jesta witness update - 2016-09-30

So much for a week off... ah well at least it was productive. With my contract gig completely done, all the time I've reclaimed is slowly filling up with new and exciting projects. Instead of rambling here in my witness update about new projects, I'm planning on doing some write ups - I feel these ideas deserve their own posts.

Before I dive into the details of the last week, starting today all of my witness updates posts will be using the 100% Steem Power payout option. I don't have an exact reason as to why I'm doing it, but it feels like the right thing to do. These updates are to serve as a public service announcement and for transparency, and I don't feel I should be rewarded with liquid currency assets for doing them. Still working on why I feel that way :)

1. Accomplished the week of 2016-09-30:

• Helped @paxmagnus make his introduction post and learn the ropes of how all this magic works here on steemit. Thank you all for giving him such a warm welcome!
• steemdb 0.3.1 update - timeline of followers, reblogs and witness votes
• Integration of SQLITE3 into SteemPress for local storage of content without requiring an actual database. This will be used for caching of blockchain information for speed as well as customization/configuration options. If anyone's got a better solution for a flat file database, I'd love to hear it. The goal of the application is portability though, I don't want people to have to install stuff on their servers if it can be avoided.
• Added the ability for SteemPress blogs to syndicate content that has been reblogged by a user. This opens up a whole new realm of ways to syndicate content through a 3rd party site.
• Started adding additional API endpoints to steemdb in order to support steempress's new features. These APIs will hopefully be a part of steemd in the future, but I'll fill in the gaps until it's ready.
• Added a page to steemdb that shows the accounts who have powered up the most over the last 30 days.
• Added a special page to steemdb that filters and shows posts that qualify for Project Curie (@curie).
• Created a CSV download for the organizers of the steemitphotochallenge to download all entries for management purposes.

2. Upcoming projects/goals

• Over the next few weeks I plan on really engaging with the community to talk about some new initiatives that @paxmagnus and I are undertaking. I'm really excited to start talking about our plans, explain how things will work, show some interface mockups of our first project, and getting a product out for everyone to use.
• Since I only took a single day off this week, the weekend is going to be somewhat calm and long. I plan on doing some cooking and play some games. I've been eyeballing RimWorld for the last few days, I think I'm going to pick it up. I might also binge watch Luke Cage on netflix, episode 1 was pretty good :)
• Next week is the first normal week back at the office with @paxmagnus (after my contract gig). I'll likely be spending 2 or 3 days in the office creating the project plan for our first release and impending announcement schedule.
• The continuation of my work in steempress with a flat file storage solution will continue.
• I plan on spending a bit of time over the next few weeks to work on a way to do a data dump for a specific account. I've had some asks for exports of data for specific purposes, so I'd like to oblige and help people take control of their data. I'm sure a few applications of this data dump will be available for everyone, so I'll probably be talking more about it soon.
• My account is now powering down ~350 STEEM/week (or ~$175 USD). I am using these funds for hosting costs of all the projects I manage as well as the public nodes for the community to use. Currently these servers run ~$300/month and I plan on doubling this capacity to accommodate growth. The US node for steem.ws receives an incredible amount of traffic these days, so I'll be adding another US full node to join the cluster. I also still am in search of dedicated hosting the EU and APAC region - suggestions are welcome!.

3. Thoughts from this week

This week I want to focus on an idea I've been seeing/hearing a lot lately, the idea that people are draining the rewards pool and voting for themselves. I'm starting to dig into the topic because I want to determine if this is real threat. I'm not convinced it is, and the rhetoric everyone keeps repeating about this topic is somewhat damaging to the steemit community.

Here's what I've come up with so far using steemdb.com data (warning, slow loading page!)

What this page does is it analyzes every vote cast in the last 30 days to see if any accounts are focusing their votes on any other accounts. It shows you how many VESTS the voting account has, who they focused on, how many votes and at what weight. It's not perfect, but it's a good smoke signal of strange occurrences.

My conclusion thus far? I really don’t see it. I'm not saying it's not happening, but I don't think it's prolific and damaging. It also doesn't look like it's that rewarding for those involved. The worst offender by far over the last 30 days was @noaommerrr, and if you go dig a bit deeper you'll notice that @cheetah has squashed the abuse. Looking at the rest of the accounts... you can probably find an instance where someone earned <100 SBD in rewards doing this. This is a tiny fraction of the daily rewards.

This isn't an epidemic like some may like you to believe, and it will only become less of a problem as the community grows in size and vote distribution increases. Sure... some people vote for their own posts with other accounts, some people vote for their friends, and some people vote for authors in an author list repeatedly - there's nothing wrong with any of this in terms of the "rules".

SO PLEASE, don't walk around spreading misinformation and causing people to turn away. If you can identify a problem, let's talk about it, but in the mean time meaningless rhetoric about how the sky is falling isn't helping anyone.

Also if you have any other meaningful ways that I can use data to shed light on a topic, please ask. You can find me on steemit.chat as @jesta.

4. Previous week's update

Update for the week ending 2016-09-23

Finally, don't forget to vote for witnesses here