I noticed many people had, at a time of self-analysis, the impression they've been on Steemit for a longer time than the platform impartially accounted for.
That says something about the impressive level of involvement of active members, for whom time seemed to extend to fit all their acquired knowledge, connections, engagement and overall evolution in this growing ecosystem.
At the same time, when you hear an early adopter of Steem talk about their adventures back then, you realize how much this blockchain has changed in only two years.
Think about it: we are waiting for the 20th hard fork which will come at the beginning of Q3 this year, but those who have been here from the start had seen this 19 times already. While I, who have been here for almost 4 months, haven't caught one. It's true these hard forks were much more frequent in the early days of the Steem blockchain than now.
What I'm saying is, as changes become less frequent and only have a minor perceivable impact on the end users, they (the users) will pay less and less attention to the details about the way the blockchain and the platform they use works, and will want to see results.
Your own feed, specialized apps, communities you are part of (for now outside Steem on Discord, but pretty soon on Steemit too), will narrow your interaction to what's on your interests list and who's in your close circle.
That is in most cases a great thing, because it minimizes distractions. But there are aspects that you may not show interest in, but should be on your agenda, if you are a part of the Steemit community, as a whole. Understanding what witnesses are and voting for them is one of them.
But before that comes the safety of your Steem account.
When you join a regular centralized site, you are required to confirm that you've read the terms of service and the privacy policy. How often have you read those before ticking the boxes that say you did and agree to the terms?
You are almost conditioned to tick the box that you understood and move forward.
To this situation contributes the fact that you expect you'll get help if you run into trouble with your account.
When you joined Steemit, on one of the screens you are provided with a master password or master key or owner key (any term can be used interchangeably). Did you copy it and keep it safe as instructed?
Do you understand YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE responsible for keeping your Steem account SAFE?
If your account is hacked, YOU are the only one who can act immediately, by changing your private keys (active, posting and memo), but you need to know your master/owner key for that.
The only way you can recover your stolen Steem account is if you cumulatively meet these requirements:
- you created your Steem account using the Steemit interface
- it hasn't passed more than 30 days since the hacker has control over your account
- you know the original owner key (or the one in effect before the hacker changed it)
Even then, this is a long process. That's one more reason why it is important not to willingly give various attackers and phishers ammunition to target your account.
So, make sure you keep your owner key safe! In multiple places, especially offline, and don't share it with anyone.
I've posted this before, but I think it should be reminded more often, because new users join Steemit every day, and most come with a "tick the box" mentality (as did I, at first).
Always have this in mind: When required, enter the lowest-ranked private key possible, after you make sure you are on the right site (secured Steemit.com, SteemConnect.com etc.), and not on a phishing site!
In order, from the highest to the lowest-ranked private keys, they are:
Owner/master key
Never use this key unless you want to change your private keys or you need to recover your account in case it was hacked!
Active key
Can be used to make transfer of funds, to make delegations, to vote for witnesses, to authorize an application like Busy via SteemConnect to make operations on your account, etc.
Posting key
Only permits you to post, comment and vote for content. Don't use the active key to post / vote!
Memo key
Should allow encrypted messaging between accounts, but it's only partially implemented. Use this key whenever possible, it has no practical use in Steem right now, other than identifying your account on the blockchain!
If someone gets access to it, he can't practically do anything on your account, not even post and upvote/downvote! That doesn't mean you should make it public, there's a reason why it's called "private key".
Conclusion
We sometimes forget how it was when we first joined. It's easy to do it, with all the new things we get involved in every day.
If we do a search on Steemit (thus on Google), about things we are interested in, many awesome articles come first. But many of them were written two years, one year or maybe many months ago.
If I sometimes wonder if things written in the article are still actual, can you imagine what must think a new user with a two weeks old account? He may skip the training phase entirely, if it was on his radar to begin with.
That's why I think some critical and important themes should be updated and reminded every once in a while, maybe new users become aware of them if someone they follow posts about them.