RE: Do we have the best witnesses? Questions for the witnesses.
There is a big chance your questions will be ignored. There is only one witness that I know will not only share some of your concerns, but also actually enjoys having these somewhat difficult conversations and does his best to educate others on the matter.
@drakos if you don't mind me tagging you, I think you are the man for the job.
This is an opportunity to have a healthy conversation on this matter, as a stake holder (mind you im no whale, but i've worked for what i have) it's in my best interest to help, if I can educate our Steemian Population on this very subject a little bit, I will.
It's always a bit worrying to me that we don't do a good enough job (i say all of us, because we are a self governed community) to put this information out there for the new users to understand and act on. Yes, crypto is complicated. Yes, Steem is just as much if not more due to its political elements.
Are you voting to any inactive witnesses?
This is the only question that I'm probably informed enough to answer. Most of the witnesses that vote on dead witnesses do so knowingly. I speculate two reasons as to why.
- if they leave it open, they will get spammed for requests.
- they don't think anyone deserves the vote at the moment.
Blocktrades said something to this effect a while back, It would probably be hard for me to find this comment, but I'm sure if he was asked directly, he would not hesitate to confirm.
Now... there is a special radio show happening this weekend.
@aggroed who is a top 20 witness and a very ethical one (imo of course) is hosting A witness Panel this coming Saturday.
It would not only be beneficial for you to come to the show, it might be beneficial to us as an audience to.
In any case, I take my leave, much respect.
Cheers
@meno I really appreciate your input here. You seem to know much more than I know and I honour and respect that fact. Maybe I am making to much noise here, and might need to step back and think again.
Maybe I overrated Steem blockchain and the witnesses. To me it's all amateurism but nothing. At least the top 20 witnesses should really care how the investors and the competitors would think about themselves as a reflection of Steem blockchain. That's how they are respecting everyone. Top 20 witnesses are not just normal Steemians aren't they. It is becoming clearer that maybe Steem witness is not what I want to be. will think about quitting.
How come this kind of excuses could be acceptable for the top 20 representatives of DPOS.
Checking out the comment from @aggroed on this post, it would be pointless attending the chat. I really do not enjoy any aggressive and emotional discussion.
Thanks again for your comment, although I disagree with some of your words, it is really fruitful discussion with you. I will definitely consider voting you if you become a witness later.
Regards
I appreciate your kind reply @asbear, I would however encourage you to reconsider attending the panel this weekend. I'm willing to stick my neck out there and say that even in disagreements, you won't be attacked and your point of view will be discussed as adults.
The witnesses who participate of MSP/Palnet without exception really are wonderful people, and to be honest with you if you perceived aggression from @aggroed's words. It might be because he is a passionate man and nothing else.
If you ask me, I think the conversation that has sprouted in your comment section has been extremely productive. Yes, it there is some coffee grounds at the bottom of the cup, but in many ways you have effectively made enough noise as to direct at least partially this weekend's conversation.
At the expense of possibly offending someone I will speculate that some of the defensive reactions from some of the witnesses on this post, come as some residual bad taste from a recent post made by Bernie, in which he was in his usual ways, very "unique" very Bernie.
In any case, I sincerely hope you come to the panel. You can listen in, if you don't feel like saying anything, don't, but you will hands down feel the love and passion we all have for this community and the unquestionable commitment to betterment of Steem.
All the best brother
Thanks, you are a really good man. :)
It's a bank holiday weekend in the UK so I HAVE TO go out with my wife all day unfortunately (?) but I will try to listen to the recording later.
Cheers!
Believe it or not, witnesses do discuss these issues. There was a big discussion about privex in particular, at one point, one of the main topics discussed in this post.
I did not mean it like an attack @blocktrades, it it came across like that I do apologize. I'm simply stating that they are not discussed in public, on a post like this and as much as I understand the need for a private slack channel to iron details out, the smaller witnesses and the public are left scratching our head in ignorance.
So I will clarify, not an attack in the slightest, simply an observation. I know @asbear is a newer witness, and as such he is both trying to get his name out there (which I appreciate) and also attempting to understand the dynamics at play.
That is all...
I see, thanks for clarification. In fact, I'd say you're spot on at this point: most of the top 20 witnesses don't think it's a good idea to share security details publicly.
On the other hand, I guess I assumed there was already some public docs that give suggestions for good ways to configure your witness from security, etc, point of view. If not, there should be.
I will be audacious enough to ask on behalf of @aggroed (without his blessing of course, hence the audacious) if you could participate of the upcoming panel this saturday.
I think he will be happy to have your voice added to the pot. As one of the biggest investors on the platform, your contributions, concerns and ideas hold a lot more weight.
With that request, I take my leave... (I won't take it personal if you decline)
Cheers
I've got a standing invitation from aggroed to attend and we agreed he would ping me once a month. I hope I can make it sometime next month, but right now I'm just super busy. I work on weekends too (generally only around 5 or 6 hours on weekend days), so even Saturday isn't a "free day" for me.
I confess I also didn't read all your reply before, only the first part. Since I'm here I'll confirm that I did vote for a few disabled witnesses. I left the votes for quite a while as they were essentially a non-vote plus a reminder to the inactive witness that some people who be happy to have them back (for example, I'd love to see SVK contributing here again). But I did eventually remove them, mostly because I would get bugged by people who wanted me to change my vote from one of the inactive witnesses to them.
Possibly a distinction needs to be made between for voting for a non-active witness (OK in my opinion) and voting for a witness whose server has been down but not marked inactive and therefore missing blocks (this is bad). IMO, there's nothing wrong with voting for a non-active witness: the whole ability to set yourself inactive was to allow you to stop blocks from being missed without requiring you to contact all your voters and get them to unvote you.
On the whole inactive witness or disabled witness I've learn to see this whole thing from a different perspective. I'm attempting to be as pragmatic as possible on the subject, because I know there is probably no effective way from removing politics from the emotional underpinnings but...
Just the other day a new witness showed up on trending, requesting votes of course, as he should and pretty much casting some buckets of blame water on to high stake holders not casting votes, or casting them to inactive accounts.
My current position on the matter is that all new witnesses probably need that time to ferment in slight failure, as to see if they can cut the cheese. Meaning, that they are in it for the right reasons.
We don't want another @zeartul pissing on the fruit punch we all drink from and I'm sure no one will disagree with me there. With that in mind, I find it healthy that a mega whale account would be extremely hesitant to vote on a new witness, simply because the vote is available or the name is catchy.
From where I stand, you, and other whales of tide altering proportions act in the best interest of steem by being "ridiculously"(please note the air quotes) careful.
Hey @blocktrades, I hope and believe you didnt take this personally but if you ever felt being offended by me I apologise. As usual my writing is not well shaped.
Maybe due to my professional, I get easily worried when I find anything flaky and try to check up. I understand I might be misunderstood and might mislead someone else. Will be always open for any discussion for good purpose.
Regards
No worries, I didn't take it personally at all. Mostly just wanted to say that these kind of issues are discussed by most of the top 20 witnesses, it's just that security ones in particular are usually not publicly discussed.