Refactoring The Witnesses List On Steemit - Please Support This Issue On Github
It was brought to my attention by one of the Steemit witnesses, @noisy, that the current UI / UX for witnesses is not ideal, to say the least. As a matter of fact, the way witnesses are displayed on the main Steemit.com site is limiting, suggesting that only the top 50 are relevant.
The reason we're only seeing 50 witnesses is historical: in the beginning, a couple of years ago, there were barely 60-70 active witnesses for the entire Steemit ecosystem, so limiting to the top 50 seemed like the normal thing to do, in order not to send a message of inconsistency. But the platform grew up enormously (and I'm grateful for that), so now we have at least 200-300 witnesses active, or semi-active in the ecosystem. Keeping the limit of only 50 witnesses is sending a wrong message now, hinting at some sort of centralization.
Beyond this, there is a real consequence: witnesses in top 50 are getting a lot more votes, just because they are more visible, despite the fact that witnesses below the 50th position may be more active or useful to the platform. As a witness who briefly hovered above the 50th position, for a couple of months, I can confirm this: once you're down that threshold, is like you're in a different community. You get way less votes, no matter how active and supportive you are, as a witness.
So, @noisy reopened a Github issue for Condenser (the UI of Steemit.com, on top of the steemd blockchain) which was closed previously, for the historical reasons I was mentioning above. I'm fully supporting this change and, if you want to support it too, just go ahead and do one of the following:
- upvote the issue on Github, if you have an account there
- leave a comment here so I'll know you're in favor of this
- resteem this post so the issue will get more visibility in the Steemit ecosystem
Thank you and Steem on!
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.
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I find this proposal (read it and voted on Github too) the right thing to do. Even more, the ideas to make this page more user-friendly are most welcomed, since I know people that have been on Steemit for as long as I have and don't know what witnesses are, or voted for one yet.
Maybe a reminder to vote for witnesses in case one still has available slots (or maybe only if he/she hasn't voted at all?) should also be included in a visible place.
Yes. I am in favor of that.
I've been looking at steemian.info where you can see up to 400 of the witnesses (active and inactive). Something like that on Steemit would be extremely useful, even if it was shortened to the top 250 which would encompass all currently active witneseses (unless there's a bunch below 400). It would also be nice if people would withdraw their upvotes for inactive witnesses, so there wasn't so much clutter within the lower tier group, but I guess that's all part of the ongoing 'fun' of a decentralized system where anyone can be a witness for life, active, contributing, or not. :)
this is strange....
I voted for you as a witness....I thought I did anyway...weeks/months ago.
I just checked on the witness votey thingy...and you were not on my list...?
I have just added you again - can you check I have witnessed you?
Cheers!
Owk this is a nice issue to visit coz honestly i never knew we had up to 200 steemit witnesses. As a matter of fact, a very active withness @surpassinggoogle doesnt even make tye top 50 and it just gets me confused.
I hope this issue gets resolved.
Am in support of this @noisy made a valid point and i hope it is addressed soon. When over 200 people are working on a platform and only 50 gets visibility doesn't sound fair. I hope its resolved soon
absolutely behind this. This has been a frequent topic of discussion during the Witness Chats I've been hosting on the Steemit Ramble. The response from one of the top witnesses was that showing more witnesses would make it too complicated.
To me, showing only 50 witnesses in a field of roughly 200 is like presenting a voter with a ballot with only two candidates in a field of 10 and calling it a fair election.
Does your proposed solution have a mechanism to ensure that only active witnesses are shown? One of the other concerns was the presence of dead witnesses in the top 50 being displayed.
The next witness chat is June 16th at 11am EDT in the Steemit Ramble discord. ALL witnesses regardless of their rank are invited to take part. You can hear the previous chats on my blog.
I have an account on GitHub and I'll be upvoting it here shortly. The importance of this simple issue cannot be overstated. I'm not much of a developer, but there are a number of witnesses I know who are making big names for themselves. However, the likelihood that they'll garner the votes that someone whose name is on a list that is generated when someone clicks on the Vote for Witnesses link is surprisingly slim. This is good. This is definitely a good thing, and I'm 100% behind it.
yeah, totally a wrong message, Those who are working hard on this platform, this is not fair to them, they will get hurt and they will stop working.