We would like to thank everyone for their votes. Because of you we are now ranked 140.

Technical Excellence

• We are running Steemd version 0.19.2.
• Additional information can be found in our previous witness update here.
• No blocks yet but ready.

Discussion

Lately there's been a number of posts complaining that new witnesses aren't getting blocks and a whole slew of other bitching and moaning. Coming in as a witness right now isn't a get-rich-quick scheme. No one should expect that. Witnesses require a certain amount of vests to move up in rank. For that, a witness needs to prove they have the technical capability and upkeep (not miss blocks, update, backups, monitoring). Can't prove anything until blocks are coming in and that leads us into the other need -- positively contribute to STEEM or Steemit. Most active witnesses run a whole slew of value-added projects and get approval based on their contribution. Numerous other witnesses posted about this fact before, such as this recent post by @drakos for example.

Our witness has a dedicated team member to manage it full-time in preparation of blocks. We recognize that technical expertise is not "optional" and it's not a "learn as you go". The projects (outlined below) are separately managed by another dedicated team member ('Patriot' on Steemit.chat and 'Guiltyparties' on Discord). We don't believe in half-assed efforts.

Ongoing Projects

Introduceyourself Tag Cleaning

The weekly query is now automated. Follow-up posting of correction images and related interaction will still be handled manually. Only users who are first-time offenders will receive a gentle reminder to correct their posting practices. The project continues to have excellent results all in all and all engaged users have stopped misusing the tag.

The query has had additional, unforeseen, benefits and allowed us to identified related systemic spam accounts. Where systemic spam or other notable abuses are identified, information is immediately submitted to @steemcleaners.

SteemSilverGold Community Promotion and Representation

The automated highlighter continues to curate excellent original quality by #steemsilvergold members. The algorithm is especially designed to only highlight posts that satisfy a list of carefully-selected parameters and is ever-evolving.

In order to ensure accountability to the community members and promote two-way conversation, a 'guiltyparties-witness-update' room was created in the #steemsilvergold Discord channel, which can be found here. More information on the community can be found in @silverstackeruk's latest update.

New Projects

Anti-Scam Queries

We have been and will continue to run queries to identify organized scam groups. A number of queries have been written already and more will be written as groups surface. The queries are designed to look for patterns. All findings will be passed down directly to @patrice and @steemcleaners as well as other anti-abuse initiatives where applicable. To see an example of a submission take a look here. Will do pulls on demand, just catch me on Steemit.chat. No strings attached.

Veterans Community Project

Formally launching this week, keep an eye out on our feed for updates. The goal of this project is to support military veterans on Steemit since, as many of you know, all of our team members are veterans.

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Like what we're doing? Support us as a Witness. Go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses At the bottom, type in guiltyparties Click VOTE