Thanks for weighing in. I apologize if I seemed defensive before. That's not how I recall our previous interaction, but then somebody doesn't usually realize they're being defensive until called out on it.
I have usually tried to be very open about how SBI/HBI works. Our codebase is open source, and we have an FAQ and tons of supporting documents explaining how everything works. When we were posting every day, the links to FAQ and support documentation were included in every post.
We have made witness changes for lots of reasons over the years, so I couldn't say whether the witness change was because of our conversation. If you seemed hostile to me (which is likely if I responded defensively) then it probably was related.
As community members have brought concerns to me, I have tried to weigh concerns and responded when it seemed merited (including removing rewards for upvoting SBI posts, even though they funded 30% of our voting power).
I recall that you had some concerns about our comment voting, and I was not in agreement at the time. I later decided that you were right, and we have not voted on any comments in a long time.
So my next question would be what's in it for the creator of SBI/HBI
I take an override of 5% on all sponsorships (rewarded to my account as bonus units that give me a chunky vote whenever I actually post). Because I don't post often, I actually use those for airdrops, supporting community initiatives, and paying the writers and interviewers that created content for SBI when we still posted regularly. I don't receive any other payment from the program.
can this service exist without middlemen taking a cut if that's the case
If it brings an end to the attacks against SBI/HBI members, I would be happy to remove my 5% bonus units from all new sponsorships. My current stack of bonus units I need to facilitate membership conversions from Steem and reward as prizes for upcoming contests that are planned).
I don't post that often anyway (except comments).
Thank you for the detailed comment and explanation, I have to say I have nothing against HBI now and considering the amount of users that find value in it and believe it brings value to the chain it should be a "let the free market/wisdom of the crowd" decide type of thing.
Also it's fine, I sometimes also get defensive over my projects when the stance of the accusers are hostile and illinformed but I thought at the time I was making it clear that I lacked knowledge about it and I believe @snook had asked me if I could weigh in my opinion on it. The witness thing just seemed like it happened shortly after and while the unvote itself is okay doing it for such reasons isn't imo, but maybe that was also a mixup and I was remembering someone else doing it.
Anyway, thanks for clearing that up and rethinking the comment voting.
Ok, I will not waste my time anymore. I'll stop downvoting it, but I think, soon we'll get to the point where I have started: hundreds, sometimes thousands of STEEM transferred to sbi daily
cool to hear that even the OG anti SBI user is going to let it be and give it a try, not sure what you mean by things getting bad but if they somehow do you can count on my downvotes as well.
ps. a bit sad over the unvote of our witness considering our position over this @ctime.
So that STEEM / now Hive being transferred to HBI is not going off the platform. It's staying here ... it's being used to help users stay on the platform and active. I could see your concern if that was hundreds or thousands of STEEM heading to exchanges every day.
Pussy.
@ctime here is another person, (whale) as you asked for, that supports HBI.
I'm by far no whale, lol.
shhhhhhhhhhh.......... it sounded good! lol
Thank you so much @acidyo