operation, is a participant who, unlike the miners who are merely, blindly chugging along, figuring out the best "hashes" with which to "decode" the messages (i.e., cryptocurrency tokens/ coins), the full-nodes are given the responsibility of actually adding said blocks--after being deciphered by the miners--into the actual, formal blockchain ledger. They are kind of the "gatekeepers," so to speak: deciding here and there, which blocks mined by the miners will become "set-in-stone" and a part of the blockchain forever-more. So they are the real "head honcho," whereas the miners are just blindly working (or, rather, their CPUs are ;)) . The "full-nodes" are there to solve any discrepancies, etc.

That being said, it would seem to me that having only three "people" in this position of full-node--out of how many total users?!?--seems precarious, at best...

I say all of this with the caveat that I am not a "pro" at this stuff-merely learning "along the way" as many others. I am happy to receive any correction or criticism--in fact, I welcome it!! Let us learn this thing together, and grow!!

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crimsonclad (66) · 7 years ago

I understand what the types of seed/witness/rpc node functions are~ the reason I ask is because we do not have enough full RPC nodes (with all plugins enabled) being made available to the public, and if another was to come on the scene I was surprised that many of us missed it, so I was clarifying. The RPC debate is one that has been going on for some time now, as obviously more are better both for decentralization and for stability, but currently, it is more costly than people would like to run something for the benefit of all, versus running a private node to be used only by a single project. This means fewer people take them on and set them up. There are other, private nodes being spun up to back individual projects, certainly, but for devs wanting to work with this chain who can't afford to do that, public resources are important.

So in this case, the 'miners' you are talking about are the witness servers, versus the seed node support, however, I'm talking about RPC nodes. The servers that are witnessing (verifying/generating) blocks are the witnesses, and there are many more than three of those. Rewards are allotted for these witnesses based on each block produced, and ranking is based on stake weighted voting in an election type consensus mechanism, so the term mining isn't really applicable in this case. You have 20 top scheduled producers, and a 21st rotating spot which is taken from all other enabled witnesses based on a schedule that is proportional to DPoS ranking.

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gjones15 (52) · 7 years ago

Thank you. Okay... so I think I'm starting to (maybe) understand--there are 200+ "Witnesses," though, only 21 of those are, at any given time, "on the clock," so to speak (i.e., "witnessing")..?

And, amongst all these various witnesses (which are also "nodes," if I'm not mistaken?) there are also various types of nodes; namely, "seed nodes," and "RPC nodes," the latter being a particular type of node which is designed to support public functions and operations--as opposed to different "private nodes," which are not designed to interact with the "general" steem chain...?

Is that kinda on the right track??

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crimsonclad (66) · 7 years ago

there are 200+ enabled, active witness servers (thousands and thousands that are disabled and not active.) The block schedule is such that each of the top 20 ranked witnesses produces a block each cycle (which is 63 seconds... a block each 3 seconds,) followed by the 21st. The 21st rotates through all active witnesses outside the top 20, proportional to their ranking. If a witness is disabled, then it doesn't go into the schedule, produce any blocks, or receive rewards for doing so.

Seed nodes don't produce blocks but do store data to support the chain, but the very quick and dirty explanation for the difference between a seed and an RPC node is that not all seeds expose the RPC port for API calls over WebSockets, which is what frontends like Steemit, Busy, and condenser based interfaces use... if you want applications built on the blockchain to be able to take advantage of all technical possibilities, all plug-ins need to be enabled. This is what requires such a skookum server, and what makes them generally quite expensive to run. The more load put on the fewer servers is bad for latency and stability of course, which is why it's important to have more of them. The cost being prohibitive and the fact that they do not generate rewards makes this harder to do for many developers, who then need to rely on public nodes provided by others.

So, as to your last question, the public bit refers to the RPC being available to anyone who would like to use it, whereas a project which is resource intensive or depends on low latency or whatever the case may be may choose to run a private RPC. This simply means it is only used by the developer for the projects they choose, and the connection is not made available to everyone on the chain so the resources are dedicated to particular performance. (For example, Steemd uses a private RPC as it gets MILLIONS of requests daily)

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gjones15 (52) · 7 years ago

This is awesome. Thank you for taking the time to explain something which I'm sure is probably pretty tedious lol. I appreciate it.

skyefox (60) · 7 years ago

Isn't @reggaemuffin the one who runs @minnowbooster? I have been trying to get my 100 SBD back that was stolen from me because I figured out how to buy more votes than other people using skills I taught myself. I was blacklisted and my money was stolen without warning. Whoever runs minnowbooster isn't replying or returning the money I sent. I read the rules and I followed them. I just used the service more than most people since I am home all day. I quickly became one of the highest in terms of transfers to minnowbooster because that helps you buy the votes that you want. Needless to say, I am pissed that someone with so much money is still a thief.

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reggaemuffin (66) · 7 years ago

Sorry you had this experience! Wanna chat me up on discord and we can see what happened?

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skyefox (60) · 7 years ago

Yes please, I will contact you in the next 48 hours.

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ura-soul (75) · 7 years ago

Part of the purpose of my recent posts about expanding the witness voting page to go beyond 50 witnesses, is to do exactly what you are saying is needed here - to give other witnesses a fair chance to be found, voted for and to shine. I'm a bit confused as to why you removed your witness vote for me immediately after I publicly addressed this, since my actions appear (to me) to be in alignment with your stated objective. Maybe there is another reason, I don't know.

$0.93

8 votes

ijatz (45) · 7 years ago

Hello @ura-soul, and nice to Steem you! :-) Thanks for your ongoing efforts around democratizing the Witnesses ecosystem, it's much needed!!

Regarding this topic, would there be a way to integrate in steemit.com the platform @drakos built some time ago? (this one: https://steemian.info/witnesses), which is to date the most complete Witnesses vote management tool and overall dashboard.

$0.33

josephsavage (65) · 7 years ago

It's a great tool that I use extensively, and I only control 8 MV of proxy votes.

I find it hard to believe that any stakeholder with enough SP to move the needle is not going to be familiar with third party tools.

ura-soul (75) · 7 years ago

Aloha! Thanks! Yes, I posted a proposal for a new design for the witness voting page already, but did not receive any kind of feedback from the Steemit Inc. team - as with most of my other proposals.

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timcliff (73) · 7 years ago

I initially voted for you because I saw that out of the up and coming witnesses, you had a lot of potential to do great things.

I don’t really want to argue about the specifics of that particular change - but in my view it is not really the right approach to the problem. If you haven’t made a big enough “splash” for the larger stakeholders to notice you yet, then you probably need to keep working on your campaign. If you do make a big enough splash, then the stakeholders know how to vote for someone outside the top 50. It really isn’t as big of a deal as people make it, and I am speaking as someone who spent many months below the top 50 campaigning to make my way up.

I removed my vote because in my view you are not choosing to spend your time on things that are improving the platform for the stakeholders/users. You seem to be too focused on the things that specifically benefit witnesses, and things that are making it difficult for you move up.

ura-soul (75) · 7 years ago (edited)

Thanks for explaining. What I am actually focusing on is building Steem Ocean, which is an app that mostly only exists to deliver features that I think should be in Steemit.com but aren't. I have a long list of features to be added in to it that have been collated over a lot of work of talking to users and gaining feedback about what they want and need. Most of my research has sadly had to focus into understanding the black box system of Steemit Inc's feature delivery protocols, rather than on actually delivering features, since I get almost no feedback or answers to questions that are attempting to help the platform. I always get great support from the community for my ideas and they always say that we really need the features and changes I suggest. However the ONLY response I have had from anyone involved with the code is @ned saying that the idea to have witness vote decay was a good one and sneak just being sneak.

Along with having to deal with their tech manager's apparent mis-alignment away from the ideals that founded Steem, I have done what I can to find the time to deliver what the communty wants/needs - which has taken quite a lot of my spare time. I am also busy working with a client and considering SMTs for my own social network. Like you I am time limited here.

I think it's unfair to conclude that I am too focused on witnesses, since I actually only ever mention them in the context of bringing balance that is itself intended to maybe help average users get the features they need and maybe a fairer deal and better experience. I am actually posting as a user first and witness second. If you examine my utopian posts, for example, you will see that witness related ones are a minority.

$23.24

13 votes

stimialiti (60) · 7 years ago (edited)

I did not read your comment until the end.
One of the problems here is creation of "apps" instead of fixing and improving steemit itself.
Granted, creating an "app" is easier and more beneficial, but it does not improve the user experience of the majority, and it usually costs to use and dangerous.

$1.13

th3voter (57) · 7 years ago

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$1.22

proffit (58) · 7 years ago

You got a 33.33% upvote from @proffit courtesy of @stimialiti!

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luckyvotes (38) · 7 years ago

You got a 21.71% upvote from @luckyvotes courtesy of @stimialiti!

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adriatik (51) · 7 years ago

You got upvoted from @adriatik bot! Thank you to you for using our service. We really hope this will hope to promote your quality content!

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sleeplesswhale (39) · 7 years ago

You got a 10.00% upvote from @sleeplesswhale courtesy of @stimialiti!

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nnnarvaez (68) · 7 years ago

you are very good at using the bidbot app created by another witness that makes apps... to complain about a witness only creating apps...

I do agree condenser is open source and witnesses can mod it to add what is missing and run it in hopes there is adoption and his changes might find its way into the official thing or the witness can choose to run infrastructure for it.

maybe not everyone is willing to do it for a particular reason ?

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stimialiti (60) · 7 years ago

When I wrote "apps" I meant interfaces to STEEM which demand active key or posting key from their users.
I did not mean automatized services which at most charge per each use, in a transparent and aware manner like bidbots do.

The reason IMO for steemit/condenser being dumped in favor of "apps" is the corruption in the witnesses election process and the deep stupidity of most people.

$0.40

profitbot (25) · 7 years ago

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youtake (36) · 7 years ago

@youtake pulls you up ! This vote was sent to you by @stimialiti!

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delusionalmadman (57) · 7 years ago

This is why, you have my witness vote and the other man does not.

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josteem (58) · 7 years ago

Me too

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ura-soul (75) · 7 years ago

Thankyou! Though maybe if you changed your name to 'supersmartwiseguy' the PR value might be higher here. hehe ;)

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midfrost (33) · 7 years ago

Hahaha, in all honesty, the name "delusionalmadman" inspires a LOT more confidence in the concurrent era than does the name 'smartwiseguy', lol. :-)

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delusionalmadman (57) · 7 years ago

I lol'd

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knowledge4all (25) · 7 years ago

hahaha

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tibra (58) · 7 years ago (edited)

You have my vote! You're quite active in posting. That's a good thing. You're also clearly a libertarian; the more the merrier!

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travelalert (49) · 7 years ago

I'd like to know more about this steem ocean. It sounds really cool!

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therealwolf (75) · 7 years ago

If you haven’t made a big enough “splash” for the larger stakeholders to notice you yet, then you probably need to keep working on your campaign. If you do make a big enough splash, then the stakeholders know how to vote for someone outside the top 50

Exactly, @timcliff. That's what I tried to tell @ura-soul as well - but I wasn't taken serious due to my blessing with freedom's vote.

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ura-soul (75) · 7 years ago

No, you are judging me here - I did not say in any way that I did not take you seriously because of freedom's vote. I said very specifically and only that exposure comes as a result of being in the top 50 due to the vote page layout. The data points to corroborate that and testimony from some in the top 50 corroborates that. Clearly it is also important to receive votes from large stake holders and clearly not everyone is going to attract their attention, but the least we can do is give all witnesses an equal shot.

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sircork (64) · 7 years ago (edited)

"I removed my vote because in my view you are not choosing to spend your time on things that are improving the platform for the stakeholders/users. You seem to be too focused on the things that specifically benefit witnesses, and things that are making it difficult for you move up." - @timcliff

^ Today I learned ^

But, focusing on things that prevent witnesses from moving up, that are VALID and documentable in the data is EXACTLY what opens the platform up and removes potential "obstruction of justice" so to speak for ALL users.

I'd argue for @ura-soul on the topics he has chosen to take on, as I also take them on, WHILE he still builds SteemOcean and I built a voice for ALL people, ALL communities and ALL inclusive on the @SteemStarNetwork (since the last station fell into the hands of a closet-socialist exclusive elitist who stole the people's voice) and a worldwide steem exclusive, block chain transparent humanitarian aid organization in the form of the @YouAreHOPE Foundation that the meta community at large loves to support. AND we choose to also seek and expose truths and theories about potential truths to the people for the goal of platform operational "righteousness" at the same time, man. And that includes witness gaming, and vote collusion and all sorts of nasty big money at stake B.S.

So there's that.

But now I know why I have never gotten your vote, despite the amount of respect and even, dare I say, admiration, which I have always shown you.

I just don't have it in me to pretend in the face of glaring issues and blow bubbles and rainbows I guess.

$0.72

timcliff (73) · 7 years ago

Correct

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sircork (64) · 7 years ago

¯_(ツ)_/¯

sircork (64) · 7 years ago

Your credibility fell so many notches with me in this one word answer. Turns out you are just another "yes" man who is willing to "overlook" rampant corruption because to do otherwise and exhibit GENUINE conviction would sort of ruin your position among a gang that doesn't have much interest in real decentralization or equality, since you and them already got yours, it would be dangerous to be honest now...

timcliff (73) · 7 years ago

I can understand why you would be upset with my one word answer. I don’t think you understood what I was going for, but how could you since I only gave one word :)

I have gotten to know you somewhat well since I initially met you, and I like you as a person. I think you have good morals and want to use your life to help other people. I respect that.

I was mainly responding to your comment about me not voting for you as a witness. As you stated in your comment, you were correct that my not voting for you is based on the priorities that you are focusing on. I disagree with them, but I also respect your right to focus on whatever priorities you want. I also already know that neither of us is going to convince the other of our point of view on this matter - so there is not much of a point of “arguing”. My one word response was basically an expression of that.

I’m not really sure what corruption you think I should be fighting, but in general “fighting corruption” is not really one of the things that I see as an important role of my witness duties - so if you see that as being dishonest - then this may be another area where we agree to disagree.

As a witness I feel that it is more important for me to focus on what parts of the protocol are allowing corruption to take place, and whether I should be advocating for or against any particular changes based on that. If there are any points to discuss in this area - I’m happy to share my views.

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inalittlewhile (54) · 7 years ago

Tim you have my proxy but I'm going to have to remove it. You'll still have my vote, and learning who I want to vote for will be a benfit though time consuming.

The reason I speak up is to address your point about competition and Bernie's point about witnesses that engage on the Steemit blockchain.

We have a recent new witness: @qurator

IMO it's tough to find a witness that contributes or cares more about Steemit than @scrooger (including his entire team).

My 2 cents, and I hope more people consider them for a top spot.

scrooger (66) · 7 years ago

Thanks for the shout out man! I really try!

Even in this dark times I am buying steem to keep Qurator's leases going. The price will recover and then all will be supporting itself again. The idea for the witness was to show we are serious and we want to help make a change. Promote quality posting and control it, monitor it. Sad to say but to do what we need people and funds to pay them. That is what the witness is for, generate funds so we can pay people to help make a difference!

Viva la Steemit!

inalittlewhile (54) · 7 years ago

No problem @scrooger. You deserve it and it shows. There are two sides (at least) that I consider before giving my support.

The quality of the service. Meaning its purpose and effectiveness. A+ there.
The demeanor of the support staff. A++ there.

It's not all about the service, but the people who run it. I've never seen anyone on your team treat people with anything but the utmost respect and consideration.

$0.09

scrooger (66) · 7 years ago

Appreciate it man, means a lot. Will be sharing this comment in our meeting room!

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timcliff (73) · 7 years ago

Sounds good. Thanks for letting me know. I’m happy to hear that you are taking witness voting seriously, and voting for the ones you think will do the best job.

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veerall (50) · 7 years ago

TO BE FRANK: 98% of the whales are not contributing anything. Meetups are "Bilderberg" style, just for the rich or for whales that are single or for members who are good at ass kissing of whales.. Witness are miners..
Steemit is becoming a CENTRAL BANKING SYSTEM

introvertspeaks (51) · 7 years ago (edited)

The human greedy instinct is constantly at play from centralized platforms and now even on a blockchain. Human beings are a certified cancer wherever they are.

nathen007 (68) · 7 years ago

Be a witness mate, my vote is waiting for you

veerall (50) · 7 years ago

we never belonged to this planet.. it was safer when we werent around.. all we have done is destruction in the name of modernization..

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lyricalinus (37) · 7 years ago (edited)

Totally agree with you , only way for them to get rich and powerful is through our creativity and hard work. We should know our worth and stop feeding greedy people that are willing to suppress the flow of information for financial gain

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ijatz (45) · 7 years ago

Hello @veerall, nice to Steem you! What I really appreciate in this kind of threads, even more than their initial or central topic, is the opportunity they create to discover like-minded Steemians, as far as the future and the governance of the platform are concerned :-) I'm gonna follow you from now on.

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mikefromtheuk (56) · 7 years ago

Steemit has a dark side, it could be it's undoing.

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sircork (64) · 7 years ago

Fact

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anthonyadavisii (70) · 7 years ago

Had something to add.

@timcliff funded the creation of @steemflagrewards and has been a consistent supporter.

That 6 Steem has led to much more worth of rewards being returned to the reward pool from scammers and abusers via our crowdfunded abuse fighting system and discord flag mention comment reward mechanism.

It would be awesome if other large stakeholders would be willing to help this flag incentivization iniative so we can further quell and deincentivize abuse.

Also, @berniesanders, thank you for what you do. I can think of anyone that does as much as you do to counter abuse and the manipulative asshats that live on Trending.

Lastly, thank you for your support of @flagawhale in supporting the quest against one of the foremost reward pool manipulator.

ezimedia (36) · 7 years ago

Thanks for doing all that you are doing..

$0.00

dimagogroup (0) · 7 years ago

$0.00

transisto (74) · 7 years ago

$9.89

9 votes

anthonyadavisii (70) · 7 years ago

Hey @transisto,

Wanted to fill you in on one contribution.

@pfunk has been a delegator and supporter of @steemflagrewards since nearly it's inception so there is that. We really appreciate it and it benefit the community.

There are quite a few using the functionality it is offering to fight abuse. Would appreciate your consideration for support as well.

$0.00

transisto (74) · 7 years ago

He's delegating what? 500 SP?

$19.09

anthonyadavisii (70) · 7 years ago (edited)

Ha, I wish. We've had 200 SP from him but we have had a couple more from others (@lyndsaybowes, @sherlockholmes, and @pjau) recently thankfully.

We were just starting up so it really helped us deal with the BW issues but now it is part of the momentum for the mentions upvote function.

I know from your perspective the amount may seem trivial but it's made a difference to the flaggers we have been rewarding with it. More VP means we can spread it out even further.

$0.00

crimsonclad (66) · 7 years ago (edited)

I appreciate that you're opening this conversation, and that you're also looking for people who care about this platform in earnest. Admittedly, as I'm part of the @followbtcnews witness team, I have a bit of a bias towards the work and attitudes we have towards the platform, obviously 😊. What I can say is we've been in the top 20 for three weeks now, so we are absolute outliers among the rest of this collection of people — that the 'rules' for us have been a bit different from others — but I'm okay with that. We came here to work; if this was all about the money, I'm pretty sure I personally would not have gone the community/witness route, that's for damn sure. We just put out an update talking about this sort of thing, so it's timely.

we test built a suite of tools including a keyword analyzer, a blockchain explorer, a mentions tool - we don't charge for any of them, but used common wants to better understand how to develop for the chain
Jeff is the vice chair of Minnowsupport, and I spend about 10-12 hours a day moderating in the Minnowsupport/SteemDevs/Writer's Block/etc. communities and connecting and developing new initiatives every day
we developed, and are re-developing a script and dashboard system that handles the delegations and tiered voting for the Minnowsupport project at our own cost, which is thousands of incoming delegations of all amounts on the fly. We're redeveloping it now to release it to any community on the chain to encourage manual curation efforts in niches, and to bring an easy-to-use spam blacklist system to everyone and anyone... with the ability to "click on" one or more trusted blacklists and make sure no accidental autovotes are given to an account the community at large has identified as a problem
we host, manage, moderate, and develop Steem.chat and take on all associated costs with that
host upgraded seed and witness nodes and backups
host and manage a full public 512GB RPC node, and split costs with MSP
we're working on two large scale projects around greater adoption and better ease of use of the blockchain — one complimentary to steemit, one in place of steemit. These are huge labours of love and they have taken enormous amounts of our time and most of our "profits"
we've been plugging away at completing pull requests for Steemit for things that people really want that no one has been willing to do or pay for (case in point, a recent one for on site avatar and banner uploads. The little things that really turn people off about this platform that just keep getting ignored)

Is it enough? Honestly, like @timcliff has said here... compared to @jesta? Nah, it probably never will be. But, in a few months, we've not actually made a profit: we put it all back into the chain in one way or another. Our power-downs basically pull just enough from the account to keep paying the thousands of dollars a month in servers alone, and for all the of the dreams we have to make the chain better. We know we have to prove ourselves as the "newcomers," and you better believe it's not a complaint, but I also know we've had a much harder climb than some others and I'm proud of it. I look forward some day, that if we have the chops to stay up here, maybe getting enough profit to power up my account so I can also do a bit more content creation and voting around the platform to reward the people who make this place great.

$5.71

carsonroscoe (61) · 7 years ago

I for one really appreciate the work you do @crimsonclad and @followbtcnews. MSP was a really great introductory to Steemit, and you personally helped me a lot when I was first learning how it all works around here. You two seem to take on so many projects and responsibilities, it's admirable.

Honestly, @jesta is on a different level. Reaching for the top is always great, but some people are just a step ahead. I'm still fairly new around here, but if we had more folk like you two and @netuoso in the top 20, I could see Steem really thriving as an ecosystem.

drakos (70) · 7 years ago

Attagirl :)

$0.02

littlescribe (65) · 7 years ago

I think we take you guys for granted, frankly.

$0.02

sircork (64) · 7 years ago

I'm glad to see this, even if I think the msp tie isn't going to impress Bernie much, but as for speaking up about how hard you work, excellent! Well done. I knew you had it in you!

It wasn't lost on anyone that Follow and you got the nicest assessment in the OP.

$0.00

crimsonclad (66) · 7 years ago

Not trying to impress Bernie; just addressing Bernie. He, like everyone else, will make his own decisions to vote regardless of what proselytizing is done by myself and the masses, and regardless of what anyone may be saying they're going to do here on the chain.

$0.00

sircork (64) · 7 years ago

None of us here expected Bern to read our stuff, I'm still glad to see you owning all you do out loud, for some well deserved notice.

$0.00

gtg (70) · 7 years ago (edited)

@gtg - WHO?!? (Hasn't used Steemit in 25 days)

You mean that I haven't posted for that long?
Yes that bothers me too.
That's because I'm busy working on a better and faster infrastructure.

I heavily disagree

but I'm upvoting anyway, as voting for witnesses is a really important thing... and that's kind of a promotion after all.
Asking question: "what are those guys doing?" is also important part of a decision making process during voting.

$3.90

14 votes

berniesanders (77) · 7 years ago

OP updated - when will this "better and faster infrastructure" see the light of day?

$0.72

gtg (70) · 7 years ago

Most of its parts - never. I'm not a fun of the light of day.
It's my infrastructure for block production.

But of course that's not all, some of it can be accessed actively (like RPC services gtg.steem.house / api.steem.house) some are served as test-drives for various entities that want to run their services on steem (you've used one of such endpoints directly at some point, remember? :-) )
I have huge delays with switching to json rpc 2.0 and that's because I'm still serving to some obsolete clients (bots, and services) suffering with poor performance for the sake of backwards compatibility (yuck!). Preliminary tests are very promising (including upcoming appbase and rocksdb).
But hey, that should be in my witness update post, not here :-P

Btw, that looks like @timcliff's Evil Brother's "The Reports from the Witnesses" ;-)

$1.60

8 votes

thenomadictales (56) · 7 years ago

Really appreciate biggies answering to basics. Thanks and stay blessed

$0.00

etemi (59) · 7 years ago

Good question

$0.00

sircork (64) · 7 years ago

That's a very high road position to take man. Super respectable and admirable.

$0.00

pharesim (74) · 7 years ago (edited)

Generally a good idea to highlight this issue once in a while. A bit more research before would have been nice, but who expects nice from you :D

My projects are listed behind my witness link. Alone the full node costs thousands, not counting in the time for upkeep. Of course a lot is automated, but I still need to keep it running. Check the availability of my services, you don't get there by slacking.
And it's taking heavy load, so it's not just for fun.
Steeminvite and steemdice are used a lot, I keep trying to spread the reward pool out, and I work with several parts of the community. More things are planned, not announcing them though.

If all this is nothing is luckily up to the community who actually knows about those things to decide, not just you.

I agree with your point that PEvO doesn't move fast. That's because it doesn't get the support from the scientific community that I hoped. I paid someone full time last year who went around conferences, and while he got some nice words about how great the idea is, in the end all scientists really care for is funding for their own research. Can't blame them, but he threw the towel.
The idea stands and I'm still up to realizing it with the right people around, but I won't force a project into existence that isn't designed perfectly, I always made that clear.

$3.81

tibra (58) · 7 years ago (edited)

@pharesim I've been voting you for witness. I'll continue to do that. Thank you for supporting the science community on Steemit.

PEvO is something I'll have to check out. And soon. It looks excellent. Was told about it by @lemouth; but I've yet to check it out.

One issue which I suspect you're running up against is that those who are tenure track are required to publish one to three papers a year in a small list of appropriate journals. The list is according to the field.

Then open access preprints will be placed on arXiv, bioRxiv, or a university homepage. Or if it's desired to publish the peer reviewed copy without a paywall, an institution will generally subsidize the 1500$ to 2000$ open access fee. Therefore many scientists have an unfortunate lack of incentive to make the switch.

I strongly agree with you that getting peer reviewed journals on a decentralized blockchain basis is the most sustainable and cost effective and transparent way to do academic publishing with peer review and handle priority in the future. Free archiving of the paper and comments. (I wrote my first Steemit post on this subject.)

The good news is that the above incentives problem applies only to those who are not financially independent or have not yet gotten tenure . . . I'll come and chat after I learn more about the project. I may have some ideas about making use cases and getting around the incentives problem in general. If the user experience you've planned is good, I'll try to get information about it placed in several journals, and see what happens.

$0.00

pharesim (74) · 7 years ago

Thank you! I'm looking forward to talk to you when you've done the research. If possible please join the discord linked on the website.

$0.09

littlescribe (65) · 7 years ago

@pharesim, sorry to commandeer a little here, but did you notice @art-universe made a pretty sexy painting of you?

here's a link to the original post if you wanna go give it an upvote.

$0.42

pharesim (74) · 7 years ago

Omg no. Thank you for the notice!

$1.27

erinna (50) · 7 years ago

@pharesim i'm new member.l have heard many of about you.you are one of helpful person in steemi.i post introduceyorself and have details me.support me in this platform.

$0.00

cthkrn (47) · 7 years ago

Yep, That's why I voted for him as a witness!

$0.00

lemouth (72) · 7 years ago

One issue which I suspect you're running up against is that those who are tenure track are required to publish one to three papers a year in a small list of appropriate journals. The list is according to the field.

I think that people are ready to change, if they have options. Options are coming. They are even there (check scipost.org).

Where PEvO could also help is with respect to the referee that no one cares about (and who worked like hell for free). I should maybe write about that, one or the other day.

$0.00

dorth (58) · 7 years ago (edited)

I don't know what you do on steemit @pharesim. All I know is the fact that with the help of steeminvite, i've been able to get 3 people instant accounts and I'm not stopping. So I don't know where @berniesanders 's sources are.

$0.00

geekgirl (72) · 7 years ago

Curie does indeed try :) 24/7 that is. Thank you.

$2.21

8 votes

rasamuel (63) · 7 years ago

Hey @berniesanders, I actually think curie deserves a lot more than At least they try. Curie is the reason a lot of users stay on this platform, by rewarding mostly under rewarded people. I'd say a lot more, but I believe you know already. Cheers.

-Ras

$1.31

berniesanders (77) · 7 years ago

I'm very familiar with Curie and their history, much more than most, hence my pessimism about their project at this point.

$0.71

etemi (59) · 7 years ago

I may not be familiar with curies history as you @bernie but i second this dudes notion, curie is the reason why most authors are still on this platform and if we have 5 more of then witnesses doing same project as curie i believe our vision of hitting that amount of people on steemit which would in turn increase the price of one steem would be achieved.. Curie stabilizes most authors to a point where they can stand on their own and not get discouraged he deserves to even go upper than the position he is.

rasamuel (63) · 7 years ago

Well then i guess you know something i don't, but the fact is undeniable. Btw why don't you run your own witness, might be a way to get you to show the kind of genuine love you did for the community in the past, and guess what, I'd totally vote for you!

$0.00

berniesanders (77) · 7 years ago

I do run witness @nextgencrypto which is sitting in slot #51 current - I don't do THAT much to contribute so don't promote it to try to go higher.

$1.02

drakos (70) · 7 years ago

Your secretary does.

Bernie's Secretary / Vote For @nextgencrypto At Witnesses!
https://steemit.com/witness/@berniesecretary/26tfbn8u

$0.00

yesaye (53) · 7 years ago

Entertainment counts. :P

$0.00

jotmax (54) · 7 years ago

I used to think your were someone to be avoided.
My support is nothing but you have it from now.
🦄

$0.00

paradise-found (69) · 7 years ago (edited)

I didn't know you run a witness. You have my vote!
And I had one vote left - perfect!!
You do more than most, don't sell yourself short!!

$0.00

artopium (66) · 7 years ago

@rasamuel I agree! I think @curie is the best. They are the biggest reason I stayed!

rasamuel (63) · 7 years ago

See, Bernie. Cheers, @artopium.

$0.00

kilbride (55) · 7 years ago

This is my observation of Curie. I think it is a great concept, but, like every other part of this platform it has checklists that get gamed. I have seen people who are curators or reviewers making comments to prospective submissions to the effect of "This is a great piece, I'm on the line and its probably @curie quality but I'm trying to move up in my rank and I need to get a 90% or 95% accepted to move up in rank. ". What may have been put in place as a way to discourage spammers from overloading curators with shitposts seems to have turned into a disingenuous kiss-up to try and play politics to certain curators. I don't know any of these people very well, and am not familiar with who might be more disingenuous (and I had some friendly support from some people in their discord chat when I got phished), but please tell me HONESTLY that you feel there is just a genuine " we celebrate quality posts " thing going on and not another , as Bernie calls it 'circle jerk'? I want these things to be real, I love cool, interesting stuff , but I just got the feeling after poking around a bit that it was just another pecking order game :/

$0.00

markangeltrueman (67) · 7 years ago

We genuinely are here searching for quality posts and that is all. There is no circlejerk or ranking. We do not accept suggestions of which posts to submit for review, all of the searching is done ourselves manually. It is a meritocracy. Curators perform well, find good quality content and they get to submit more posts per week for review. That's it. There are many curators working really hard as we believe in this platform and that quality content should be helped to be made visible as much as possible. If you would like to chat more about it and understand what goes on, then, by all means, pop into our discord channel.

$0.09

mattniblock (53) · 7 years ago

I'm totally with you @markangeltrueman and the @curie team. You've helped me get the word out on more than a few occasions and i thank you for that.

$0.00

lexiconical (72) · 7 years ago

"It is a meritocracy."

Other than the massive, socialist bias that you must have a tiny rep.

$0.00

https://steemit.com/video/@marinauzelac/cymatics-film-about-the-states-of-water-exclusive-on-steemit

markangeltrueman (67) · 7 years ago

Thanks for replying,

Sorry, I wasn't clear; internally it's a meritocracy - you perform well as a curator at finding posts, you benefit from more submission slots.

However, id like to make a point on the rep thing with a recent example....

Rep hasn't been part of the guidelines for a long time. It's all reward based. There is the inherent probability that high rep authors receive more reward, hence they tend to not get curie upvotes but it does happen. It's not like the current curie upvote would particularly help out the majority of high rep authors anyway; the average curie upvote at the moment is around $30-$40 which is pittance compared to what most high rep authors are getting (high rep being 60 or above from my point of view)

$0.00

carlgnash (69) · 7 years ago (edited)

Hi @lexiconical, you have been on the platform for a while so I assume you formed your opinion about @curie when there was in fact an upper REP limit. For some months past now the upper REP limit has been removed entirely; Curie now upvotes exceptional content by authors who have been persistent/consistent with little reward lately (any REP). I invite you to join the Curie Discord server if you want to see the most up-to-date guidelines. For reference the old REP cap was REP 52 - I just ran a query on Curie upvotes from past week.
Curie upvotes on REP less than or equal to 52 in past week:

Curie upvotes on REP > 52 in past week:

Lest you think I cherry-picked the data by choosing REP 52 as the cutoff, here is same thing (past week Curie upvotes) for REP 60+:

I don't think this fits very well with the narrative that Curie "only supports lower REP". As I know you to be a thinking person I hope you take the time to inform yourself of Curie's current operations. Cheers - Carl

$0.00

misterakpan (61) · 7 years ago

That's a rather absurd claim.

"This is a great piece, I'm on the line and its probably @curie quality but I'm trying to move up in my rank and I need to get a 90% or 95% accepted to move up in rank."

Do you mean a curator comments on a post, that it is fairly decent BUT that s/he wouldn't submit it because he has a score to maintain? That sounds really ridiculous as curators would typically skip posts that fail to pass their personal judgement of exceptional and good enough for a curie, without having to write that stuff you made up. I think it is unfair that you used that as the sole basis to discredit a system (the curator scoring) put in place to manage Curie's very very limited voting budget. A dynamic quality bar adjusts according to the quality/quantity of posts under review at any given time, and the available voting power. Trust me it's a difficult balance to maintain in a community where all the influence is battered while there is a pressing need to reward actual creators who put in the time to create valuable content. I will implore that you take the time to go through curie guidelines and read her white paper; and talk to a few curators in the Discord server and have all your doubts and uncertainties dissipated.

$0.06

kilbride (55) · 7 years ago (edited)

I agree, that it is not fair to pass judgement on the whole system. I did see the version of the comment I wrote several times. I'm not sure of the titles of people (ie reviewer vs curator etc) exactly but it was in this way: 1. a post was submitted in the chat 2. Somebody who appeared to have authority to allow submissions or deny them to pass up for further inspection did actually write out the explanation that the post was very great and they were tempted to select it, even saying that it might be picked up by someone else, but that they were going to pass because of a percentage they were trying to hit. Like I said, I don't fully understand the system, and I also %100 understand that there had to be 'funnels' put in place because people who really just want to make money will burden you with low quality submissions- I have seen what you deal with, just as i see what Steemcleaners and others deal with. Its tough. But, I am very observant and noticed that underlying, disingenuous sort of political game play and it kind of turned me off. The idea of helping point out great content really appealed to me, but I don't want everything I do in life to become a game I have to play with people clamoring for some sort of inorganic authority. I honestly thought long and hard about even mentioning it , and I thought about bringing it up in the chat itself, but pointing out that someone is being pretentious publicly is not a way to come to an understanding, and honestly I thought I may get on some 'bad list' if I criticized and Curie is a large presence.

$0.00

geekgirl (72) · 7 years ago

I think you misunderstand how the process works, that is where the confusion is coming. May I invite you to read the whitepaper at curiesteem.com which explains how everything works in details. Also, as others mentioned feel free to drop by on discord and ask anything. I will be happy to help.

Only curators can propose posts, and posts are not proposed in chat. They are proposed on streemian.com/guild/curie. Anybody can become a curator, just need to be recommended by one of the top curators. I hope this helps.

$1.35

kilbride (55) · 7 years ago (edited)

But my claim is not absurd, it is what I saw on several occasions. I don't appreciate you saying I made it up . I am not a troll or any sort of an antagonist, and I have nothing specifically against Curie. I just said above I shy away from those sort of political games and that really stuck out to me.

$0.00

dorth (58) · 7 years ago

Well, I do understand your stance. With what I see you say, I believe it's a case of you yourself trying to "game" the system in some ways. Ordinarily, what curators do is to look for deserving posts all around (organically). When it comes to the case of you suggesting a post to a curator, you probably are putting them on a tension. Note one thing. curators are paid for each posts submitted and accepted, soa curator would ordinarily want to have "submittable" posts in his reach. Apart from getting paid for each post, your level of accuracy in your suggestions would open up more priviledges to you (at least, no sin in an encouragement for a good work done). Conversely, your poor performance would only invariably earn you a lower position (those checking posts, i.e reviewers can't afford having undeserving posts submitted to them by a large number of curators all around). I have felt this when I told a friend to suggest posts to me and it looked like i aas wasting my time in checking them. So, for me, if anyone trully told you what was said, they have the right to it as yhey are working with a stated standard (which is openly stated in the curie guidelines).

Ordinarily, all i tell anyone looking for a curie vote is that instead of bringing your post to me, use the appropriate tags relating to your post (there are many curators out there hungry for unrewarded quality posts) and if I don't see it or I couldn't decipher what the quality in the post is, another curator would see it while doing his own search and do the needful. Infact, this has happend to a user I know. He received 3 curies right under my nose (i couldn't decipher when his post is deserving mainly because I am not an authority in vetting his type of content.

In the end, @kilbride, I advise that you just keep makimg your content (quality) and do so as it there was no @curie guild in place and when your post is deserving, someone would gladly come for it. You are still young on here, just about 2-3 months in.

$0.00

kilbride (55) · 7 years ago

I dont think you understand what I was saying. I wasnt trying to game the system or really even very concerned with participating. The comments I saw were not in response to anything I submitted, I was just checking out the chats and asking questions, along with seeing what people were doing. I was recommended to steemit from a friend who had not really spent much time on it, she just thought I would like it because Im very active in creating discourse on FB and she liked my writing. I had no intention of this being my job . I found Curie one of the more interesting aspects and spent some time checking it out, just the same as I did when I found steemcleaners. I saw a similar gaming there, but it is no reflection on specifically Patrice or even the moderators. If I come across something organically I report it, but I noticed people who were 'looking' for particularly large accounts to report so they could make money. I may have submitted two things to Curie and I had no expectation, and my thoughts were that I would just organically submit when I came across stuff, which I still probably will. Once again, I just felt like those comments made it feel disingenous, and no matter how pure the intent is with anything there will be people who create a disingenious experience trying to move up a 'ladder'. That was my comment and Ive seen plenty of response from people that seem very sincere, so that is a good sign ✌ I dont even like the mentality that people are 'making content', it actually feels like one of the most inorganic things about many of these types of social media. I feel like we should just share when we have something we feel is worth sharing, not because we are on a regiment of content making. I am in no way 'making content' specifically with the idea of any specific parameters except interesting and comprehensible, or because I might learn something and want to pass it on 😉

$0.00

dorth (58) · 7 years ago

I see you actually write a lot...lol. it costed me much to do what I did up there but it kinda comes easily with you. Thanks for understanding my stance as I have understood your stance too.

$0.00

kilbride (55) · 7 years ago

Also, I remember names, but people seem like good people and just like they were behaving i n a not uncommon way to a reward system, so I prefer not to do it like that :/

$0.00

abh12345 (76) · 7 years ago

Ive been curating for @curie for 3 months now and must defend any accusations of wrong doing here.

I seek work that deserves more than a $ and which should make our trending pages shine.

Sadly, and even with the support of @hendrikdegrote, the @curie trail cannot get close to a 'promoted' article.

This is a sad state of affairs in my opinion.

I would hope that everyone finds room in their 30 votes to support this project.

$0.00

rasamuel (63) · 7 years ago (edited)

Feel free to find me at the curie discord server at any time, I'll be sure to clear all the above misconceptions.

Cheers,
Ras

$0.00

freebornangel (73) · 7 years ago

If you were chosen to be excluded by curie perhaps your opinion of them would be different?
Having been excluded from the very beginning, i was here when they started, they can kiss my,....

$0.00

rasamuel (63) · 7 years ago (edited)

Excluded? Curie, to my knowledge, excludes nobody. There was an upper reputation limit but even that is no more. There are guidelines, however, put in place to make sure the deserving user gets the vote, given the economics of voting power. But please how were you excluded?

freebornangel (73) · 7 years ago

This is an ongoing dispute between me and the reward pool rapists, it began when they announced that only approved speech would be promoted.

If you care to take the time to look back to see my posts about this topic from the fall of '16, be sure to reference the links so that i can use them in some new posts.
I know what happened, and dont care to waste my time looking for the posts.

Curie was invented to pick winners and insure losers made no rewards on platform, it continues to do so today.
Although i have reason to believe they did find some shame, at some point, and stopped acting so shamelessly as to vote themselves exhorbitant salaries from the reward pool on crap posts, but they have never supported dissenting opinions that i know of, and certainly not mine.

So, again, @curie, and all the other gangs that pick winners and losers, can kiss my,...

$0.00

geekgirl (72) · 7 years ago

It seems you have some deep hurt feelings from the past, that I am not aware of. While I am not interested to dig into the past to find out your reasoning, I can assure you Curie's mission was and remains to be "discovering promising authors with quality content that add value to the platform who constantly create quality content without much success and empowering quality curators". Curie tries to reach as many authors as possible with limited resources. I hope to connect more with you in the future, and perhaps you can tell me the stories of the past.

freebornangel (73) · 7 years ago

Wonderful, would you care to opine on my content?
Perhaps you would be more comfy with my nonprofit, they are less contraversial?
@freebornsociety

$0.32

geekgirl (72) · 7 years ago

lol most of your posts look like fall under politics or steemit related categories. Those wouldn’t fit the guidelines. Following you to get to know you and your works, but not for Curie purposes.

freebornangel (73) · 7 years ago

Exactly, but when @curie votes it's favorites the votes i do get are diminished in proportion to the sp involved.
When a whale votes everybody else loses money.
Dont believe me?
Ask @paulag, she didnt believe me either.

Thanks for what attention you give me in the future, if any, but the effort you put into @curie is taking bread out of my mouth, so forgive me if i dont stop proclaiming that fact.
Like i forgive you for hiding your head in the sand to get your own bread.

hitmeasap (71) · 7 years ago

These are the witnesses I vote for:

aggroed
ats-witness
ausbitbank
fyrst-witness
lukestokes.mhth
neoxian
nextgencrypto
patrice
pharesim
steemgigs
teamsteem
themarkymark
therealwolf

I would never vote on someone just because others told me to do it, so I carefully vote for witnesses and I do it for various reasons. Things I consider to be contributions.

However, it's not that easy to figure out what some witnesses are doing nowadays, even if I knew what they did earlier. I'll make sure to look into these witnesses I vote for and update the list if and when I believe it's necessary.

Thanks for writing this bernie. Hopefully, some of these witnesses will respond.

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zool237 (48) · 7 years ago (edited)

Interesting. I love Bernie's post and like yours though it's in considerably less depth of course. Being relatively new, I don't really know half of these characters so can't vote for any of them in good conscience, I feel. And if the system's as screwed as Bernie says it is then I'm glad I'm not doing. I must admit to voting for resteemable (who mustn't be on the list I guess) as I use that for resteems for everything I'm trying to curate / my own posts. At a push, I may vote for steem-cleaners (and their staff) but the jury's out right now for them for various reasons.

Should a good steemian do his bit and use his 20 votes? Is choosing not to vote worthy (if you think like Bernie above / have no real idea as to who you might be better off voting for)?

pharesim (74) · 7 years ago (edited)

You have a total of 30. There's absolutely no need to use them all, only vote who you're comfortable with.

If you don't feel like you want to keep up with all the characters, you can also proxy your votes to someone you trust.

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zool237 (48) · 7 years ago (edited)

Yeah, I heard about the proxying. But then again, other than resteemable (whose personal politics I know nought of but who I feel I may forever be indebted to), I wouldn't have a clue who to choose to be the one.

Hence, I guess I'll go with your first suggestion for the foreseeable future. I just wouldn't want current voters to suddenly decide they might not know enough about those they're currently voting for (on seeing my comments here or Bernie's, even), decide to remove the votes they've cast and the whole thing then falls apart.

I'm sure it'll never quite come to that though! ;)

gtg (70) · 7 years ago

You can chose up to 30. You can also retract your votes or change them at any time.
20 most voted witnesses are those called "active" they take part each round in a block production.
Yes, good Steemian is expected to vote for good witnesses (or as @pharesim suggested - use proxy to delegate such judgement to someone else you trust to make a good choices on your behalf)

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cortexx (57) · 7 years ago

it's hard to argue if we are clouded with emotions, what would be the most efficient and productive engagement to solve this issues?

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jademont (68) · 7 years ago

The community really needs people like you!

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heyimsnuffles (67) · 7 years ago (edited)

Yes they Do!

Unfortunately we do not have many, and until the people in the likes of all of us commenting here band together and actually start flagging and growing this community it may be in a standstill.

All of these commenters are the real people here and the ones that will make the difference.

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steemitadventure (66) · 7 years ago

This reminds me I have to clean my witness votes and vote for you, at least you bring up points that not many others will.

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sircork (64) · 7 years ago

Oh some of us bring them up all the time. It's just that part of the problem is you have to be Bern's size to be seen and heard.

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qurator (76) · 7 years ago

It is hard to tell what others do and most people do not search enough or even have any idea that witnesses exist. We know it is gonna be very hard for a project like Qurator to get noticed by the players.

Hmmm... What do we do? What we do is good!

Well, we are a small team and trying to make a change is not always easy. We do TRY though. Manually reviewing one member at a time to join our project. If they post crap, they never qualify. If they post original content with the correct images sourcing, then and only then do they join the Qurator project. We do try to monitor people after they have joined, we know they get lazy and start posting low quality content just to get their daily upvote. We warn and we kick. Quality/originality all the way or GTFO.

The Qurator project has been around for exactly 200 days now (our 200th edition will be posted today) where we steem day in and day out showcasing original content. Hosting weekly and bi-weekly competitions to help promote and motivate members to keep posting good content.

New to the witness scene we know we are not perfect and we do not make THOUSANDS. With the recent price of steem we barely break even. We are not going to spam with comments/wallet messages to get a witness vote. We will get them naturally from our members and real supporters. This might take forever but we will rather do it the right way.

We have been steeming daily, not just here but on Discord as well, actively chatting and helping members be just a little better with each post.

All our profits goes towards our members. WHY? Because as flawed and circle-jerky as Steemit might be, we feel there are some quality and integrity left. Even if we sometimes have to hang around in our little Qurator bubble where the drama is minimal and the upvotes are shared with love instead of hate.

So yes, we might not code. We might not fight spam as hard as others do. We promote and motivate those who know they post original content, and want just a little more recognition for their hard work.

So yes... That is what we do, that is how we try to make Steemit just a little bit better.

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charles1 (68) · 7 years ago (edited)

This is indeed a good point of discussion and soul searching for steemit community (all of us) and the witnesses. I do like @jesta a lot and started using his / her apps on steemit when I was new and loved it. @good-karma is head of esteem (I guess) , @timcliff is a real gent, @blocktrades is the wallet and exchange guy...lol , and many more. Some do add big value here but not all. Thanks for sharing

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berniesanders (77) · 7 years ago

And WTF is esteem?

@blocktrades is more than a wallet guy - he runs a ripoff exchange - please do your due diligence before using his site

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charitybot (63) · 7 years ago

Having to use blocktrades to make a round-trip trade out of and back into steemit makes me think it would be more fun to grab a pile of money and just burn 30-40% of it in a bonfire on the beach and try to make some revenue back from uploading videos of it. At least there's a chance I would recoup some of the cost.

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pathtosuccess (51) · 7 years ago

esteem is a mobile STEEM application people can use to access the site. You know, like the one that Steemit Inc claimed was a priority and hasn't delivered.

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berniesanders (77) · 7 years ago

Thank you, editing post.

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drakos (70) · 7 years ago

Really? You've been around this place for how long and you don't know what eSteem is?

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berniesanders (77) · 7 years ago

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drakos (70) · 7 years ago (edited)

I don't think those stars are representative. @good-karma has the highest witness votes count with 12,161, second is @jesta with 10,332 and @blocktrades comes third with 9,104. If they're that popular, they must be doing something with a high impact for users. Don't you think?

You can do all kinds of stats sorting by clickin on the column headers at https://steemian.info/witnesses

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berniesanders (77) · 7 years ago

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ura-soul (75) · 7 years ago

It's worth noting that good-karma votes for almost the largest number of accounts of any user on the Steem blockchain - every week, as you can see on steem ocean. 3467 accounts voted for in one week. I don't think it's fair to note that he has 12000+ witness votes without taking the full picture into consideration.
I'm not picking on him (or anyone), just adding a data point.

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cmoljoe (53) · 7 years ago (edited)

Esteem sometimes gives automatic upvotes (0.20$) when someone post article using the app. One of those upvoters is good-karma. That is reason for that high number of accounts he upvoted and probably why many of witness votes for him are coming from users of eSteem app.

BTW Esteem app is full of bugs. Tried to use it, but because of number of bugs I don't use anymore. Few people told me same story.

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Show 5 more replies

charles1 (68) · 7 years ago (edited)

Awwww Bernie , I always use @blocktrades for exchange purposes because it is fast and almost no fees...guess we do not have any other option here. Thanks for sharing

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greatestjourney (50) · 7 years ago

I'm kinda new to this but have heard bad things about Blocktrades. It's endorsed by Ned / Steemit Inc. as the main link when we sell / buy. How do we go about not using it and something else?

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fbslo (70) · 7 years ago (edited)

@someguy123 created steem-in-a-box/steem docker.
I think @gtg is runing full node.

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drakos (70) · 7 years ago (edited)

Slow down cowboy, many of the people in the top 20 are contributing more than you think. I can't speak for all of them and I won't go on their defense, they are big boys and I'm sure they can do it themselves. Suffice to say, they run community projects, review/correct code and other various involvements. Their work may not be always blogged about since it's happening behind the scenes. For instance, you can take a look at the Github, that might help you see who's doing what.

Granted, I'd like to see more public RPC nodes from them, but that doesn't make them bad witnesses. If you have a better list of people to replace them, please share it so we can all vote for them.

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berniesanders (77) · 7 years ago (edited)

Good try...nobodys going to acknowledge someone who provides 0 evidence besides "go look at github".

There is NOTHING happening behind the scenes here. Are you blind? When was the last time you saw any improvements to the blockchain?

Open your eyes, they're filled with shit.

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drakos (70) · 7 years ago

I gave Github as an example. I've known and interacted with many of them for a long time and I can tell you they're smart and competent people who do provide value in their own ways. You don't have to take my word for it, but I'm sure if you spend some time interacting with them (in a positive manner) you'd probably change your stance.

P.S. It's still early in the morning, there's plenty of time to hear their reactions. I'm eager as you are to read their responses.

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berniesanders (77) · 7 years ago

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drakos (70) · 7 years ago

You mean that very simple task that you can't do?

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sircork (64) · 7 years ago

thread of the day.

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berniesanders (77) · 7 years ago

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drakos (70) · 7 years ago

Good point, more like won't
😉

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paradise-found (69) · 7 years ago

That's why you are respected!!
Equal opportunity constructive criticism!!

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mysearchisover (70) · 7 years ago

I think the payment threshold should be lowered from 2 cents to 1 cent maybe even lower. I'm bummed that 1,000+ of my upvotes were worthless. :( People like you and haejin get all of your money but newbies lose every single one of their 1 cent rewards due to the 2 cents threshold. :( I thought when I joined steemit my votes were worth something. I didn't know until very recently that a lot of my votes got zeroed out.

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eirik (69) · 7 years ago (edited)

The voting should be changed to work more like in another DPoS cryptocurrency called Ark. (https://blog.ark.io/dpos-and-ark-voting-explained-68596a171ca1)

Let's see how it would look like on steemit:

User Alex has 100 SP.
Alex can vote for 1 witness with a weight of 100 SP assigned to that witness.
Alex can also choose to vote for 2 witnesses, but each witness would then only receive 50% of his voting weight.
As Alex continues to vote for additional witnesses, he reduces the weight he contributes to each of the witnesses proportional to the number of votes cast.
User Kevin has 20 million SP. Kevin can nominate his witness fairly easily. He may even be able to vote in 2 of his own witnesses, but rightfully so, he purchased 20 Million SP. What he can’t do is be guaranteed to nominate more than 8 witnesses before his weight is too diluted to maintain his position.
Kevin is a contained whale.

= not that much of circle-jerking anymore on the witness tab!

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teamsteem (74) · 7 years ago (edited)

If I'd be in the top 20, I'd panic because I'd feel like I could never do enough and I'm sure a lot of them if not all of them feel like it.

I wish I was better at publishing what I do and I'm pretty sure that's the case for every witness.

Anyway, I appreciate that post.

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destinysaid (67) · 7 years ago

Youre quite good at whar you do teamsteem:).

At least ive heard you speak, ive seen the emotion and energy you put into your work.

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kabir88 (60) · 7 years ago

We love you @berniesanders

I've finally got around to looking at witnesses and how they works. I've been trying to vote for those outside the top 50. Steem needs some new blood and to be open to all its new users.

If all the steem is controlled by just a few, it's no better than other corporate social media sites.

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leoplaw (67) · 7 years ago

Agreed, we need new blood at the top.

kabir88 (60) · 7 years ago

Or a new social network designed with a bit more forethought. It wouldn't take a lot just to copy steem and tweak it

leoplaw (67) · 7 years ago

There are hints that @dan is building something new, perhaps on EOS.

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cardboard (61) · 7 years ago

Oh bernie, never change <3

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holger80 (72) · 7 years ago

It is not true that @furion does nothing for steemit. He is a very active developer. Steem-python is based on his work. @furion has developed and operates steemdata which is a very costly server that hosts a mongo DB to access steem operations. Unlinke https://steemsql.com/ which costs 10 SBD per month, steemdata is completely free!

Please check:

steevc (73) · 7 years ago

I'll support witnesses I see doing good stuff here. Some of them may not make much as they are well down the list. Of course the system will get manipulated by those who control lots of accounts.

nnnarvaez (68) · 7 years ago

I run @castellano witness, aiming to represent the users of the language and the myriad small projects in hopes of creating a bridge between bigger projects and the user base to increase retention and educate steemians and encourage re-investment of their rewards to avoid extraction mining.

I'm just saying as you can find me in back of the classroom...

I also fight a lot and bitch and complain, i realized that and that is not really a good approach to create bridges so after my stent i came back as a sweet sheep who only raises hell when absolutely need to, and gave up in the witness political race and just keep the node churning blocks when happens to be its turn.

We have a council that tries to help and promote support to serious projects and to mediate between users to avoid flagwars.

610 active users support our deeds yet only 762 MV are behind them and most of those belong to the first 20 voters who are mostly other witnesses and some respected members of the community.

I run @reveur project and a miriad of sub-projects from there like @delega. We have a discord community

I don't have a lot of steem but i did invest as much as i could (around 12K SP spread around my account and the project's)

I try to build helpful bots for whoever needs them, try to help the cleaners, belong to @lince 's council (Spanish hybrid of Steemcleaners / Cheetah )

Since i seized full responsibility for the maintenance of the node (before i was sharing it with another witness to try and have some free time on my 25 hour days) We haven't missed a block and the price feed is properly kept.

I do not like bragging or self-promoting but i didn't want to miss this opportunity, and hopefully this will encourage some votes our way ?

In any case if you arrived here, thanks for reading!

schattenjaeger (71) · 7 years ago

@followbtcnews is now in charge of running steemit.chat, so I guess that's worth mentioning.

It's the best part about Steemit anyway.

berniesanders (77) · 7 years ago

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ilyastarar (64) · 7 years ago

@lukestokes.mhth (the witness account of @lukestokes) missed the least number of blocks among the top witnesses.

Witnessing Steem's block production happens to be the primary responsibility of a witness.

Other than witnessing blocks, Luke adds a lot of value to the community by educating us about cryptocurrencies frequently. His passion to promote Steem whereever he goes (and he speaks at many conferences) is priceless.

@timcliff is one of the most actively engaging witness who not only see technical side of the blockchain but also promotes Steem in beneficial ways.

I can say a lot about some of the people mention but Luke and Tim deserve more than what is written.
We need witnesses of different abilities and domains to have a balaced progress. Promoting Steem is important too. Only dev activity cannot take Steem forward.

bitgeek (62) · 7 years ago

Congratulations @berniesanders, this post is the second most rewarded post (based on pending payouts) in the last 12 hours written by a Superuser account holder (accounts that hold between 1 and 10 Mega Vests). The total number of posts by Superuser account holders during this period was 1248 and the total pending payments to posts in this category was $6353.76. To see the full list of highest paid posts across all accounts categories, click here.

If you do not wish to receive these messages in future, please reply stop to this comment.

statsmonkey (49) · 7 years ago

Congratulations, your post received one of the top 10 most powerful upvotes in the last 12 hours. You received an upvote from @smartsteem valued at 100.61 SBD, based on the pending payout at the time the data was extracted.

If you do not wish to receive these messages in future, reply with the word "stop".

moemanmoesly (67) · 7 years ago

@blocktrades gave me a $20 upvote in the past but i agree that a lot of these witnesses just watch the dollars roll in...

pharesim (74) · 7 years ago

Giving his votes should be the normal, not a gift...

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javirid (56) · 7 years ago

I disagree. Think witnesses tasks and activity in the community are two separate things. Upvoting someone post just because the content creator voted you as a witness is neither a gift neither a donation. It is paying back. And that's not good.

Content should be rewarded by its worthless, not because of personal interests.

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pharesim (74) · 7 years ago

Absolutely. And voting for a witness should neither be used to pay back for having received a valuable upvote

jamiekensell (53) · 7 years ago

I loved to read your personal opinions next to the top 20. Keep up the good work!

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rahulsaini (57) · 7 years ago

Point to be noted.

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resteemable (50) · 7 years ago

Your Post Has Been Featured on @Resteemable!
Feature any Steemit post using resteemit.com!
How It Works:
1. Take Any Steemit URL
2. Erase https://
3. Type re
Get Featured Instantly & Featured Posts are voted every 2.4hrs
Join the Curation Team Here | Vote Resteemable for Witness

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nightwind (38) · 7 years ago

I think we need alot of people with new ideas or steemit will tank along with most of the crypto .. No one mentions the stock market link, I have been watching it for quite some time now when the stock market goes up crypto goes down most of the time and when the stock market goes down crypto goes up I woud guess about 80% of the time.

What this means is the whales of the stock market are having some fun, If they think the stock market will go down they usually move their money to safe zones of stocks, now that amount is huge and can raise bitcoin by 1000s very fast. When the economy looks better and the stock market whales want to catch the upswing they unload in cyrpto take the mula and reinvest on the stock market low..

More easy said the whales of the stock market are now using crypto as a pump house.

The reason is that crypto although decentralized has no value unless it can be cashed in at some point in time to a government currency. When said governments decide you can not do that its all poof.

Is it property? The IRS says so.
Is it a commodity? The CFTC says so.
Is it a security? The SEC has yet to say so for sure.
Will there be an ETF? Coinbase is preparing one, but the SEC hasn’t approved anything yet.

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malay11 (61) · 7 years ago

Though steemit.com is decentralised but it is looking like a venture of some capitalist and centralised peoples who didn't know the true meaning of decentralised community.Because of this Growth rate of Steemit.com is not high.
Today we launch Appics ICO. On the occasion of great upcoming ICO we should promote Appics ICO as much as possible without wasting our valuable time.

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pharesim (74) · 7 years ago

Witnesses aren't connected to Steemit.com at all. We run the steem blockchain, and so our own work around it.

tuwore (53) · 7 years ago (edited)

Of course you want to make a point and want to poke the witnesses awake a little bit. To say they don't do shit is obviously false, but I agree that it would be nice to finally see them take a stance against reward-abusers like our dear friend Mr H. I hope this post can cause enough controversy to encourage these big players to take action...

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etemi (59) · 7 years ago

Most times some of these witnesses got to that position via politics and they dont actually do NOTHING. Most of the witnesses that actually contributes to steemit are not even on the top 20... But for those witnesses that are really doing something for steemit i really do appreciate their effort they know thyself!

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syncubate (50) · 7 years ago

This platform is inextricably tied to the perception of the Steem blockchain and its value in the overall crypto space. As long as it remains stagnant in its development, nothing the Witnesses do is of any substantive impact in that regard. The CEO of Steemit Inc hasn't even posted in a month.

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adigitalife (51) · 7 years ago

I'm relatively new to Steemit so I'm not sure what exactly witnesses are supposed to do. I know they run servers and make money from it. If that is all then how do I sign up for that? Of course, if there's more they should be doing then it's good to call them out.

However, isn't doing nothing still better than actively doing something that harms the platform and the community as a whole? If you're already getting paid to run servers that generate coins used by the community AND you sell your votes in order to collect a significant portion of those coins, isn't that like a conflict of interest or something?

I have come to understand that vote buying and bid bots are a bad thing for Steemit. If this is the case, then why would a witness, no less, be doing it? Or are vote buying and bid bots actually good things? Or is there simply no consensus on whether they're good or bad?

In any case, I may be wrong but I still feel there is something not right about witnesses selling their votes or renting their delegation out to bid bots.

In my opinion, at the very least, there should be transparency. I'd like to see clearly on the witness page who sells votes (either directly or indirectly through delegation) and who doesn't. People will then be better informed on the witnesses they're voting for.

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ijatz (45) · 7 years ago (edited)

Hello @berniesanders. nice to Steem you! A topic that comes in mind, related to the Witnesses universe and the clarity of speech on Steemit, is the fact that all videos uploaded on DTube disappear after a maximum period of 3 months... How many Steemians know that the IPFS storage isn't free of charge, and that DTube currently doesn't pay the due fee? That's why, for instance, a French Witness recently took the responsibility of setting up his own IPFS node (supporting its cost), to "rescue" the French-speaking videos previously posted on DTube.

It'd maybe be worth an article on its own.

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yesaye (53) · 7 years ago

Boy, it's not easy to impress bernie is it? xD

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berniesanders (77) · 7 years ago

For as much as they're making, they better be fucking doing something worthwhile, or else, they're just leeches.

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yesaye (53) · 7 years ago

lol I saw you didn't know @good-karma was running eSteem.
Thought you knew yet said that he doesn't do shit so it seemed like that.
Also,

@curie - At least they try...

lol c'mon kinda understated there.

@clayop - Supports the Korean community...avoids other races at all costs...

lmao

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berniesanders (77) · 7 years ago

Obviously if I would have known, I would have included it, that's why I made the update.

I have no problem being wrong and if any of these witnesses provide evidence that contradicts what I've said I'll update.

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yesaye (53) · 7 years ago

Oh I wasn't making fun. Just saying the reason why I felt you were being hard on some of the witnesses was a misunderstanding.
I agree 100% they need to interact with the Steemit community more, even if it's via other apps based on Steem.
After all, they're helping run it in the first place, so they should be the ones helping build the community in the first place.
I see most of the witnesses posting every so often though, so that's cool.

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charitybot (63) · 7 years ago

From a simple game theory perspective there's no way any individual generating steady income or retaining a large portion of the steem created would ever want to accidentally invite any users to the platform who would prove themselves to be capable of both reducing the geographical vulnerability of the network and improving the network by creating useful services that run on the blockchain. Competition is bad, mmmkay. But as an aggregate they would be better off trying to improve things because the market will eventually punish us for our hubris when other social media websites come to steal our ste... thunder.

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yesaye (53) · 7 years ago

tl;dr - the witnesses are selfish and they need to stop being so, else we're effed?

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charitybot (63) · 7 years ago

If there was any real competition for the positions then you'd start to see effort more equivalent to the amount the position pays out, otherwise it will stay looking like a bunch of seats that have been gerrymandered so hard that no one reasonable and new, even if over-qualified, will bother to try to get elected.

allcapsonezero (61) · 7 years ago

^^^ That about sums it up for me.

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kongen (7) · 7 years ago

What the fuck?! Who are you Berniesanders?
"@ausbitbank - Has a lot of Steem, doesn't do shit besides whine about vaccinations and other conspiracy bullshit."
Why the heck do you dare to say such shit?
If someone had an injection with a needle in the shoulder and you saw them start to have epeleptic seisures and collapse to the floor 2 minutes after, HOW WHAT THE FUCKIN CONSPIRACY IS THAT?! HUH!?

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kongen (7) · 7 years ago

Take yourself together when you write! you are probably one of those morons that think that the collapse of the twin towers is also just some theory!... what a nonsensical smartass duuschbag you seem to be! if you are not so, stop acting shitting like it! gaddamn saddam!

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kongen (7) · 7 years ago

you ruined the whole post for me by saying just that line about ausbitbank, and I dont even know him that well yet, nor you! so get your attitude together please. Its dripping with blood outside the liqour store!

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kongen (7) · 7 years ago

world trade center had 3 buildings blown up .. it was a demolition, which followed after the plane crashes.. the fires from the jet fuel did NOTHING .. it was thermite charges melting and cutting the steel, and explosives to blow the thing in a sequence.. And you dont need to do shit, other people already made the research and physics on it FOR YOU.. like me.. so give some credit or get out of here man! how old are you? i guess you are either 13 or 59 !

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howo (70) · 7 years ago

Lel

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freebornangel (73) · 7 years ago

Ganging up to pick winners and losers, @curie, @msp, @smartsteem, et al, disadvantages far more users than it benefits.
If they vote 1000 users a day, they didnt vote the other 59000, eh?
But they sure made the votes those others did get smaller because of their advantage in sp amounts, huh?

It also sets the gang's controllers up as the 'kool kidz', as shown by your kowtowing to them.

At least they are trying?

Better we tell newbs not to vote a post with more than a couple bucks on it, that would encourage far more minnows than selecting .0001% of authors to be winners, at the expense of all other authors.

Taking 'profits' from the reward pool for anything other than creating content voted by individual users is reward pool rape, imo.
The sooner we get this across to the majority of users the sooner we can lose the insider circle jerk/money grab reputation that cant be helping the price.

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dorth (58) · 7 years ago

I'm stunned with this level of hate you have for the @curie guild. Maybe as you said in one of your comments above, you have a long standing idea of the guild.I can't say more than tell you to update your idea of them. @curie by far doesn't fall in this category you have grouped it.

freebornangel (73) · 7 years ago

Excuse me?

Any gang that teams up to concentrate rewards to bestow on their favorites while denying disinterested third parties from getting rewards can kiss my,...
You do understand that when a whale votes everybody else loses money?
Dont take my word for it, ask @paulag.

Maybe you werent here when @curie launched with ned's posting key to rape the pool so that only approved speech could gather more than a few cents per post, but i was.
Perhaps you havent looked around at how delegations to the favored few/most willing to pay has decimated curation rewards for everybody else.

You know the current state of affairs as normal, but i was here when the whale experiment was proving that taking the highest staked accounts out of the math raised the bottom.

Maybe you worship wealth like it makes somebody a better person, idk.
But i know what ganging up does to rewards for those that dont play along and kiss the gangleader's ass, first hand.
All you got to do is look at how my rewards have dropped off with the advent of the vote bots, delegation leasing, and vote selling.
If those things put quality content on trending and drove searchers to steem for content, i'd bite my tongue, but the facts are the exact opposite.
We are a joke, and that wont change until the rules change.
As long as ganging up is the preferred way to make money here, real people will avoid steem like the f'n plague.
They get enough of that bs in real life.

I will update my opinion of @curie when they apologize for screwing everybody that called them on their bs and disbands, at least then they would have that going for them.

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kongen (7) · 7 years ago

make a post about it. send the link to me in memo

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freebornangel (73) · 7 years ago

My whole blog is about this.

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kongen (7) · 7 years ago

okay just relax then ..

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kongen (7) · 7 years ago

can you spare a few milis of a steem or sbd? 0.003 would be fantastic.. :) i need to make resteems but i am totally dry! .. ? ;D

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freebornangel (73) · 7 years ago

You cant buy your friends.

yehey (63) · 7 years ago

Being in Top 20 is like position in the pedestal, it will change only if @freedom un-vote them. Mostlikely not going to happen anytime soon.

Anyway, It would be nice to see them to run FULL RPC node as well. To those run with RPC, thank you.

Cheers to all Witnesses for your hard work.

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sapper11g (45) · 7 years ago

Vote @sapper11g as witness. Make Steemit Great Again! MSGA! This post is approved by sapper11g the Purple Heart Veteran.

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zemiatin (57) · 7 years ago

I'd like a few thousand dollars a month not doing anything. :D

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schattenjaeger (71) · 7 years ago

You have two options:

Politics.
Steemit Witness.

These two are very close to each other anyways. You can also easily transition from to the other.

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danyelk (69) · 7 years ago

Lol @schattenjaeger you nailed it your comment made me laugh a lot thanks for that but sadly it's true ;)

schattenjaeger (71) · 7 years ago

Glad I brought you joy.

danyelk (69) · 7 years ago

Yup you did and I am still amused :)))))

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schattenjaeger (71) · 7 years ago

I'm a goddamn fun engine, that's what they say.

danyelk (69) · 7 years ago

Looks like they are right because it's not easy to amuse me but you did you goddamn fun engine ;)
Have a nice weekend and stay blessed
Btw cool name it's German like me but we write it like this Schattenjäger.

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schattenjaeger (71) · 7 years ago

Yeah, I know it's spelled Schattenjäger. :)

Have a fun weekend, dude!

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Show 1 more reply

introvertspeaks (51) · 7 years ago

Steem witness is already an advanced politics.

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eprolific (65) · 7 years ago

Let put greed aside work for the betterment of the steem ecosystem. That is what the message of this post is all about

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libert (63) · 7 years ago

Well, that's true.

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taraq (44) · 7 years ago

Hlw steemit i read your post and i like your post wonderfull your post and use full this post
I upbot your post and follow you and back me

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phoenixwren (65) · 7 years ago

I don't pretend to know bupkis about the politics of Steemit, and I am unfamiliar with most of the witnesses (but have voted for I think 13 now as I have come across people who I like). But I was surprised to see you are not a fan of @blocktrades. When I was brand new, they big ass upvoted me twice, which not only paid my electric bill (I live way below poverty line, so that's huge to me), but it encouraged me to keep at it and start pitching Steemit to other people, because it had literally paid my electric bill. And generally, Blocktrades the exchange has cheaper fees, at least on BTC, than, say, Bittrex (though this was reversed during the highs because Blocktrades' fee adjusted whilst Bittrex's stayed the same no matter what the price of BTC was). Though again, I'm still rather a noob and so maybe there are better exchanges than either of those and I just haven't tried them yet.
I'm interested in your analysis, though, because I really do want to vote for the best, community-minded witnesses. Do you have a favorites list you could share, too?

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cryptopie (81) · 7 years ago (edited)

I hope to get some support from the witnesses that I had voted. I am in my one-man-team in helping myself raise funds for my medical needs. Hopefully some people will look over me and show support.

Update: Thank you @nextgencrypto @berniesanders God Bless you

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brianphobos (70) · 7 years ago

That was a very entertaining critique of everyone! I actually laughed pretty hard even though I don't agree on the assessment on everyone some seem to be true. Hahah

For some it is almost an automatic. They were witnesses for BitShares and then STEEM and then ultimately EOS. Which that is fine but it makes it hard to justify even attempting to run a Witness and trying to campaign for votes. A few have been able to successfully rise up.

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steemingmark (55) · 7 years ago

Who do you vote for @berniesanders?

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berniesanders (77) · 7 years ago

I admittedly have not looked at my list in quite a while, however, I plan to clean it up very soon here and then will post about who and why.

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steemingmark (55) · 7 years ago

At least your honest. I look forward to seeing that post please let me know when it us up thanks

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javirid (56) · 7 years ago

I don't bother if @jesta is active on the community. He is keeping steemstats.com working, and that's enough to me.

I haven't spent all my available votes for witnesses. That's because I only vote for people when I really found they are really worth to be voted. And it could be that way if they provide helpful content to the other members or provide any kind of service -like jesta or @blocktrades.

Recently I have decided to don't vote for witness who have opened their accounts less than one year ago. I have found atrend of people who have realized that the only ones who are earning money for sure are those who are paid, whatever their activity on Steem was. They are here for the money and that means they are not here for helping make Steem a better place. That's why I am not going to vote for their Witness candidature.

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bacchist (69) · 7 years ago

upvoted by gtg

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teutonium (62) · 7 years ago

Like everything on steemit i will do my own research about this topic, but you are asking the right questions, what a witness is doing is very important!! Why should a witness that isn't doing anything for the community still be in the top 20? Why should they be earning soo much money just for running a server without trying to make the community better?
If this is true i don't understand why witnesses don't try to do more!! i know they are earning huge amounts of cash atm just for posting/self-upvoting/ running the servers, but if they want to keep the steem blockchain up and running for many many more years, if they want to make this their job they should be trying to better it as best as they can!
I know i'm still new at all this steem stuff, my account is very young tbh, my vote isn't worth much, but still i want to see a future where steem is something world wide known, i don't have the power to make that happen but witnesses DO! they should be trying to make this platform the best it can be! It's their money on the line too!!

Cheers!

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tsnaks (63) · 7 years ago

I have noticed that people that only post about crypto currency market prices
and some more garbage
get the most recognition in steemit

Btw your post is really good i hope you give us more of this kind of content to keep us updated with what is going on in steemit !

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tryskele (64) · 7 years ago

Completely agree.

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clausewitz (60) · 7 years ago (edited)

Lets see some responses :)

But checking into it, I see that you have deep knowledge of steemit and how it is being run!

Could you / someone clarify how the witnesses actually make money, is it just passive rake ? in that case, I feel that you bring an excellent point to the table, and one many has overseen, at least me.

Do some digging, you'll see most of these witnesses with large holdings trade votes in order to ensure they stay in the top while contributing as little as possible to the Steem ecosystem.

Is there an optimal way to investigate this?

Peace to everyone @steemit let´s make the platform greater then what it already is <3

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berniesanders (77) · 7 years ago

Yes, it's completely passive, all they need to do is run a server and trade votes.

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kongen (7) · 7 years ago

So yes, we need to investigate and push for solutions to this problem, or these problems. But look at my other comments.. Why this? "@ausbitbank - Has a lot of Steem, doesn't do shit besides whine about vaccinations and other conspiracy bullshit."
Why? Who are you? Rockefeller wannabe someone? YOU ARE THE CONSPIRACY THEORIST BERNIE! Vaccinations are PROVABLY POISENOUS ! World Trade Center building 1, 2 and 7 was PROVEN to be demolished in a sequence.. NOT a result only of the plane collisions.. Damn, do some research. You should probably give some more credit instead of throwing names and accusations which are like fascist / communist shit spew!

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kongen (7) · 7 years ago

you are a disgrace.. the northern gods have forsaken your spirit now.. you will wonder and walk alone in the spirit world. You are dragging shitty toilet paper after you. Get yourself together now, say sorry to those you insult. Move on in the real matter.. Damn... Are you also one of the people trying to take away peoples ability to defend themselves? gooooooooooood dammmmmn..

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mejustandrew (58) · 7 years ago

Witnesses earn STEEM POWER by running witness nodes which is something like mining, but not so computational intensive. This is called staking and is used in Proof of Stake based blockchain when one is able to get rewarded based on its actual stake. Steem as a blockchain is a little bit different in this case, because the amount of stake that you are able to mine for does not depend only of how much stake you currently have, but it depends also of how much stake the people who have voted for you as a witness have.

If you look on steemd on some witnesses accounts, you will see the producer reward transactions. This is how they actually make money, and this is also generated from the same reward pool you are payed when you claim your rewards :)

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clausewitz (60) · 7 years ago

Thanks! I see, the pos reward varies with our votes due to our stake, I ll have to chose my vote with care :)

Peace & nice answer!

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itasteemit (58) · 7 years ago

now I've known them better. and I will change my witness's voice now.

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littlescribe (65) · 7 years ago

@pfunk and @timcliff use their steempower to delegate and upvote and sponsor contests and initiatives I've personally been the recipient of. @pfunk especially. So I dunno. Do they have to be developing, or adding content, or can't they just be going around spreading good cheer?

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mejustandrew (58) · 7 years ago

I am sorry to say it, but you need to do more research about at least (from my limited knowledge) one witness: @lukestokes.mht

I say this because @lukestokes and his witness acount are the same person. If you look at his posts, he is using quite a lot Steemit, sometimes with the declined payout option on his posts (option that very few people use these days), trying to contribute at the community growth and cohesion.

If I remember well (and I am sure I do) he has took position against @checkthisout's placeholders voted by @grumpycat and a lot of stakeholders follwed him.

If there is a person who I really appreciate on this platform, he is that person.

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berniesanders (77) · 7 years ago

Yea, we know you love @lukestokes.

Whoa! He declines payouts?! He's a saint. His posts are nothing but an automated post and personal posts.

Still, he makes THOUSANDS a month and contributes nothing other than not raping the reward pool. It's people like you that settle for mediocrity and that's why Steem is where it is today.

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mejustandrew (58) · 7 years ago

I respect him for the ideals and the vision that he promotes. I know that he is a good person and I have followed him for almost a half of year so I had plenty of reasons to vote for him as witness. Plus, he never powered down, which is an important thing from my point of view and this makes him different than a lot of witnesses.

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pharesim (74) · 7 years ago

Sure, with some posts rewards and no cost for anything besides a small server there's no need to power down. Who doesn't love to have more steem.

lukestokes (75) · 7 years ago

I do spend significant amounts of time (>11k posts and comments) engaging with the community to better understand what they need, what they don't understand, and what they want more education about. I think that's valuable and worth rewarding. As this is a social blockchain powering social applications, I'd prefer all top witnesses be more social as well as technical.

That said, I appreciate your point and am considering running a full node which would clearly require more powering down.

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pharesim (74) · 7 years ago (edited)

I didn't intend to talk down your contributions, just question the reasoning that not powering down would be a good quality for witnesses. Personally I prefer parts of the enormously high pay be put back into projects than piling up in a private piggy bank.

lukestokes (75) · 7 years ago (edited)

Thanks. I think, at the very least, witnesses should consider delegating their Steem Power to projects which help the ecosystem, which I've been doing for a while. I also think, given a witness who powers down to sell STEEM for personal gain outside of their witness expenses and one who doesn't, I'd prefer the one who doesn't. I'm not sure we need 20 full API nodes (maybe we do?), but if not, I'd certainly consider funding the expenses of existing projects, if they needed it.

pharesim (74) · 7 years ago (edited)

In the end it's all personal gain, except it's spent or given away. As soon as we have it it's ours. When we don't sell it, that's just because we speculate on higher prices at some, however distant, point in the future.

Technically I didn't touch my witness pay yet, and I'm basically powering down permanently. I mined most of my steem early on ;) And while my main account got somewhat smaller, I still hold a lot more on exchanges to trade. Mostly buying recently.

Others have different reasons. Some may have quit their jobs to fully focus on their steem efforts and depend on the witness pay for a living. With the amount that's paid that'd be reasonable, and I'd definitely prefer it to a part time witness.

How someone manages their personal finances depends on so many factors completely unrelated to witness efforts, and a power down doesn't even mean it's being sold. Basing a decision on that is just silly.

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techsfair (19) · 7 years ago

If your point is proven to be clear I guess there is something wrong with the platform then

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jesusbatallar (58) · 7 years ago

Let's be honest, most of us just comment and give opinions, but as in real life, the only way to do a change is to work on something that could make a radical change and solve the problems, the technical problems! We could do any amount of posts about the issues, but unless we get the power (programming skills) to do something, things will be the same.

Take as example bitcoin! When someone decided to code the blockchain, no words were needed, the code spoke for itself!

That's my opinion and I am willing to learn how to code because I am not going to be forever just complaining about things and do nothing...

Regards to everyone!!

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samueldouglas (54) · 7 years ago

I haven't used many of my witness votes, and have tried to do my research before deploying them - with the possible exception of the first vote I cast. I totally agree that people need to use their heads and investigate who they are voting for.

That said, what exactly is the point of my vote anyway? You know how many of the top 20 have a vote from one of your favourite people, and that their vote is worth about 7000 times more than mine, right?

And how much can witnesses actually do to make a difference to some of the things that both you and I complain about? Could they fix the shit-show on the trending page so it doesn't resemble a cross between a vanity publishing catalogue and the home shopping channel? Can they curtail bidbots, or at least stop them from enabling the wholesale hijacking of the attention economy and fucking up the whole idea of proof-of-brain? Can they do anything to help minnows do more than just fight over the crumbs that fall from the whales' table?

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camillesteemer (12) · 7 years ago

Two trolls have downvoted your post.. Now your reputation is : -16 !!!
Never post negative facts....

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olusegun3386 (51) · 7 years ago

@Berniesanders I humbly beg to differ from your views.
https://steemit.com/steem/@olusegun3386/timcliff-and-others-are-patriotic-steemians-am-here-to-set-the-record-straight-2639948e31362

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crypto-econom1st (57) · 7 years ago

And why do you think these guys remain witnesses?
I mean who votes for them? And does not change that vote?

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pequef (59) · 7 years ago

if I had enough power to earn several dollars with my vote I would do without a doubt, your post is honest without hairs in the language (as we should really be ALL) things on this platform are getting out of control and mainly by people that have a lot of money invested here (whales) whales to which only they are interested in their own benefit, does not help improve anything neither the platform nor the new users. The only thing to look for in WINNING MONEY, without a doubt the ecosystem would improve a lot if all those people who have great power here on the platform will help others.

here in Steemit there are many people who have great potential, as there are also those who publish only junk content.

as I would like for all of us to help each other, remember that in the union this strength and that we the "fish eggs" will not always be fish eggs.

sorry if you do not understand much what I wrote, but I'm using a translator

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isnochys (66) · 7 years ago

Vote for me, guys, and make a profit with it:)
Seriously, there are a lot of choices in the upper 50 to 200 witnesses
Just choose 20 of them, the rest you can give to the mainstream top 20

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aaronhydra (25) · 7 years ago

steemit seriously need to get their shit done

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arcange (73) · 7 years ago

Congratulations @berniesanders!
Your post was mentioned in the Steemit Hit Parade in the following categories:

Comments - Ranked 4 with 204 comments
Pending payout - Ranked 6 with $ 283,87

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donchate (49) · 7 years ago

So stop voting for them people.

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yuriks2000 (66) · 7 years ago

Wow, you have really got a lot of top witnesses here in discussion. As it turns out witnesses are doing much more that it seems from first sign. But you have brought up a good discussion, which will keep witnesses in good shape, even though they are not obliged to what what you are implying on. Most important part as I think is network reliability and performance. As far as I can see many witnesses have invested in much more expensive servers than $100 per month.

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flugschwein (60) · 7 years ago

I already talked with pharesim a few times and he seemed like a pretty nice guy. Could you tell me what he promised but didn't deliver. Because so far i really like him as a person...

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berniesanders (77) · 7 years ago

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orangila (50) · 7 years ago

Wow... you are like Oatu The Watcher from Marvel Comics... I barely know what they do and thanks to your report, I have a better idea... thanks for being awesome and your willingness to touch on the sensitive topics... Good to hear both sides of the stories....

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rawdawg (61) · 7 years ago

Hey Bernie, could you explain the benefits of running a full node? Many Steemit users probably don't understand and it would make your comment "The majority don't bother to run full nodes." a more valid point, IMHO.
BTW, thanks for sponsoring the SPL April Fool's Day poker Tourney tomorrow and the other one your sponsored last week. I'm a member of SPL and the whole poker community is super excited! Everyone appreciates your generosity!

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kryzsec (59) · 6 years ago

Late to the party but I have been off of steemit for the past few months due to work and such. Anyways, I am pretty sure that furion and Anyx are involved with maintaining steempy (along with other steem-libraries) and are involved in writing the documentation for said libraries.

I know thats not like a super lot but compared to what a lot of other witnesses are doing (using their witness rewards to power up giant bidbots that just go to pushing content to the trending page, cough cough) its at least... well... yeah. Beyond that I had also gotten help from furion with some questions involved early on when attempting to learn the library that is documented so well.

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isnochys (66) · 7 years ago

holy -16!
you didn't do your duty!
above -17, we enter soon red alert area!

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tryskele (64) · 7 years ago

That's the thing. He does do his duty more than most. People can't handle it when they care called out on their crap, so their answer to everything is to downvote to discredit anyone that does call them out.

To me the Witnesses should be all about cleaning up the garbage, not tolerating the fraud that goes on. Not bilking the pool for their own sake.

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godsngh1 (48) · 7 years ago

the fact is well said but hey!!! B its such a hard nut you got to just throw some light on this but as we all know its not everyone who is here for some one but them self because we might not know what they have been through before making it here but you know something B? i think you can write something about this that can touch a heart to become good and turn to the community and give back to it what he or she got from it and don't just leave it like that because they don't do anything. good luck i admire your courage

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randohealer (41) · 7 years ago

Wololo!

(RandoHealer has healed this post because you have been randomly selected from the whitelist. Lucky!)

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bitfiend (59) · 7 years ago

curie and pharesim have upvoted me recently so obviously they're active. There's a lot more than just witnesses circle jerk upvoting though.

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magic8ball (47) · 7 years ago

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julienbh (59) · 7 years ago (edited)

Lmfao!!!

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yesaye (53) · 7 years ago

To the answer in your comment, my Magic 9-Ball says:

Answer not so good

Hi! I'm not a bot so why am I doing this.

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kongen (7) · 7 years ago

cos u can

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