Meet Our Witnesses - @patrice

By far the most important choice you will make on Steemit is who you nominate to be witnesses. Everyone has 30 witness votes to place and should take the time to learn about the many great witnesses on this platform. Over the course of the next month I will be introducing you to many of the witnesses here in our community and trying to get to know each one of them a little better. Often time we just see usernames and don't really know the people behind the @ symbol. So I've decided to do what I can to shed some more light on who are witnesses are and why they deserve our votes. If you are completely new to the witness process, go check out the Steemit FAQ Page. If you aren't sure how to vote for witnesses, go check out the Witness Page. On that page you can click on any of the top witnesses names to find out a little more information about them. If you want to see other witnesses outside the top 50, you can check out the SteemDB Witness Page. I can't stress this enough, Every steemian needs to take some time and get to know who our witnesses are and what they are doing to help make the Steem community better.

Today I would like to introduce you to Patricia. Patricia goes by the username @patrice here on steemit and has been active in the community for over a year and a half. @patrice helps run a huge service here on the platform, of which you don't want to be on the wrong end of. She is the creator of @spaminator and a founding member of the @steemcleaners. Spam is a huge issue here on steem as there are and will always be people trying to abuse the system. @patrice helps to keep our feeds clean. This never ending job is one that we should all be thankful for and all give @patrice many thanks. If steem and Steemit are ever to become mainstream we need users like @patrice who do the dirty work and help keep the reward system working as it should. If nothing else, go over to @patrice's page and show her some love for all the cleaning up she does for our community. When @patrice isn't online she enjoys spending time with her dog and two grandchildren. To read more about why @patrice is a good witness, read her Witness Post. If you want to vote for @patrice to be a witness, head over to the Witness page, scroll down to the bottom and type in here name, because she is not currently in the top 50, you need to manually search for her.
Below is a transcript of the recent conversation I had with Patricia. I hope you enjoy it.

• What is one thing that most people don't know about you?

I like cats. @zoee would probably disown me if I got one. (Yes, my dog has an account. It is currently following and upvoting the veterans bot @shadow3scapel and will upvote the posts the bot comments on in the near future when I get some more SP. )

• For steemians who don't know much about witnesses, can you give a layman explanation of what it is that witnesses do?

In simplest terms we keep a witness node(server & software)running with as close to 100% uptime as possible as well as review any proposed forks for potential problems & vulnerabilities before implementing (upgrading software) them. Many of us also have other steem/steemit related projects.

• Being a witness takes a lot of time and energy, how do you keep a balance between this and other commitments?

I really haven't had that many other commitments to balance and it is something I'm struggling with now since my friend and housemate passed away earlier this month. Previously I was free to devote most of my time here on steemit tackling abuse. Now I have new commitments so I will be doing some juggling for the next year.

• If there was a worldwide internet and cellular blackout for a week, what would you do for those 7 days?

Play with my grandkids, read books, and sit on a beach.

• Thus far what has been your most embarrassing moment?

I cheetah banned someone by accident when I stopped to read their post! I don't remember who it was a post caught my eye in the middle of banning a ring of scammers and I stopped to read it. I hit reply and was deciding on my response. I guess muscle memory had me hitting ctrl+v and hitting submit. 😖

• If you could have one super power, what would it be?

The ability to immediately know if someone is just a newbie or an intentional scammer.

• When you are not in front of your computer helping the steemit community, what other hobbies do you have?

When I find time I love to read and play video games. Though I haven't played many in the last year.

• In 5 sentences or less, tell steemians why you deserve their vote.

I'm always bad at these questions. My witness server is 45 days old and I've missed 1 block in that time. I work hard to fight abuse on steemit while striving to be fair. I also want to coordinate abuse fighting efforts between projects in the future.

• What is the biggest mistake new users make when joining steemit?

Thinking this is like every other social media site and not taking the time to look around and get to know the community. Some think that this is facebook, reddit, or twitter and start copying and pasting their posts. Others get discouraged when they don't get noticed immediately and don't realize there are programs out there like @minnowsupport to help new users.

This is part 5 of the series "Meet Our Witnesses", You can read the interviews with @rival, @good-karma, @someguy123 and @liondani by clicking the links:

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https://steemit.com/witness-category/@jasonshick/meet-our-witnesses-rival

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https://steemit.com/witness-category/@jasonshick/meet-our-witnesses-good-karma

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https://steemit.com/witness-category/@jasonshick/meet-our-witnesses-someguy123

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https://steemit.com/witness-category/@jasonshick/meet-our-witnesses-liondani

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Make sure you follow along to this series as we get to know many of the leaders in the Steemit community and show some appreciation for everything they do. Thanks for reading and check back soon.