RE: Transparency Wins: Witness Insight Project
Very nicely done!
One thing I'd like to see (which is quite difficult to do and visualize) is how many accounts someone votes for before they are top 20 witnesses. If we just say "Hey, that person votes for a bunch of top 20 who also vote them back!" and see it as a negative, that's a little misleading. If someone instead votes for a great up-and-coming witness who, over time, makes it to the top 20 then that should be a positive example of the benefit that witness is brining to the ecosystem. They recognized value early on and supported it.
Make sense? I think some of the people in the top 20 I vote for weren't in the top 20 when I voted for them originally, but it would be hard for someone to determine that unless there was a time dimension involved as to when they voted. Again, maybe not easy to do, but quite interesting.
Hey @lukestokes, first of all I really appreciate your comment and the suggestion. I clearly see your point. And I know what you worry. Some other witnesses also worried about the possible misleading.
To be clear, I want witnesses to be prepared for the misleading, and bold enough to proudly deal with the questioning from the other Steemians.
In order to avoid the unnecessay dispute, I hope witnesses groom their voting as often as possible, and check if the witnesses they are voing to are still in a good state. Currently 5 of the top 20 witnesses are voing to some disabled witnesses. It's been quite while actually. I think this is not a trivial problem.
Last but not least, some witnesses are not actively working as a witness apart from the block producing and the price feeding, while many other backup witnesses are devotig their time abd effort for Steem not to mention the basic role of the Witnesses. Then do they really deserve your vote? I hope the top witnesses stimulates each others and get improved together, and support the outstanding backup witnesses by their witness vote. Witnesses voting will anyway never make the votee to be top 20 witnesses anyway, but it will really really encourge the votee and the others.
Sorry for this long reply. I really will try to make the metrics not to mislead people anyway. Our goal is the same isnt it. "Make Steem greater, and get rewarded"
Thanks again, all the best!
Votes from accounts like @freedom really make the difference, for the most part. Who witnesses vote for matters less, depending on their VESTs and how many people proxy through them. Maybe it would be useful to show the top active voters by VESTS as well who aren't witnesses? Their votes make a huge difference, more so than who the witnesses vote for.
The challenge with much of this is some of the top witnesses provide a lot of value in hours and hours of very high level discussion regarding game theory, economics, code changes, strategies, etc which is really valuable to STEEM and yet much of that happens behind the scenes. Those who know about it vote accordingly. Those who don't, think they are providing no value other than block production. I'd prefer more openness in these discussions and more involvement from backup witnesses (ideally, I'd like for it to happen here on the blockchain), but I also recognize when there are too many people in a discussion, you end up with noise. It's a tricky problem with no easy solution. Maybe a read-only discussion system where the top 100 witnesses and a select group of 50 or so major investors along with employees of Steemit, inc could all dialogue but it would be read-only for everyone else?
The challenge there is some may not freely speak their mind and try out new crazy ideas because of concerns that those listening will take things out of context and hold it against them. There are also security concerns where the top witnesses need to respond quickly to private information that has been responsibly disclosed before it's made public in order to protect the chain.
This, I am one of those who does not know what is being discussed between the top witnesses. I definitely appreciate what you guys are doing behind the scene. No doubt it. but "Woking behind the scene" can also mislead how the people think the witnesses do. I really hope that the discussion results are published immediately to the public. For this, top 20 witnesses should post summary of the discussion in rota probably.
Top 20 witnesses should think themselves as public figures. Never forget that they are paid around $24000 a month now. As you suggested, the pre-scheduled regular meeting with the read-only audiences should be a really great idea. I will fully support it!
Again, witnesses like you, who try to keep the communication channel open, are really important for DPOS. To be utterly honest, a lot of Steemians worry about the unprofessionalism amongst the witnesses. They just do not dare (have power) to make their voice. Actually BP's of EOS worry me. They are incredibly professional and absolutely transparent, and that fact dwarves the witnesses of Steem as we look very amateur compared to them. But we can initiate the positive change if the top 20 witnesses change their mind.
Sorry if I am being too pessimistic. This is coming out from my enthusiasm for Steem, but please just take this as a constructive criticism.
I think you made a lot of important points here, and I've shared your comment with others as well. Here's what I said:
That's cool.
This is to the point. So true especially for those who are pioneering the blockchain innovation. Many thanks.
And forgot to mention, the metric will be quite interesting, will think about it. Surely really difficult even with SteemSQL though :-)
Yep. I figured it would be tricky. I'll be doing an updated witness engagement report this week, and I too try to draw attention to people voting for inactive witnesses.
It would be great to be mentioned in your witness enngagement report indeed. No one will say any negative about it. Cheers!