Eating Your Own Dog Food: Is the Steemit, Inc Team Regularly Using Steemit?
Like many lately, I've been frustrated with the slow responsiveness of Steemit.com and the now common HTTP 5XX errors trying to use the site. New posts and comments often don't save correctly or are gone forever to be replaced with a Loading... text.
Some early community members have written about this multiple times. Top witnesses have chimed in suggesting things are so bad, you should save your comments and posts before submitting them.
In short, the site is becoming unreliable.
I've discussed how we need our own mascot of failure which includes a styled error page helping people understand what's going on, a site status page to show previous outages and what has been done to resolve them, and most importantly, more communication from the Steemit, inc team.
This morning I noticed notifications working again. No notice from @steemitblog or @steemitdev as to why they were broken for so long or why they are now working again. I asked about notifications 7 months ago without a solid answer.
Two weeks ago, @sneak mentioned a DDoS attack as did the @steemitblog. You can see my comments there and replies from @sneak here and here. Why were there no follow up posts? I'm looking forward to attending SteamFest2 so I can ask these same questions in person and get a better "understanding [of] the specific risks to this site" which explain why a CDN or a site status page are either not an option or not a priority.
I've been running my own SaaS company for over 10 years (FoxyCart.com). We've processed over a billion dollars through our system in that time, and we're a level 1 PCI service provider. Security is what we do. It's where we focus much of our time and efforts. We have a smaller team than Steemit, inc, and yet we prioritize personal support and communication with our users. Importantly, we ourselves use our own software to bill for our software. In the software world this is called eating your own dog food.
Today, as I saw notifications randomly start working again with no word from the Steemit team, and as I dealt with more slow responses and lost comments, I had to wonder, does the Steemit team eat their own dog food?
How often do you read posts from Steemit team members? How often are they actually using this tool they built to understand community frustrations about it not working well?
I've got nothing but love for @andrarchy (I really hope he truly knows that), but he's only commented 1,500 times (I'm approaching 9,000) and lately only does so every few days. As a community liaison, is he aware of what the community is experiencing? I hate to call him out like that, but I'm trying to make a point, and I think he knows how much respect I have for him, so he's a safe example for me to use.
If the Steemit team used Steemit as much as the rest of us, they might reprioritize fixing the issues we're seeing and put a higher level of importance on communicating about those issues so we can set better expectations. If Steemit knows what's going on and are actively working towards a solution, great! Please let us know all about it! If not, should I change my expectations and use other interfaces entirely to avoid frustration?
Instead of just complaining about problems, I'm trying to bring some possible solutions. For my company, we have a Slack channel where we all daily post our to-do list for the day. This creates visibility and synergy for the team. My recommendation is for Steemit employees to do the same thing publicly. Use the site regularly throughout the day. This will fix two issues:
You'll dramatically increase the communication level regarding what Steemit, inc is working on and what their priorities are.
You'll have personal experience with the site usability (or lack thereof) to better understand your community.
What say you, Steemit, inc?
I've consistently been one of the biggest fans of this site since I started posting in July of 2016. I've never powered down (so far). I've watched week after week as people have cashed out their STEEM and SBD while I've mostly powered up. I want to see this site succeed!
I look forward to your response and to meeting you in person in Lisbon. Thanks for letting me vent a bit. As a witness, I care about this community, and I want to see it valued.
Note: I'm heading out in a bit to go camping this weekend, so I won't be around much to respond to comments until next week.
As if to highlight my point, here's what I got the first time I tried submitting this post:
Agreed. I think it is pretty arrogant from Steemit Inc to not communicate better. After all most people have invested their hard earned cash into it. Seem pretty irrelevant to talk so much about SMT, when can barely upvote or comment on stuff.
Let me ask my little 3 year old nephew about this... He says that DDoS attacks do not last for weeks.
Unless it's an extortion attempt. Might explain the relative silence. Alas, we're stuck with pure speculation without updates from the team. But hey, we've got SMT's coming and a movie is being made which mentions Steem, so I guess those are the clear priorities.
Their silence leading to all kinds of speculations is exactly what I told another witness in a pm last night. SMT is overhyped in my opinion, it's still far from reality (they only produced a whitepaper so far). Before embarking on fancy projects, build a solid 100% working platform first. The way I see it, with the current state of things, if they want to add SMT and keep going as they do, this place will turn to a pile of 💩. I would hate to see that happen because I invest so much time and energy in this place, on a daily basis; I love Steem's concept, like a lot do, so STINC, stop ruining it.
Bingo. I feel like they've left a renovation job unfinished and moved on to the next house.
Exactly!!!!
"Unless it's an extortion attempt."
Interesting idea, hadn't even thought of that...a Steem stick'em'up.
PS - Transactions still failing, this comment was eaten x1.
Lol. Pity for me I know nothing much about DDoS attacks. I need to meet your nephew @drakos. 😅😂
Anyway, thank you @lukestokes for speaking on behalf of us. Your statements are on point.
Cheers, @arrliinn (now crossing fingers that my comment won't disappear as I hit post.)
Exactly!
I fully echo all your sentiments.
On the notification issue, I can provide a little color.
My notifications worked for a few days when I signed up 5 months ago, and then mostly died. What I have noticed is that when my computer BSoDs (got a pad PS I think), and I have to reboot from scratch (as opposed to hibernation), my notifications for Steemit work in all my browsers. This only last for a few hours, then they go away again.
Probably not too helpful, but there's definitely more to it than "notifications have been broken for 7 months on the site's end".
same here but u knew that
It's true, I did.
These are all good points Luke, and I'm really glad you're asking them. The lack of progress has got me down recently. I mean, I know stuff must be happening behind the scenes right? But the GUI stays the same, and as you point out, the outtages seem to be getting worse.
Voting seems to be really heavily affected, sometimes I'll vote, then try and do another vote 5 minutes later, and I get the "can't vote more than once every 3 seconds" error.
Just recently I saw that the post button got changed from submit, and I wondered if we had been abandoned. That feeling was strengthened when I saw Ned talking about how much time he has been putting into SMTs.
Steemit seems to have a big team and an admirable war chest, yet I don't see the progress. I tried to start an "If I Was A Dev" tag, hoping that some Steemit devs would chime in.
Anyways, it's good that you as a prominent witness are calling for more communication, I hope we get it. Especially as the Steem ecosphere grows, I think it's important for the centre of the Steemverse to be running smoothly.
I wish I could afford Steemfest this year, as I'd be right there with you asking those same questions :-)
Cg
I'm very new to the community and so far I came to the realization that Steemit community is the warmest thing in the entire Universe yet I come across tons of posts regarding the Steemit problems and I realize that I have them as well. Very same problems. I am used to technical difficulties. They are vowed into the core of our internet lives.
Flashback: Back in the days when I was a kid in Ukraine we had problems with electricity almost every week. Fun times, as the only device with the battery in the entire house, was a flashlight with a built-in radio. It was actually larger than a 5-gallon jug. Certainly looked like a giant red portable gun from the future. 😆 We gathered around it to tell stories…
Back to the story: So I was ready for some tech issues from a startup. I know it’s hard, I’m running one myself. But I wasn’t realizing that it’s currently the major frustration from the entire community.
Do you guys think that this is going to be fixed is this it? Is @steemit dying? Slowly falling apart? Bug after bug? Ignorance?
I was tweeting about the situation to Steemit this morning. I couldn’t load the page this morning. I really needed to write and post and so I went to the only other platform where I’m active. They liked my tweet 😒.
I couldn’t find any status updates from Steemit or any news about outages.
There needs to be more transparency?
Yes we all love the community as you say; however often it seems like the lights are on at Steemit.inc but nobody is home :-(
I would love to see a picture of that 5 gallon radio if you have one! Looking forward to that post :-)
Cg
Hah man! I wish I could find the images but it were the early 2000s back in Odessa, Ukraine. I was too young to even start thinking about documenting the history.
But you're right, I can write stories about it. Maybe they would bring some light to the Omens of memory.
Oh that's a shame, maybe you could find someone else's pic of the same piece of equipment?
"Some light to the omens of memory" ~ I like that, you put it a beautiful way. Speaking of memory, take a look of my latest series, it talks about how you can edit your memories.
Not so much edit the content, but tweak it so it makes you feel a different way; you can neutralise sad memories and enhance happy ones :-)
I very much look forward to those stories!
Cg
Thank you so much for your series actually! I've started reading yesterday and continuing today, you really got me intrigued about the memory editing.
And it feels so good to directly communicate with the author right after reading the quality content! I'll be participating in your discussions often 😅👍
🎶Current music: Sasse - Antiloops
Thanks. I love the great discussions we have here. I just got back from camping this weekend, and it's good to see I'm not the only one frustrated by these issues.
I think things are definitely happening behind the scenes, hopefully and I think they might want to push everything at the same time. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot got reveal at SteemFest.
Nonetheless I share this feeling that more could be done to better keep people in the loop with small updates.
I agree, what do you think we should do?
Those are the same glitches I have had with upvotes and stuff.
I am new ...so I don't know how my tolerence would be if I was in it from the beginning. I guess there has been A LOT of growth and improvement... But if I had been expecting so much more.
I do think status/progress updates would be an excellent offering from the devs to the community.
I am right there with you @cryptogee, it has been very disappointing
Great post! I love the way that you ask very pointed questions and also "called out" the community liaison while doing it with tact and kindness.
There is definately a need for a news post where we can read reports about these problems without having to speculate.
Come on Steemit inc. Don't you see how much we're all doing our part to build Steemit and make it successful. It would be good to see, or at least hear more from your end.
Yeah accountability is key! It is like humour can't live without it!
I think not naming name would have made more sense but that's a small detail. I share your feelings on those issues guys.
He did it in style though
I agree. It might not be a bad move either. I don't know.
I am curious if we get feedback here.
I guess they are keeping everything for SteemFest. Maybe they should look to become better at daily to weekly communication. I still think we should give them the benefit of the doubt to some extent.
Sometimes naming names is needed to make the wake up call sounding louder :)
Will you be in Lisbon? Would be really nice to meet you
Sadly for me and ever more so for everyone else I won't be there.
I was waiting for a write up because it’s been a drag indeed, a challenge to practice patience.
I’m amazed that my comments even come through. Most just vanished. Same for my votes and replies.
I'm now copying & pasting my comments in a separate text file on my desktop before posting to Steemit; the same goes for posts. I've had to re-type comments multiple times as a results of the recent outages.
Yes too many errors now-a- days. I have just re-posted my post after first showed errors. Now i have double posts. There is something wrong with the site.
I can’t even count all errors anymore
@lukestokes, I agree with you 1,000% !! I have been blogging about my frustrations too. I have been psyched about Steemit the past 3 months, but these last 3 weeks have cast things seriously into doubt. There is a SEVERE disconnect between whatever team of techie geeks that is truly "running" Steemit.com and how ordinary people like to access a website. It is sad that so many people are working their asses off to get people to join Steemit and grow it WORLDWIDE and then to have the website have piss poor performance. It is a disgrace really, especially with all the hub-bub about Steem Fest 2... I'm starting not to believe the hype, that's a sick and saddening feeling. Peace
You expressed my thoughts exactly. I've gained a lot of excitement about this platform, the community, and what I've learned here. But, the unreliability of our interface at steemit the last couple weeks has been frustrating. As @lukestokes said, without communication from the team or quick resolution of these problems, it causes users to lose faith in the system. It should be interesting to hear what happens at Steem Fest 2 and see the aftermath here at Steemit (hopefully there's aftermath, because if not, that would be a bad sign). Luke's idea of a Slack channel is great: put it up there for the community to see. If we don't see that they're "eating their own dog food" there needs to be another go-to resource that lets the users know, and see, that they're working to keep steemit running.
You mention this being a disgrace, and I think you're right. Steemit has had a strong start, a lot of support from within the community, and seeing growth to where it has then be suffering with dev communication and on-going platform reliability issues is a pretty bad look. It feels like this should have been something that got ironed out much sooner. I hope the aftermath is a better way of Steemit Inc keeping in touch with the community, being aware of the problems and addressing them efficiently, while avoiding hot headed episodes of lashing out at complaining users on social media.
Time to click the "Post" button, watch that wheel turn for a solid minute, and hope for the best.
I agree its starting to get frustrating. People work so hard and then this is what they get? I like your stuff, following you. I hope you have a wonderful day!