How To Solve Steemit UI / Backend / DDoS Problems With One Simple Management Hack
As you surely noticed, Steemit.com had a few problems in the last couple of weeks. First a DDoS attack, then countless of UI / backend inconsistencies which led to loss of posts / votes and (probably) transactions.
I have a very simple solution that I propose in all honesty and transparency to the Steemit INC management. Here it goes:
pay UI / backend engineers to do nothing
Let me explain.
If the site is going ok and there are no issues, the engineers are getting paid. But the moment we have verifiable reports about malfunctions, the payment stops, until the problems are solved, and the service is restored.
It's not a joke, nor something generated by frustration. It's a verified way to incentivize people when times are tough. I used this model with a system administrator in my own company, ten years ago, and it worked great. The guy was paid only if the sites (we had about a dozen of them, hosted on six bare-metal machines) were working. The moment we had a problem, the hours spend fixing the problem were not paid.
You know what was the first reaction when I implemented this payment model?
Pro-activity. The guy cloned the environment immediately and started to search for bugs, in order to prevent them. Of course, there were "zero day" vulnerabilities and those were exempted (I think we can do this with the DDoS thing for Steemit too).
Now, let me clear something. I'm not frustrated with how the site works. I'm a programmer and I can post on Steemit via cli_wallet if I want to. I can use my own interfaces and build my own node (which is something that I'm actually doing). This is not about me.
It's about the regular users, which are seeing comments lost, votes not passing through and so on and so forth. It's incredibly hard to gather a loyal audience to a social media website and incredibly easy to lose it, no matter how much you pay people to stay around. Especially when there is already competition in this area and other services are starting to pay them too.
This is serious.
And it has to be addressed, somehow. The sooner, the better.
P.S. Like I said, I'm a programmer and I know what it takes to run such a service. I feel for the guys working at this and I know they are doing their best. But when you have a consistent, recurring UI / backend problem, you don't keep it in production for weeks, hoping it will pass on its own. You roll back to the last working version of your product and keep that version public until you clone what you have now in a separate environment and start working on it until it's pristine. We're all losing business here, not only you, guys.
P.P.S If you think I can be of any use to you, I'm offering part of my time to contribute, just let me know what you are dealing with or what you are trying to implement, because you're clearly working on some stuff.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
If you're new to Steemit, you may find these articles relevant (that's also part of my witness activity to support new members of the platform):
Yes, its frustrating and the conversation needs to be had about why Steemit is performing so poorly at the moment. But I’ve also managed an IT team before and in most environments I’d expect your policy to cause sysadmins to respond with a total resistance to change (in fear of breaking something and not getting paid).
Admittedly it is change management which is often the causation issue and most development companies could use stricter change management protocols (and proper test networks) but pitting devs against sysadmins is one sure way to kill progress and cause internal strife.
It's more of a strategy than a strict policy. More like getting the message across the entire team (not only sysadmins or devs) that they make money only when the project is working. Sometimes it's easy to get caught in building new features, become numb or simply to get cut from the "outside" environment.
Like I told you, I, for once, I'm not frustrated because I can find my way around this. But the vast majority of people aren't so comfortable. So they'll leave. The simplest way to keep them around is to have the site working. That's all.
This is an awesome offer mate! I have never thought of applying such a payment and incentive mechanism myself, but i see why it should work very well! It seems counter intuitive maybe, but this is definitely something i will try in my management practice. Thanks! P.S. And you are right, we are all loosing business here. ALL of us. I am glad i have voted for you as a witness.
Thank you, appreciate the witness vote. As for what they do, at the end of the day, it's their decision. But it is affecting us, so speaking up is a must.
You're right, steemit has been kind of buggy of late. I just push through the frustration of losing a comment but is definitely annoying. Awesome offer and idea :)
That's what I'm talking about. You're a power user, but imagine a newcomer. He'll just go away. No words, no nothing. And when somebody else asks about his experience, he will answer, in all honesty: "that site doesn't work".
I just lost a comment :))
I lost my reply twice now after seeing this at 4 minutes. 30 minutes remaining typing the comment and waiting for it to post. My frustration is emmense right now and I can't believe that we can't fix this. I'm glad I don't have more invested in here as I am seriously losing my faith.
Sounds like a sensible pro-active measure to me... God knows the world needs more intelligent proactive activities instead of stupid, reactive knee-jerk responses.
thanks. interesting post
hey bro @dragosroua,
I support your steemit post.thanks for sharing...upvoted
thank you for sharing information
amazing and helpful article and vedio thanxx