You know, I think I should just put you and @preparedwombat into a cage and let you fight it out.

https://steemit.com/zappl/@preparedwombat/2-068-341-transactions

From my perspective, and I'll remind everyone that I am nobody and nothing, these posts, yours in his, are linked. But both of them miss a fairly significant part of both the problem and the solution.

It's true, the steem blockchain is processing 2 million+ blocks the day at this point, with a mere half a million users, and quite a number of those much less active than the rest. And it is true that the bandwidth allocations are made on the basis of SP – just like everything else on this blockchain.

Ironically, given the size of the articles I do post and the link that which I to carry on in comments, I think I've seen an out of bandwidth message once in the several months that I've been here. Just the once.

Which makes me curious about the pattern of usage which leads to an "out of bandwidth" error for a new user. What kind of messaging are they engaged in from a traffic point of view which is getting that particular error on a regular basis?

But that's a sidereal issue.

The real question is one that no one has seen fit to actually inquire after, and from a networking perspective it's the only question worth answering:

What's consuming the bandwidth?

Odds are extremely low that it's being eaten up by high-SP users responding with "nice post." Odds are extremely low that it's being eaten up by low-SP users responding "nice post," unless the sheer volume of bottom-feeding comment-bots is a lot higher that I've observed (and today I saw three of them in concert jump on more my posts; it was quite impressive just before I slammed the down-vote hammer down on all three of them).

I really don't have a grasp on what is consuming the traffic, and I don't think anyone does. You don't, because you would've said so in a very direct and clear way if you did. I've learned enough about you by observation to feel comfortable saying that.

Just because a user doesn't have a lot of SP doesn't mean they aren't worthwhile, and just because a user has a lot of SP, doesn't mean every comment they make is worth making.

This is also true. But here's the thing – added be the way to bet.

And that is exactly what the system is doing, laying a series of bets on every transaction regarding whether that transaction will be "valuable" to the blockchain. It is statistically more likely that a high SP user will have an interaction that is "valuable" at any given moment on any given transaction than a low SP user.

That's just the nature of the world. I'm pretty much the opposite of a fiscal elitist and even I have to acknowledge that is the best bet.

In terms of interaction, telling people not to "waste bandwidth" is a guaranteed way to get more of the things that you don't want on the blockchain and less of the things that you do. Anyone likely to listen is also likely to be producing something you might care about. Anyone likely to not care what you think is more likely to be producing things you don't care about.

Nice job breaking it, hero.

Don't tell people to conserve bandwidth. Encourage the people who have something interesting to say to use bandwidth. There's nothing you can do about the people who don't have something interesting to say from your perspective, and even if you could, you wouldn't want to – because they probably or at least might have something interesting to say to someone else. If they don't, they will gain SP and thus won't have equal access to the bandwidth that there is as the ones who were posting and who found some audience, even if that audience isn't you.

I'm not about to position myself as the judge of what content other people should consume. I'm also not about position myself as the judge of how others should interact with the blockchain. I'm perfectly happy being the judge of how the system works mechanically and whether or not it encourages behaviors which it says it should, but I'm not going to tell anyone not to talk, not to post, not to interact, on something that is ostensibly a social network.

At least until they adjust how they conserve bandwidth, so it effects spammers more, and good new users a little less.

Yes, let's talk about this.

How do you differentiate a spammer from a new user?

That's not a rhetorical question. Given the information on the blockchain, which in the case of a new user or a bot forged from nothingness is equally nothing, how do you differentiate the two?

The reasonable observer would suggest that the only way to know is to look at their first post. Even that is not definitive. A decently crafted spambot would hopefully open with a post which is structurally and perhaps even content-indistinguishable from the standard introductory post – and may even be a carbon copy of one that already exists. A new user may not know the etiquette and social architecture of Steemit and may have a poor idea of what is interesting, important, or non-spam-like.

So how do we distinguish them?

If we can't distinguish them until after their first several posts, then what shall we do? By not consuming the bandwidth ourselves, we actively leave more for low-value spambots. By your own logic, we have an equal responsibility to consume our portion in order to protect the blockchain as a whole from spammers.

That is to say, it's a silly argument.

I have a better idea. Let's find out what is really consuming the bandwidth between the witnesses – and it is only the bandwidth between the witnesses that were concerned with, because that is the bandwidth that the blockchain is concerned with metering. What kind of transactions are the largest percentage of traffic payloads?

Let's start with knowledge, not supposition. Then we can make reasonable judgment.