Jesta - backup witness update for week ending 2016/08/19
Transparency is good and I like the fact that the other backup witnesses are posting updates. Friday also seems to be the day everyone's silently agreed upon. Since I'm acting as a backup witness, I'll also make it a point at the end of each week to write post explaining how I've been contributing to the growth and success of steem.
I am also going to try to establish a little bit of order to my posts and avoid rambling as much as possible. I'd encourage other witnesses to do the same. It would be nice to have a standard content format that's easy to consume and use to learn about the individuals in the witness program.
These posts are broken into 3 main sections:
- What I've done since my last update
- Upcoming projects/goals
- Thoughts for the week
The template I plan on using for this post can be found here. I'm also open to discussions on how we (as witnesses) can make this content more digestible.
1. Accomplished the week of 2016/08/19:
- Enhanced the Witness Voting Page on steemit.com so that you could see who you've voted for that's not in the top 50.
- Working with @dudutaulois for the SteemPress Bounty I issued a few weeks ago. It's shaping up pretty nicely!
- Created a Dockerized + Pistonized version of @clayop's price feed application. I've been running this ever since posting about it and it seems to be pretty stable.
- Updated SteemStats to 0.3.4. I had a backlog of features and fixes I managed to squeeze in this week.
- Wrote 3 separate python scripts (for blocks, account history, and witnesses) using Python/Piston. These scripts sync the steem blockchain to a database for analysis and experimentation. I currently have been synchronizing blockchain history for about a week now.
- Updated the steem.ws API nodes I control to 0.13.0.
- Engaging more and more in discussions occuring with developers on github.
2. Upcoming projects/goals
- I am planning on launching a new steem tool in the next week or two that will directly integrate with steemstats, as well as being it's own standalone site.
- I currently working on some deployment scripts for steem.ws nodes. I am going to spend some SBD to fund 1-2 new steem.ws nodes in under-served regions this weekend. This will improve response times around the world to all applications using the cluster (e.g. steemstats.com).
- There are a few "nice to have" features I think I can tackle on steem/steemit.com that have been mentioned on github. I'm planning on spending part of the weekend to see how many of these I can accomplish. Pull requests incoming!
- The SteemPress Bounty program ends this weekend and will need some coordination/communication to wrap up. I'll be talking with @dudutaulois, getting the source code, and sending him the bounty. I may also attempt to implement the theme this weekend.
- To continue helping answer as many questions as possible from those new to the platform. I've learned a lot over the past month and want to share as much of it as possible.
3. Thoughts from this week
The one thing that's been a constant theme for me this week is: we really need better ways to educate users on how things work. The way this website works is confusing to most people, and even once they get started, they still don't even realize it's only the tip of the iceberg.
I've talked to dozens of people over the last week - many of them who just want to learn about this stuff. I applaud @ned's effort to improve this and we all need to get involved. We are going to need more than a wiki though, as some of these things will need to be displayed on steemit.com as well. The information needs to be put in peoples faces, rather than requiring them to go off somewhere and "learn".
If you're someone who is assisting with this effort and you need help understanding something, please feel free to reach out to me on steemit.chat. I am more than happy to act as a bridge between the nitty-gritty of how something works and those who are writing content to help others. My actual writing time is rather limited
Previous week's update
My last update was on on Sunday the 14th. It was my witness application thread, where I announced my intention to get involved with the witness program in an attempt to learn about all aspects of the steem ecosystem.
@jesta
You are doing a great job. Steemstats is awesome!
I wish us miners could have a little more mining stats ;)
You got my vote!
What kind of stats are you looking for related to mining? I've got a few new ones in mind, but always curious to hear what others may want.
You probably have better ideas, but these are a few to come to mind:
Steem Power Earned (/ Day / Month)
Difficulty Chart
Network Hashing Power
Number of active miners
Good stuff @jesta. My writing time is very limited too but I'll support your effort to make this platform more clear to new users!
@jesta thanks for the article...I want to know what are the ways to witness and what are the benefits being witness?
I don't know that I can sum it up properly in a single comment, maybe I should write a post on the topic now that it's fresh in my mind and I'm learning about it.
Sounds great...might help a lot...thanks for the response...looking forward to read more.
Thank you for filling us in. This kind of information is much appreciated. I realise that you probably have a lot to do but thanks for the update.
I agree that understanding how the system works is definitely daunting. After two weeks I still feel like I only know the tip of the iceberg. What I do know about STEEM is very intriguing and fascinating to me. The concept and its application make this an exciting platform.
Every time I review the white paper or read informative posts, I learn a bit more. And I try to help newbies understand the system too. There have been some great posts (written some time ago) explaining the system and providing graphics. I bookmark them to refer back to them when someone needs help.
Thank you for contributing to the SteemIt community and for all your hard work. It is appreciated!
Steem on,
Mike
You have definitely helped me understand Steemit better especially the voting system. I was wondering if you could explain the witness page a little better and how that helps us on Steemit? Thanks for all of the work you've done.
Awesome Jesta, I know we chatted previously on gathering history - gr8. I'm looking to learn how to pull this data, I'm not a programmer tho! Jesta I just voted you as witness, well deserved in my opinion. Keep up the gr8 work )
Wonderful @jesta!! Love this . I should do the same to be more organized and set my goals. Thank you!
"We are going to need more than a wiki though, as some of these things will need to be displayed on steemit.com as well. The information needs to be put in peoples faces, rather than requiring them to go off somewhere and "learn". - I agree with that, maybe have some kind of quick animated video tutorial pop up for a new user that goes through how to post (including linking pictures and videos) and goes through other good to know aspects of Steem. I hope Ned and Dan are listening.
Great! I support you!
I've been meaning to reach out to you, did you catch the fork I did to add docker/piston to your price feed app? It was a fairly big change, so I didn't just assume to submit a pull request. But if you're interested I'm more than happy to merge it back in with the original.
Otherwise I'm more than happy to try and maintain a separate version. Thanks for creating it in the first place :)