Witness Survey v1 - @timcliff's Responses

@patrickulrich / @witnesssurvey has started an initiative called the "Witness Survey" to try and provide the community with a better understanding of where the witnesses stand on various issues. You can read about it in this post here. In this post, I will provide my responses to the questions asked in the survey. I encourage other witnesses to do the same.

What is your position/stance on bid-bots (ownership/delegations/opinion)? - @abh12345, @ammonite

I am a firm believer that stakeholders are allowed to do whatever they want with their stake. With that said though, I do not personally support bid-bots in any way. I don't run any, I don't delegate to any, and I do not use any.

What does the witness want to do to make the blockchain more user-friendly and help to on-board new users. What do THEY personally want to see done and what will they do to get it there? - @ericwilson

I think the three biggest issues for new users are: 1) the ease (or lack thereof) of creating a new account; 2) the difficulty of understanding how to get started and how to be successful; 3) the lack of large stakeholders who are actively seeking out and rewarding quality contributions (or delegating their voting power to those who do).

Personally, I have made a lot of contributions to help with these issues. I helped to create the "Welcome Page" that is seen on steemit.com with another (now inactive) witness @bitcoiner, and I helped to create the FAQ page on steemit.com with the help of @pfunk. I have submitted several issues and pull requests to the faucet repository to help improve the signup process. I also moderate the #help channel in steem.chat to assist users who are having technical issues with the platform, and ensure that everyone who has a question there gets a response within 24 hours.

Do you think votes for witnesses should last indefinitely or should they time out (or perhaps decay over time) so that periodically voters will need to reevaluate and affirm their positions by recasting their votes? - @harvhat

The main use-case that I am concerned about with permanent votes is if a stakeholder dies, or is otherwise unable to access their account anymore. I would support a change that removed an account's witness votes if they have not used their active or owner key within some defined period (say six months).

I would also support a change that removed all of the votes from an inactive witness if they have not been active for a defined period of time, although it should be sufficiently long that if a backup witness has "life issues" and they need to take a break for a period of time, that they do not loose all of their votes for temporarily suspending their witness campaign. Again, a period of six months (or more) would probably be appropriate for this.

Do you think the 30 witness votes each steemian gets is the correct number, especially in light of the fact there are only 20 top witnesses to be seated? - @harvhat

I am OK with the number. There are valid arguments that it should be higher, and valid arguments that it should be lower. It would be a pretty significant change to make, touching the core logic of the blockchain. I don't see a strong argument to justify the developer resources it would require and risk of the change to tweak it. IMO, there are more important priorities to focus on.

What is a concern or two that you have about the #steem blockchain? - @johnspalding

My biggest concern is that we find a way to stay true to the mission of rewarding people for their contributions. I know there are a lot of challenges that stand in the way of successfully doing that, but IMO it is critical that we stay focused on that goal.

What are you hopeful about for the #steem blockchain? - @johnspalding

The amazing community of talented intelligent passionate people is IMO our biggest asset.

What is the monthly cost of equipment? - @abh12345

Around $500/month

Where do your earnings go? - @abh12345

Other than paying for my servers, I also pay myself a salary for my time. I have also used small portions to fund various initiatives including several local meetups that I have hosted in the Minneapolis / St. Paul area.

[What are some of your] Current projects? - @abh12345

1. I created and maintain https://steemeconomy.com/
2. I moderate the steem.chat #help channel
3. I create the weekly "Reports of the Witnesses"
4. I have contributed development to both the Steem and condenser open-source repositories, as well as many of the other repositories that support Steem (dev portal, signup faucet, etc.)
5. I am very active in discussions with stakeholders, other witnesses, and Steemit, Inc. on proposals to change and improve the platform and community.

[Will you provide an] Alt accounts list? - @abh12345

test123x
new.user
the.masses
lil.missy
sbd2paypal
testnewaccount
mynewaccount
test.faqinfo
timcliff2
timcliff3
mynewaccount2
newname
xxx1234test
account.test1

What are the benefits associated with being a witness? - @klassic

It is fun being a mini celebrity / leader within the Steem ecosystem. It pays well when the price of STEEM is up. I enjoy being able to shape discussions on the future of the platform and community.

How do I become a witness? - @steemingmark

Here is a post which should have all the info you need:
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@timcliff/steps-for-setting-up-a-witness-node-the-manual-way

What do you think the SBD [STEEM] price for a new account should be? - @harvhat

There are various trade-offs for having it higher or lower. The lower the cost, the less RCs a new account will have (unless they also receive delegation). I lean more towards the side of having it cost as little as possible, and expecting that new users either receive delegation or power up their own Steem if they want to transact more than the minimum amount. Currently, I have my account creation fee set to 3.0 STEEM.

What is a witness and how I become a good worker? - @rubaethsyed

If you read through the various posts that are lined in this article there is a lot of information there, including a post "Guide to Being a Good Witness".

Have you implemented any new procedures for evaluating potential hardforks? - @patrickulrich

Yes: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@timcliff/timcliff-s-witness-hardfork-approval-standards-v0-1

How does a new user make the availability of his vote known to the cabal of witnesses wannabes trying to overthrow the current witness regime? - @grimgriz

I'm not really sure what this is asking, but I suppose you can reach out to them and start a conversation. Most witnesses are available for chat in steem.chat as well as Discord.

Should we have interest for SBD? - @patrickulrich

I currently concur with the position articulated by @smooth in the comments of this post: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@steem-bounty/apr-anyone. I do monitor the STEEM/SBD economics closely though, and would start voting for interest again if the economic conditions call for it.

What takeaways do you have from the Hardfork 20 issues that occurred? - @patrickulrich

It is probably an unpopular opinion, but I think things got blown out of proportion a bit. There were definitely mistakes made and things that could have / should have been done better, but sometimes situations like this happen when dealing with complex software systems. Within a week or so after the HF, everything was back to "normal" and i think the improvements on the other side have been very beneficial for the long-term health of the platform.

To me, the biggest takeaway was that we need to do a lot better job testing, and in order to do that, we need a proper test environment to simulate the right conditions. I have been actively working towards that, as can be seen here: https://steemit.com/testnet/@timcliff/call-for-more-tools-on-the-testnet

Do you think 20/21 top witnesses a good number or should there be more or less? - @harvhat

I will repeat my response to a similar question that was asked above:

I am OK with the number. There are valid arguments that it should be higher, and valid arguments that it should be lower. It would be a pretty significant change to make, touching the core logic of the blockchain. I don't see a strong argument to justify the developer resources it would require and risk of the change to tweak it. IMO, there are more important priorities to focus on.

[Image source here]

Thanks @witnesssurvey for the interview questions! Great job :)