TimCliff Witness Update 2018-05-22
Hello Everyone!
Here is what I've been up to since my last witness post:
- I hosted a Minneapolis / St. Paul meetup. TLDR: It was a lot of fun :) There are pictures and details of the event here.
- I have started learning how to develop code changes for the Steem blockchain. My intention is to be able to work on some of the improvements that the community has been asking for, which are not currently priorities for Steemit. I have started work on two changes. I will write a post with more details about this soon, but if you want to take a sneak peak, the GitHub issues are 2140 and 2022.
- A lot of my time continues to go towards helping users who are reporting issues in the steem.chat "help" channel.
- I continued testing the new AppBase release candidate.
- I submitted a pull request to the Steem repository to add a plugin that was missing from the new full node configuration for AppBase.
- I updated all of my nodes to have the 19.3 security patch.
- I continue to post the weekly Reports from the Witnesses series each week, which provides the community with an aggregated report of all the witness reports from the week.
- I moved my
appbasetest.timcliff.comnode to new hardware after a server crash, as it was taking too long to resynch on the hardware it was on. - I made a proposal to make spam less profitable, but it was not very well received - so it will not likely go anywhere.
- I wrote an article about why double producing is bad.
- I participated in @shadowspub's witness chat show on Discord.
- I opened several condenser issues with suggested improvements and reported bugs.
- I also did some initial development to add a "Share on StumbleUpon" button to condenser.
- I opened a lot of issues with suggested improvements for the devportal.
- I also submitted several devportal pull requests including adding new nodes to the public RPC node list, and adding SteemPress to the community tools section.
- I submitted several PRs to update the documentation in the Steem repository: 2477, 2444, and 2354.
- I helped to review a community pull request that was submitted for HF 20.
- I submitted a PR to Steemit's new "redeemer-deplorables" repository which contains a list of accounts for them to undelegate to. The PR removed the SP from around 500 accounts that were spamming the blockchain. I also submitted a PR to update/clarify the documentation in the repository for other users who are interested in submitting similar changes.
- I created several issues in the faucet repository related to the signup process.
- I continue discussions with other witnesses, stakeholders, and Steemit about potential changes to the platform.
Forward Looking Plans:
- My main focus for the foreseeable future will be to continue digging into the Steem code and working on improvements to the blockchain code. It is an ambitions goal, but I would actually like to ultimately propose and develop an entire set hardfork changes, and get them accepted by the witnesses.
- I have plans to write several posts over the next few months, including one on how to better align stakeholder objectives with user behavior.
- I will continue to provide support in the help channel of steem.chat.
- I will continue writing the weekly "Reports of the Witnesses" series.
Information / Suggestions / News:
- There have been quite a few interesting community development projects released, including SolicitingPower.com, Fundition, SteemTipper, Musing.io, and eSteem: Surfer.
- There is a Steem.Camp event happening in Germany, August 22-26.
- Here are some important updates from Steemit: Hivemind/Communities, Scalability, STEEM listed on Huobi, DevPortal Updates, 1,000,000 Steem Accounts, Applications Team Update, and Blockchain Update.
- Ned has been busy promoting Steem/Steemit at the Steem Korean Tour and Consensus 2018.
- Steemit posted a good "101" article on Steem, Steemit, and SMTs.
- Steem has been in the news quite a bit, including a Bloomberg video, Ned's GQ Australia interview, and Steem ranking as second best blockchain in the world according to Chinese Government!
Summary of Current Witness Parameters:
- SBD Interest Rate: SBD is currently trading way above $1.00. Based on this, my interest rate is currently set to 0.
- Price Feed Bias: My price feed bias is also set to 0. I am not currently planning to use the bias to increase SBD production, because I feel the potential negative consequences outweigh the potential gains.
- Registration Fee: My registration fee is currently set to 0.1 STEEM. This makes it so that a new account costs 3 STEEM (non-delegated), which is about $9.00 USD at current market prices. Users who have accounts created with the minimum fee (3 STEEM) and are not delegated extra SP are likely to run into bandwidth limitations. It is recommended that new accounts start out with at least 15 SP.
- Maximum Block Size: I currently have my block size set to 65,536. I feel this is sufficient given the current size of the user base and the amount of daily usage we have.
I welcome feedback if you think there are things that I can be doing better as a witness. If you think I am doing a great job, I would really appreciate your witness vote!
Thanks everyone for reading my witness report!
@timcliff
I am glad to see that your proposal about trying to make spam less reward-able will be putting on hold for the moment. But I am also very glad that you wrote that proposal it did open quite some eyes and lots of people (like myself) were unaware of the dust threshold. I do appreciate all thing that you are doing to support the steem ecosystem and blockchain! That why I decided to give one of empty witness spots to you. I was hesitant about doing this, because I do feel that we should create a better middleclass on the Steem blockchain.
This is somethings which is missing at the moment.
We are all trying together to make something out of it. You as a witness, I by trying to interact as much as possible! Both are utmost crucial!
We, did set up recently a small community trying to prevent as much drop outs as we can within our niche! And I have to admit, it is hard work! If you are interested into following our small betting community, you can find us at @sbcbot! The purpose of the bot, is not to sell votes but the give starting people within our niche a push in the back. More niches should try to set up things like things because every users we can prevent from leaving steem will increase the interaction, hence will decrease the drop outs!
Our latest project is a world cup contest! It is getting bigger by the day! So, if you have some spare time left, feel free to join us! Registration is free, and like it should there are no upvote, resteem of follow requirements! You can find it on my blog!
So, thanks again for all the hard work. The steem ecosystem would be nowhere without guys like you!
Cheers,
Peter
How will you as a witness, save steem from people like haejin?
It's a problem we have all tried to manage but I think it's time for witnesses to take note and respond to our genuine concerns.
@lukestokes @fyrstikken @flagawhale @abusereports @carrioner @truthtrader @lyndsaybowes @thabiggdogg @d0zer @enforcer48 @soma909
@flag-haejin @haejin-sucks @weflaghaejin
Also, multiple votes for same post. If I want to vote on the same article 10 times, should I not be allowed to do?
Or if you want to get radical, 10% of your votes must go to an account you've never voted on before
We've got Starjuno, Haejins other account flagging this comment. Is this not censorship?
My views:
https://steemit.com/payout/@timcliff/everything-you-need-to-know-about-potential-payouts-and-flagging-for-new-users
It is a complicated issue. I believe that an improved downvoting system will play a large part.
Thanks for your reply and engaging with the community.
I will vote for you as witness. But we do need to give the social aspects and rules as much attention as the technology that supports.
Otherwise we will have an amazing blockchain that no new people want to use and without growth, we will be dead in the water
We can start by fixing the reputation score system which allows people like haejin to have a 70+ score and anyone who flags with a score below that has no effect
Good idea. The reputation system could use some work.
Do you know if there are any real plans to improve the downvote system, or is that something that is just on a theoretical level at this point?
Yes. That is one of the things I am hoping to address as I learn more about how to develop blockchain changes :)
I posted some of my ideas here: https://steemit.com/downvoting/@timcliff/let-s-make-downvoting-great-again
Hey Tim I have listened to the tips you have given me in the past and I saved my steem power. Now I have delegated some of it to steemians thanks for the help and support you have given me in the past (I will definitely vote for you) I WILL ALSO MAKE ANOTHER PAINTING OF YOU SOON
Ah, that's great to hear! I must have missed that post, so thanks for linking it to me :)
That is definitely needed @timcliff ! Great report, upped and resteemed!I have always voted for you as witness and will continue doing so!✌👍😀
Thanks :)
I upvoted this comment because (a) I agree and (b) @meno mentioned your thread in a post and it prompted me to come see what's up — but you decline payment on your posts so, your comment is the victim of my thank you vote. 👍👍👍😀
hehe, sounds good :)
"My registration fee is currently set to 0.1 STEEM. This makes it so that a new account costs 3 STEEM (non-delegated), which is about $9.00 USD at current market prices."
??? Should the .1 Steem be $3?
That is not how it works. The blockchain takes the
account_creation_feeparameter that the witnesses set, and multiply it by 30 to get the amount it costs to create an account without delegation.30 x 0.1 STEEM = 3 STEEM. 1 STEEM is currently around $3 USD, so that turns into $9 USD.
You are on my list already BTW this is hell lot of work....
I went to U of M ... twin cities rule
Your list of "some important updates" is very cool
ty
Ah, cool. That's where I went too :)
Thanks for the update, @timcliff! I think it's great that you are working on some community changes that Steemit Inc. does not have the time to prioritize. I see a lot of people complain about benefactors for post payout being very weird right now, so it's good to see that you are doing something to fo fix it.
Keep up the great work!
Thanks :)
Voted as witness.
Thanks :)
My pleasure
You've been busy! Glad to hear you're working on changes the community has been asking for. Also, great to hear your voice on the Steemit Ramble witness chat again. Listened to it with a group of Steemians at the Nashville meetup this past weekend. So much fun! Love the in-person community building. Sounds like you've been enjoying it as well. :)
Wow, lots of good work done by you @timcliff
Like I feel you’re the only witness working believe me
You’ve been in and completed so many projects . I must just give it up to you
If I e not voted for you in the past they you just earned my honest vote. Kudos
More grease to your elbow, keep steeming and touching lives