I'm a bit slack jawed by what I'm seeing here. On the one hand, a lioness fiercely protecting her community. On the other - crypto.piotr, a user who doesn't play by the established culture.
@crypto.piotr asked me to come here and take a look at this conversation, he also asked me to be respectful if I chose to say anything. Although he still sends me wallet messages, we have exchanged emails and this message he included to me in an email. So I thought it might be important to him - and here I am - mouth open and wondering - what do I say here, as someone who respects both users?
I understand your concerns @rhondak, in fact, I think @crypto.piotr does too, and as he says in most of his messages and several times here, he does curate his list and he won't waste steem sending messages to those who are not interested in what he is doing.
But is what he is doing wrong? I'm not so sure. Open to misinterpretation from the predominant culture, sure, but I think I can make a case here that hasn't been made yet, as someone who has seen the work of both. I hope so, because I don't see a lot of common ground in the other comments/responses - what follows is my experience and my opinion, and it's worth mentioning that beauty, spam, quality and, in the end our judgements of value, are subjective.
I discovered crypto.piotr a while back, while engaging in the @originalworks community. It is a huge, sponsored writing community that is interested in cryptocurrency and blogging, and they fit right in on steem. I remember when Piotr started testing different mechanisms for getting more people to comment on his articles. You know the real wallet spam, those resteem services? Yeah, he tried each one and did a write up about the results!. He started sending wallet messages because they work. In this very thread he has showed that he gets results, and the people on his 'wallet mailing list' stay on the list because they like to engage with him (or at least they like the dust!) He is also known to put huge steem bounties on Other People's articles to encourage discussion.
This topic reminds me of a great user, a friend of mine from Belgium, that HATES steemcleaners. When I asked him, out of ignorance, why he would hate such a 'fine, upstanding program', he said that they put him on their blacklist and he was flagged nearly out of existence, without discussion or reprisal, as a new user. He made it through, but with a bitter taste in his mouth. And a lesson that made me think twice about content regulation.
I'm not saying that you have to like him, but I do think that you should consider carefully the roots of ideas like - 'if you don't know the main players, you aren't a good steemian'. Yes he could be in a bubble, but couldn't we all be? In fact, there is a lot of drama on this site that I intentionally bubble out of my life :)
I am not a delegator to Piotr, but I did take notice when he delegated all of his SP to over 100 people (viewable on steemworld), and noticed too that others supported him in his effort by delegating to him. This is not dissimilar to what others at the Welcome Wagon do, as you mentioned. The existence of Welcome Wagon validates Piotrs actions, not the reverse. There is need for community leaders - we all know that! But in a decentralized community we are going to have many groups!
Here I will conclude - its already probably too long and I risk alienating anyone reading this far, but I want to say that you have every right to issue this warning, to your followers and your community. As you say, you don't know, but feel. I get that, its instinct! I just think that in this case there is a cultural difference, not a difference in values. We all really want the same thing, we're just going about it differently.
Great response, ecoinstant. I still, however, am very put off by the methods he uses. They’re impudent and inappropriate. Cultural difference, maybe. But Kaliju said it best: “he doesn’t respect other people’s space.” And now, according to what I’ve read in the comments here, he’s trained a whole posse of users to burden the nodes further by using wallet memos as an email service. Thank God for MIRA. Let’s just hope enough full nodes stand up now to handle that kind of drain on resources.
Which makes me wonder about RCs, and how many it takes to send a wallet memo....
Thank you for this (gentle) response! Of the technical side, I am ignorant, though I was under the impression that our blockchain was robust and under-capacity.
Along with taking all the advice in this article into consideration, I would encourage @crypto.piotr to address this concern, do the research, and publish the results! What are the costs in resource credit for wallet transfers? This is an interesting topic (perhaps related to micropayment for sending/receiving emails) that I think would make a good article.
Email 'spam' is currently the norm in modern marketing. An open rate of 1/100 is considered good in some newsletter communities. Once again, we on steem are on the forefront of cultural, community development - we are literally making culture (as I discussed in my most recent article about the steemit 'crisis'.) If we commit to respectful discourse about method, this disscussion may well turn out to be quite productive.
It could be quite productive, yes. Hence the reason for the post. I was just in discussion with a witness friend about the RC issue and wallet spam. This definitely needs to be looked at and addressed.
The Steem blockchain is indeed robust. But we’ve dropped nodes, and MIRA came about as a potential solution. Pied Piotr teaching a whole swarm of low RC users to abuse their wallet features is bad business. I think my concerns are valid.
Thanks for letting me know that this isn't a good idea. I honestly had no idea.
So then, what is the proper method to send a message to another user, outside of a particular thread?
Steem happens on Discord. That's where everyone congregates in various communities. It's free and doesn't tax blockchain resources. There's also Steemit Chat, which isn't as user friendly, but just as effective in most cases.
@rhondak
Thank you for the reply. Honestly, I had no idea Discord was that important. Yes, of course it's mentioned in the FAQ we all read when we're new, (or should read when we're new), but the importance isn't stressed, it's just sort of mentioned in passing.
Personally, I took a quick glance at it and went, "Oh god, another Flavor-Of-The-Month VOIP proggy, no bloody thank you" and dismissed it out of hand. I have seen so very many Voice Over IP programs come and go in the last 15-20 years.
OK, now that I understand the importance of Discord, I'll DL it and get it set up. Thanks again for letting me know.
As a "leader" on this blockchain, it's The Pied Piotr's responsibility to make newbies aware of the best options. Instead, he's chosen to teach bad habits and encourage bad practices. You'll be stunned at the vibrant communities on Discord. PAL (MSP,) The Ramble, The Alliance, SOS, and so many other specialty groups where everything happens and everyone stays connected.
Don't forget @themarkymark's https://social.usesteem.com/
If hopping into a community Discord is not your thing, I think it would be a good place for general interactions.
It's new.
Oh, I'm very much on Discord. My community is there, along with The Alliance, Steem Alliance, SOS, The Ramble, Chibera, and all other twenty-six servers I'm in. LOL I have a long thread going with Malcolm Reynolds (Marky Mark) from way back and dropped this post link in there a couple days ago. ;-)
I thought about how all the passionate people got to this post in his defence and started replying with essays - he asked them to! I suspected as much. Wow people, can I delegate to all of you 50sp and give you 10c upvotes so you can back me up like this too if I ever need it!? We can build an army together. All the struggling accounts out there, let's be friends! Let me know if that's all it takes! I'll delegate to you all and you just ride for me - my intentions are simple: to help you get discovered! Serious.
Yes indeed, you can see that his method is quite effective, and he has developed a group of committed commentors that he guides, usually towards discussions on different technological aspects of cryptocurrencies.
Whether you too could develop such a following is unclear. I don't think it is as simple as 'delegate to all of you 50sp and give you 10c upvotes', but that is only my viewing of the issue.