Dear Community, Let Your Voice Be Heard | Top 20 Witness Communication
Many times throughout my time here on Steem I have heard about the frustration with the lack of communication between all community members, Steemit inc., and the witnesses. I feel efforts are being made to improve this daily, but I am still hearing a lot of frustration from the community itself. I have tried to do my best to help with this when I can, as have others, but I am not a top witnesses or anything more than a community member myself.. and even when I try to make posts to help explain or communicate, people want something "official".
Recently during a conversation in The Ramble Discord it was brought up that many felt there was not clear communication from the Top Witnesses themselves.
One example that was given was with the upcoming EIP changes now included in HF21. The @Steemitblog put out this post, where they explained the "community proposed changes" and also stated that it would not be something they were focusing on right now -
Right now our focus remains 100% on improving steemit.com, Communities, MIRA, finalizing the Steem Proposal System Hardfork (HF21 or the “SteemDAO”), and preparing to switch to SMTs. We do not have any plans to begin working on any code relating to these economic changes. But we do believe that this is a conversation worth having and one that we would be happy to participate in. Ultimately, the decision of when to begin work on these improvements, and in which hardfork to include them, will be up to the Steem community and the Witnesses they elect to approve Hardforks.
Then after push from witnesses (and stakeholders) the changes were suggested to be included in this hardfork itself. While there was a lot of discussion on these matters over the last few years, nothing was put on chain to explain the recent push to include them. This led to confusion from the community, and in my opinion furthered the "us vs them" and "secret room talks" narrative we have here.
While most witnesses I have spoken to felt the discussion had been had repeatedly, on chain as well, the community went from seeing Steemit inc saying it would NOT be included, to all of a sudden it being part of the deal.
Another simple case of fragmented communication that leads to unneeded frustration, contempt and drama.
Witnesses Are Representatives
The witnesses on Steem are elected officials who produce blocks as well as make decisions on the future of the chain itself. They are elected by stake based votes and to me they should be a representative of the community itself, or at least attempt to be - As they, along with Steemit Inc., are the leadership here.
If individuals are not happy with what they are doing they should first communicate this and then of course vote accordingly.
The issue I am hearing is that many feel that they don't know how to get a message to the witnesses, where to ask questions or to find the information. This is a core issue with steem in my opinion... sometimes it is just hard to find what you are looking for.
Clear Line Of Communication
During the recent discussion about this and how to prevent it going forward, it was suggested that the Top Witnesses elect a "representative" to post and speak on their behalf. That way the information was easy to find and all in one place.
I actually suggested this previously and was told that it was insane to think one person could speak on behalf of 20 independent witnesses. I believe this response is just based on confusion of what is being asked.. as all the community wants is to be kept in the loop and to BE HEARD.. this role would be nothing more than a "reporter" of sorts who relays information, even if the tops aren't saying all the same thing.
There is absolutely no reason why information cannot be gathered and the community informed of why decisions are being made.
When this topic was brought to me again and my response was "You need to go tell them what you want then. Get organized, make a post explaining what you want", I was told -
"I don't know where to post where the witnesses or even Steemit Inc will see it."
I honestly am not sure how to help with this. I have suggested a type of "Community Liaison" role to fill this gap between the Witnesses and or Steemit inc and the community itself and I still believe that doing so would solve so many issues, but I don't think that will happen anytime soon.
So all I can offer is a place to discuss, here on my blog.
Let Your Voice Be Heard
I don't know how to fix this problem, and can't speak for exactly what it is the community would like to see.. but I can offer a post that will be seen to share your thoughts, your wants, and your questions.
- Do you have a suggestion for the witnesses to help better their communication with the community?
- Do you have concerns you want them to know, and haven't been heard elsewhere?
- Do you just have questions that you can't find the answers to about this hardfork or something else?
Now is the time to make them heard, and I will ensure they are seen. Make a comment below.
If there are questions asked that I have seen answered by the witnesses previously, I will try to provide a link.
Please let's try to make constructive comments that could actually provide a solution. I understand the frustration and welcome the community explaining their frustrations.. but I also believe that vulgar raging never really leads to much. Let your frustration be known, but let's have mutual respect.
I will promote this post to try to get it seen by as many as possible so that the community itself feels like it has a place to communicate.
My Goal
My only goal is to help find a solution - by connecting people in one place to have a discussion on how to improve this. I feel much of the frustration and division from the upcoming hardfork (as well as soooo many things in the past) could have been easily avoided (or at least lessened) but open and clear communication.
It's true that not every user cares about this, but there are enough that seem to that I felt the need to try to help in some way. This is what I can do at the moment, it's not much.. but maybe it's a start.
Share your thoughts, suggestions, ideas, and lets work together to move forward in a positive direction. As this blockchain is special due to the community here, and we can accomplish way more by working together then being divided.
Much Love and Steem On,
Justine
I would love to see witnesses provide a position post before each hardfork where they explain what they are for, whether or not they want to accept changes and why.
However the issue is the top 20 rarely need the community vote and they know it. They don't answer to the community and they know it.
Also many perceive that they will lose votes (that matter) if they take unpopular positions.
I give you kudos for trying to help, but I'm not sure what would motivate them to communicate since there are no consequences of not communicating.
Which is something encouraged by the system itself which would have to be changed to improve this:
1: Problem: Votes that do not expire
Imagine in the real work how much less even politicians would care if people had to actively go to unvote them to remove the vote. They'd just do even less, even less transparent and they would be in power eternally.
Solution: Witness votes expires after 1 year.
This would not only encourage witnesses to be more active, but also punish inactive stakeholders for not participating in the democratic process.
2: Problem: Allowing to vote up to 30 witnesses
This automatically centralizes the chain even more, since most of the stake, as on most blockchains, is distributed to a few whales, it is easy for whales to significantly manipulate the top witnesses. This way, 1-2 big whales can already define all 2 witnesses.
Solution: Allow to vote only up to 10 witnesses.
This would decentralize the election and reduce the immense influence of the biggest whales. Allowing them to only put in a maximum of 10 top witnesses.
3: But now we come to the key point, there would have to be pressure from the stakeholders to change this (unlikely because of point 2) and witnesses would have to approve this (unlikely because of point 1).
Yep, having 20 witnesses decide things while letting people vote for 30 is a major issue. We need to cut the limit to 10 witness votes like you proposed, or 5 would probably be even better. That would go a long ways in preventing the entire ecosystem basically being controlled by a couple of the largest stake holders like we have now. This is something that must change ASAP if we want this place to survive.
Vote of 5 or 10 Witnesses is ideal. I think this will work.
That's an interesting solution that I haven't heard before to reduce the number of witnesses we can vote for.
That would even be relatively easy to implement (compared to the expiration).
This
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I unvoted all witnesses.
I want the SPS, build and delivered in a professional way by blocktrades months ago.
NO EIP, I want the SPS as promised.
Or is this all a distraction to delay the SPS implementation?
I have also unvoted most of the witnesses
@whatsup Where I can unvote the witness I vote in the past? They never said thank you to me, very ungrateful people!!
Thanks,
Have an awesome week!
Login to steemit.com, click the hamburger menu.
Scroll to vote for witnesses
Select your choices or unselect them.
To be fair I don't think witnesses can be expected to spend all day thanking and discussing every vote they get from the community. :)
Thank you @whatsup
I genuinely appreciate your answer and your valuable time.
I understand some do not have enough time, we live in a busy world with our responsibilities and life in general.
Again thanks much. :)
Have a wonderful day, @whatsup!
@drakos opposes EIP and is currently 21...
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I do vote for Drakos. :)
And together we did it! @drakos has moved into the top twenty!
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That is definitely true.
Its like politics 🤣🤣🤣
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I would like to know if there has been any discussion or thought around a more developed “burn steem” program.
There has to be a way to include some type of gamification to incentivize people to burn steem in order to gain something... like SMTS for example as @aggroed has suggested.
With inflation seemingly outpacing growth, I cannot envision STEEM gaining more value with consistent selling pressure such as the programmatic sell by steemit inc. I fully understand the selling is necessary to fund operations at this stage in the game.
but
If a new and improved burn steem program could be implemented this would raise the price of steem and steemit inc would require a smaller quantity of steem selling thus reducing pressure on the price, creating a virtuous circle.
It is very common for publicly traded companies to buy back shares and it seems with all the development and resources here on steem that a system to gamify burning steem to gain something else is completely possible.
Much like you ‘burn’ @steemmonsters to gain DEC (dark energy crystals), I envision some sort of similar system on steem to improve economics and incentivize folks to actually hodl some steem or steem power.
Is there anyone working on the economic fundamentals of steem?
My question Justine, is there any sort of economic advisor consulting or involved on the blockchain level for steemit inc or are they open to anything like that?
From my understanding steemit inc is strictly made up of devs and engineers, but what about the economics\gamification side?
It’s difficult to envision a case for steem bullishness if we are caught in and endless loop of inflation without incentive to hold the coin.
^all to be taken in context from a concerned stakeholder who <3’s this place :)
I am not aware of an economic advisor, but I can ask around to see if this is something that has been discussed at all. 🙂
Great questions btw, thanks for taking part!
i see this burning steem thing few times in last week and i am not sure why investing efforts to find a solution to burn when in reality there is not that much steem around. there is just small group of people using it.
There are over 350,000,000 STEEM in total supply. The more steem is created the less value each steem has UNLESS growth and demand are greater. Burning steem makes your piece of the pie more valuable.
look at it this way. defranco has over 800.000 views on youtube every day, and he is just doing 10-15 minutes news. so 800.000 for a whole social platform is really not a lot. that 350,000,000 on 800.000 people is less than 450 steem each. not sure but i think you are not planing to share your steem with new people.
so my view is not that there is not enough steem, there is not enough people to want to own it.
so if we need to make an effort to change something, i would like to we make effort to get 1.000.000 people on steem and have a place where something is happening for the normies than make an effort to think how to burn steem.
that is only my opinion, and i could be horribly wrong.
I agree. I would love for there to be 1,000,000 more people on steem.
Until that happens, people are focused on the price of the token unfortunately. We know this because I can tell you that I know dozens of former Steemians that have left because they don’t feel as incentivized as when steem was $4 or even $1.
Not saying that it makes sense to stick around just for that reason, but thats just what happens.
But if we can get a million more people on steem, im all for it!
I would love to know a simple thing. Why are those communications happening on discord and not in the steemit platform itself?
What is missing on steemit that make everyone feel more inclined to use other platforms like discord to engage with the community and have great talks?
I agree, and I think EIP pushes us in the wrong direction. I have found that I have to be on discord, but it shouldn't be that way. I think there's this weird fear of "cluttering" the blockchain, and that we'll be punished for writing mediocre comments. But that's silly. Short comments are not spam. Spam is spam and the worst purveyors are bots.
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Who says short comments are spam?
:)
Not I.
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Wasn't me either.
Must've been a ghost.
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Do you know who I worry about most? @gentlebot
I think @ionlysaymeep will thrive in any environment, though.
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I had a fairly long conversation with Meep awhile back. Damn thing always wants the last word.
Oh? I think I offended meep. I keep talking, but they ghost me.
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You are absolutely right. With all those fears of 'clutter' the blockchain, the only visible result is that more and more people tend to use other platforms like discord and important information and engagement is lost in here...
How can anyone defend the growth and make a platform stronger with the ultimate vision to attract more users and keep them engaged if the majority use another platform to communicate and discuss all this and other topics?
That don't make any sense. I really hope this change and the devs of this platform start to think more about the best experience possible they can offer and not get stuck on 'how to save the blockchain by implementing minor fixes'.
Sometimes you have to push something a bit harder without fear in order to see the 'big results'. No one needs to invent the wheel at this point... if people like discord and want some of there functionality here in order to spend more time on the platform focus on building that...and not promoting rewards for downvotes for example.
The EIP has absolutely nothing to do with “cluttering” the chain or attempting to prevent comments. Can’t you elaborate on what you mean a bit?
I'd be happy to elaborate.
When I said the EIP makes it worse, I mean the incentive to have these conversations will be even lower, as comments rarely receive 16 steem upvotes, so even if your every comment is read and appreciated by the writer you're communicating with, the new curve will reduce the value of their appreciation, which is enough of a feel bad that I'd expect no one to really vote for comments, which is a pity.
The goal of the EIP may not explicitly state that it intends to de-clutter the chain, but that rewards curve is meant to force accounts to group their behavior together. Which means small positive contributions will receive even less, which means no one looking to maximize their return will engage in one-on-one conversations on-chain. It also means outliers, people who don't follow or lead the pack, will give less value proportionate to their SP. It'd be nice to avoid a system that discourages outside-the-box thinking. Ah, well.
And also, that curve IS meant to de-clutter the chain. I mean, it's talked about as keeping them from taking rewards, but the effect is the same. And for a new user, or even an old user, this concept of fighting spam is hard to disconnect from the idea that my $0 comments are the spam they're talking about.
that was the first thing i was moaning about when i read about the changes. not be able to vote for people that follow my content and engage.
Keep moaning! I feel like they're using a broad range of herbicide to kill the pesky weeds without realizing they'll also kill the daisies. Or they realize and they don't care about daisies. Or they realize, but think the pigweed is a big enough problem that the daisies are acceptable collateral damage. Regardless, I'm yelling, "I care about daisies! Don't kill the daisies! Daisies are my favorite! I think a lot of people love daisies!"
i did for a while, commented, made posts, and all i got is 2-3 responses that voting will change, small accounts will get more because no autovotes and bot votes and downvotes of those autovotes, and bigger steem price, that i am stupid for not seeing that, and that was it. so now i just want them to do it as soon as possible so we can move on.
i never cared about ROI on my votes, voted what i feel i should and when i get to it, so maybe after it i will only vote 100% on comments just to skip dust vote on them. (if even that will be possible)
Well the people pretending to know all the positive impacts of this change are either delusional or lying. I don't pretend to be sure, but I am sure that it's not a magic bullet, and I'm furthermore sure they can't know. There's no way to test it, I keep being told, so I don't know where they get their confidence from. This isn't physics, it's frontier economics. Behavior is hard to predict.
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Dust vote will be affected, I think many have discussed this. I believe there is a discussion being had about lowering the dust vote so the impact would not be so great. But again, I’ve not seen anyone discuss this on chain.. so I guess it’s back to the point of this post... tell them what you want to see.
You keep saying this will stop comments, but are you implying that the only reason people interact through comments on this chain is for upvotes? As my comments are very rarely upvoted and I still do so quite often.
I’m just trying to figure out where you are coming from as $0 comments have nothing to do with the curve and it’s not designed to prevent them.
So are you looking for another way to “like” comments without wasting your VP? (As you mentioned somewhere here). Are you worried about how it affects the dust vote? Or are you concerned with how the curve will initially decrease rewards on low rewarded posts? Or none of the above?
The only people who may stop commenting are those who are doing spam comments only to self upvote it and farm rewards... other than that I’m very confused how you feel these changes will stop comments.
Your, mine and everyone else’s $0 comments are NOT the spam anyone is talking about.
This one: Or are you concerned with how the curve will initially decrease rewards on low rewarded posts?
Here is one use case that the new curve renders less functional, but there are many more:
I run Punday Monday every week. People write puns on a given topic, and I reward the successful puns with my vote. It's a tiny bit of positive on the chain, that takes a tiny bit of effort, and that is rewarded with a tiny bit of money.
Will they all stop now? I dunno. I think they enjoy it enough and have learned how to do it, so they might keep going. But I also think they started because of the promise of a little change in their pockets. That's the promise of Steem.
So, my understanding of the purpose of the platform is: it's a social media platform and a blogging platform where user likes have financial rewards. Maybe it is other things, too, but that seems integral to the premise.
The whole point of this change is to change behavior, so I'm not sure why you don't think the rewards curve change might even impact desirable commenting behavior.
The "where user likes have financial rewards" part is currently true! Yippee! My largest concern for EIP, is that the plan forgets or ignores the needs of the average user, who isn't trying to maximize returns, but who is rather trying to use the platform as advertised.
Editing to add: nowhere did I say that EIP will "stop comments". I didn't keep saying it. I didn't even say it once. I just want to include this addendum because I'm not sure why you say I said that. Maybe there's a misunderstanding here. I think EIP will have a net negative impact on regular, human, positive behavior, including comments, but I don't think it will stop comments entirely. I don't even think it will destroy Steem. It'll just make it incrementally harder to be a new or poor user.
for example most of my posts (be it photography, sports, steem...) have 2-3 comments, and a lot of the times one of them is steem ua bot. now to show that i appreciate the effort i do upvote comments as to give my 2 cents back.
now with new curve my 2700SP vote that is now around 35 cents (when WP at 100%), will be even lower. so voting on comments, and also voting on people that don't get votes will not only get no ROI, it will just be useless for me and for the that one that i voted for.
Yes, so you are referring to the dust vote and how it will be affected (increased) after the change. Rewarding comments for small amounts and going over the dust will be harder to achieve on your own. That would mean someone else has to also upvote the same comment to push it over the dust.
What I’m trying to say is there is a discussion to lower the dust so this isn’t an issue.
Of course with falling prices votes are worth less, and that’s just how this works. Focusing on what will increase the price should be everyone’s focus, and part of that is making this place appealing to investors.. which I believe is the goal in these changes.
I’ll ask around more about the decrease in dust threshold after the HF and see if I can get more information.
The point I was trying to make above though, is whether a comment is voted or not has nothing to do with if a comment can be made.
So if we can’t reward comments, maybe we could just comment back, engage and have a conversation. I also think emojis would be great but I guess we aren’t there yet
non of my comments were ever written with upvote in mind, i am just saying it is a nice option to give something back to people that engage on your posts (with new curve that will be impossible)
another example why a lot will suffer in the new system. i am week for week in 200 best curators on photography tag. if i am in best curators, you can imagine how much is distributed to the tag.
now why would i in the new system (i had no reason in the old one eather), vote for small acc that has few votes and now even penalised by the curve, so i get less and that small acc get less.
as i said, my mentioning of dust vote is more of a joke for a comparison of power of my vote and what i expect after the changes.
and as i said many times and not listening to myself, now i just want it to be implemented and we get over with it. maybe witnesses could tell us how the testing is going, and when should we expect HF. because november is near and steemit said that until steemfest we will have communities or SMT's (forgot which one was it). and i am kinda sure we will not have two HF in 3 months.
Because it is difficult to have a “chat like” discussion on chain sometimes. Also, discord allows radio style talk shows, so much of the conversation happens there.
There are many posts made on chain to have these discussions, unfortunately sometimes people don’t know they are happening or how to find them. Having one account where maybe a month or bi weekly “discussion” post is made might be a solution, I’m not sure if that would be helpful or not.
I do think it’s important to have the information on chain as well though. And look forward to a day when discord isn’t needed at all 🙂
If the chain can't be used to create that experience for its limitations, the solution can be the use of another technology to deliver that like the matrix protocol. If everyone wants and push for that they would do it. A great example of that is the next version of busy that already detected that problem and are building their next platform with that in mind as well.
I will leave here the link for you and others to check out @justineh: https://hello.busy.org/
So you can easily see that with the right priorities and will in mind it's possible to bring such great experience on the same platform and not split on different places. For now, I think you will not have a radio and talk shows, but you will have individual and group chats so that engagement can happen on the same service.
That could be a solution, have a tab for that with also notifications built-in so that each person can toggle the notifications and 'discussion' they want to follow. Would be like subscribe to newsletters on the e-mail. That way you are always up-to-date.
Yep, all great ideas.. but someone has to actually communicate and write these posts. 🙂
Then people need to know the name of this witness so they can unvote the individual. If Steemit can pin a winner from "Open Mike" and PIN other post to the top of the feed, I have no doubt that @andrarchy would have any objection at all to pinning a progress report to the top of the feed page.
In fact you should ask @andrarchy to pin this post to the top, I do not often check the trending page but felt like it today.
HF21 has been in the hands of the witness for one month, no progress report, no clues as to what is working, what is not working, or even what their thoughts are on it at all.
I have heard there is discussion about having the POCKET token (Steemit’s historic first token) balance show up in your Steem wallet. Where are we at with that?
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Thank you Justine for putting this out! This is indeed a problem we need to solve. I do have an idea tho.
The devs could implement a Witness tab where the current witnesses are displayed. On this tab they can post about the current things and what's going on with this Blockchain. They also could add polls and other useful things to ask the community things about how we should progress with this chain.
Great post
Great!
I'd like three things:
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I could definitely do my best to get a witness questionnaire of sorts done possibly.
What specific questions (besides those you listed) would you think would be beneficial to be included?
Here are a few questions that I'd like answered, and I'll include a few that I don't care about the answers to, but that some people might like to see:
To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.
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Great post!!!
Nothing more to add, as to demand the implementation of the SPS.
No EIP, the SPS is what is needed badly.
And let them create a proposal in the SPS for the EIP changes.