TimCliff Witness Update 2017-01-01

Happy New Year Everyone!

Here is what I've been up to since my last witness post:

• The submission period for the "Welcome to Steemit" page banner image has ended. There were a lot of great submissions! We posted the results here for the community to review. If you haven't seen the entries yet, you should check them out!
• I created the latest edition of the Reports from the Witnesses series, with a summary of what all the witnesses have been up to.
• @the.masses continues to remain an interesting project to watch. The account recently moved up from reputation 49 to reputation 50. Users frequently use the account to post 'scandalous' topics/posts that they wouldn't want to do from their regular accounts. The most recent example was a question to the whales about why @ozchartart's posts are considered so valuable. I am generally not in favor of 'personal attack' type posts, but I understand the need for users to express themselves through this type of post. The account was also used to create a German post Wie der Rechtsterrorismus auf Facebook organisiert wird (translation: How the right wing terrorism is organized on Facebook). I find it so cool that this account is being used to post anonymous content all over the world!
• I posted a summary of Steemit's latest release, which included a fix for the NSFW issue! The post was resteemed by @steemitblog (Steemit's official announcement blog) - which I considered to be quite an honor!
• A reminder to only use 4 tags (instead of 5) when creating posts, due to a glitch in the blockchain code. The details can be found here. As we wait for the back-end fix for the blockchain code, Steemit is also working on a fix to change the limit to 4 when you create a post via Steemit.com. This will help users who don't know (or have forgotten) about the issue, by preventing them from using 5 tags. This is being tracked in GitHub issue 918.
• I proposed a knowingly unpopular idea to change the Steemit economy by starting to charge a 3% premium to power up. Even though this will probably never be implemented, it seemed like an idea worth discussing. It created some interesting conversation - both in the thread and in steemit.chat!
• I published an announcement based on @ned's comment in the steemit.chat witness channel, that the Steemit roadmap would be delayed. The delay itself isn't a big deal (IMO) - but it could have turned into one if it wasn't properly communicated. Thankfully Ned let us know ahead of time so we could get the word out!
  
• I submitted my first pull request to the Steemit.com GitHub repository! The PR makes a bunch of updates to the "Welcome to Steemit" content, based on suggestions from @sneak, @pfunk, and myself, along with several others from the community. The details of the PR can be found in this post, which amazingly made it to the number 1 trending spot on Steemit!
  
• I continue to be involved with a lot of the GitHub discussions about feature additions and glitch reports.

Forward Looking Plans:

• Continue my involvement with existing projects.
• @bitcoiner and I will be reviewing the images for the "Welcome to Steemit" page banner with Steemit. Hopefully (with Steemit's approval), we will be working to update the page with one of the images. This will take some time though. Expect an update within the next few months. The winners of the bounty will be paid once we decide on the images.
• I plan to start working on more changes to the Steemit.com front-end website via GitHub pull requests. Unfortunately this means the amount of 'blog/content' type posts that I do will probably go down a bit, as I spend my time coding. This is where I currently feel my time/skills can be best put to use helping the community right now though. I will post details as I work on things.

Use of Witness Funds:

• So far, I am continuing to run my witness servers at a loss - which is totally fine by me. I believe it is important for witnesses to be doing what they do for the community, and not to make money. I have been able to cover the costs of my servers using author rewards from my blog posts though - which is really great!
• I sent 10.385 STEEM to a user who posted in the "help" steemit.chat channel about having transferred STEEM to an incorrect account when trying to withdraw to an exchange ("bitterx" instead of "bittrex"). Their STEEM was essentially lost with no way to recover it. For the small amount of STEEM it cost to resolve their issue, I figured it was a good use of funds. Small things like this can make or break a new user's user experience when they are just starting out on site.
• If the amount I make from my witness position exceeds the costs of running my servers, I plan to use a majority of my witness funds to create bounties that incentivize more Steemit.com front-end UI development.

Summary of current witness parameters:

• Price Discount: I reduced my discount from 5% to 2%. The SBD peg has held very close to $1.00, frequently slightly above. Currently it is at $1.02. The debt level is still high though, at 3.2%. I feel that we need to be encouraging more people to convert SBD->STEEM right now to reduce the debt. With the current rising price of STEEM, and the now shorter (3.5 day instead of 7) conversion period - I feel that 2% is enough of a discount to encourage conversion without being unnecessarily high.
• Registration Fee: I reduced my registration fee to 40 STEEM, which is approximately $6.40 worth of SP (at the current market price). This is still slightly on the high side (IMO), although it does provide an extra incentive for new users to sign up. My current policy is to keep the amount between $5 and $10 USD worth of STEEM, aiming to be closer to $5 without going below.
• SBD Interest Rate: I reduced my SBD interest rate from 7% down to 4% today. Based on the fact that the SBD debt is still considered 'high', an increased discount is the preferred method over SBD interest rate in terms of keeping the SBD/USD peg close to $1 USD. There has been a discussion among the witnesses (idea from @pfunk) to try and make changes to the SBD interest rate only on the first of the month. This is explained in @smooth.witness's post here. I cannot guarantee that I will stick to this policy forever, but it is my plan to follow this until further notice, or unless an 'emergency' situation arises which calls for a change in policy outside of the monthly update.

I welcome feedback on any of my projects or things that I can be doing better as a witness :-)

If you think I am doing a great job, I would greatly appreciate your witness vote!

Thanks everyone for reading my witness report!

Remember to vote for witnesses here:
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
If you aren't sure who to vote for, check out this Witness Voting Guide!