Thank you for the update. I've been anticipating 0.19.x for a while now - hope to run it soon. I see active development on SMT / 0.21.x. However, any update on HF 20?
Everything you have pointed out about Communication is obvious. The important thing, however, is to keep pointing out the obvious. People are emotional and impatient, particularly for a platform they see significant potential in. Although it would seem logical to "shut up and ship", devote every ounce of attention to engineering, this is an aspiration to be a massive, decentralized, open social network, and people come first. Account for ill logic and irrational behaviour. Keep everyone updated, keep sending the same message every week, or any reasonable timespan, keep reminding people that you're working hard on it. Whilst it would be folly to reveal intricate details of your work for an abuser to exploit - and indeed, almost all of your audience doesn't care about these under-the-hood workings - it is most essential that they are reminded time and again that work is under progress. Even if it's a minor update, it's better than silence. Consider silence the devil's playground - emotional people will tap into their wild imaginations and spread FUD every which way. Communicate regularly, control the message.
Needless to say, again, all of this is the bleeding obvious, but I had to hammer it home, like you need to with us.
I completely agree with you here @liberosist! If I may quote my own post from just now...
People don't need specifics. They just need to know developers are aware of issues and are working on fixing them. Here on Steemit, it's hard to know where to get this reassurance, but it's so important to keep your members patient.
Perhaps when Community feature is implemented, we won't need such news flashes to clutter our home screens. Anyone interested can get that news by going to the respective community, I guess. But yeah, we do need some solution for the problem you have pointed.
I think any community site like this could benefit from a specific page with some updates. Especially when things aren't running very smoothly like lately. Ofcourse, we don't need many details mostly. I think any specifics would do fine in a dedicated community like you said :-)
Agree!
This...
Communication is key; Also giving timelines is key! Forget all the details, we are not interested in all the complexities. I get the impression product management is not in place at all; No experience with service evolution definition and planning is in place! I've been managing complex telecom and IT software products for years, from initial design to first delivery as a marketing tool, field test versions, to high performance versions and all the versions in between matching the life cycle of the product. I never ever had to give my customers the messages as expressed in this post. I never ever had to do that, since the next version addressing exponential growth was always addressed in time! FYI, I had to deal with the smallest to the largest customers you can imagine, and in the end all were addressed with the some software architecture and code; But with cleaver design it was possible to keep everybody happy while also the operating costs were according to the budgets of my customers. How can a service in the field for more than a year, still not have the code line with a high performant architecture. And how can a company address us with the statement "we know what is happening, we know when the service crashes" while the service is underperforming for many weeks already?...Fact is: the service is far below minimum expectations from performance point of view. Dealing with an open community, many messages are made public by the community that will harm Steemit and therefore also Steem. There must be a reason why many Alt coins are doing pretty well, even when BTC is flying high, but Steem is devaluated on a daily bases. Start becoming professional in product development and product management. Read about "crossing the chasm" by Geoffrey Moore if you will, it may open your (STINC) eyes.
It's rather easy - and seemingly fashionable currently - to critique development work by Steemit Inc, but the question is - do we really understand the challenges it takes to build a social network and frontend on a blockchain? I certainly don't, and I haven't seen a better alternative or solutions suggested. There's probably a good reason there have been a dozen or more social blockchain platforms announced, yet Steem is still the only working one I'm aware of. There have been platforms announced over 2 years ago now! If there were a direct competitor to Steem that were outperforming it, I'd agree, of course. As it stands now, I'm not even sure a blockchain social platform is a good idea. As flawed though it may be, nothing offers a superior experience than Reddit as a social platform for me, currently. On those grounds, criticism is certainly valid - Steemit is a sub-par social network experience; though de-facto still the best blockchain driven one.
Looking at Github, I see plenty of evidence that the team is working flat out, with new developers added. Occam's razor, they are simply facing difficult problems that take time to solve; rather than incompetent developers lazing around doing nothing. Vitriol doesn't seem to be warranted in this case.
I don't agree that publishing timelines are key for experimental projects like Steem with no real precedent. I believe it was a mistake to list out timelines in the 2017 Roadmap. Predictably, they have missed most of them as other priorities come to light. History has taught us an obvious lesson time and time again - schedules and budgets are never, ever met for innovative work of any kind. There are unforeseen and complex challenges of all sorts that will only be apparent during the development process. Technology corporations know this and keep their cards close to their chest, only announcing products and timelines with manufacturing set to go. (Yes, I'm aware competitive advantage is an important part to this, one that's not relevant to Steem. Still, I hope you see my point.) Products that have been in development for 5 years are announced 3-6 months from release.
As for price, it's completely irrelevant to technology - crypto traders appear to be irrational lunatics. Steem has a poor reputation in the crypto community; there are plenty of other coins which have far superior hype drivers. How many of them have a product that is in active use? Doesn't matter.
Sure I see your points, but still I think my criticism is allowed and correct. I dealt with experimental projects myself as I dealt with products that made my employer market leader by far, meaning nobody was able to do the same since we did it in a different way and outperformed everybody by far. I know all about what, when and how to communicate these things. I know all about how the plan these things and keep the 'customer' engaged even when timelines are not met. And sure, any IT/software project have the tendency to take longer then expected, but that is anticipated and reserved for. I'm in favour of mentioning timelines in roadmaps, and features per release. I'm also not scared to change those, features and timelines, but it all boils down to communication and keeping the customer engaged and knowing how to do that. Communication is horrible, in frequency as well as in content. Frequency is way to low, and content is way to detailed; Thats is were they loose their customers, us, the community who work hard to make a success out of Steemit.
Okay, let's have a set of amorphic promises with no due date and hope someone will do something next year. Or dosen of years.
To have commitment is tough call. Really tough. But it is the only way the team could move ahead.
Agree
We're not customers.
Interesting, what are we then?
BTW, the definition of a customer: "A party that receives or consumes products (goods or services) and has the ability to choose between different products and suppliers." reference: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/customer.html
Authors, readers, investors.
Paid beta testers?
Although the Steemit UI states "beta" and STINC didn't take Steemit UI out of beta, doesn't mean we are beta testers.
You realise how much money is going through the system? And how much money is distributed every single day? And how much money STINC owns through its Steemit account and others?
Yes we are authors and readers as these are the activities the service allows us to do. And we are also investors, since we invest in the currency Steem. In addition we are also curators, and partially decide who gets rewarded for their activities. But we are for sure consumers of the Steemit UI and Steem blockchain (as per definition I gave you in earlier comment), since we consume the service STINC develops, making STINC the supplier and us, the users, consumers.
Keep in mind when we walk or drive the streets, we are also consumers of the road we use, wether we directly pay for usage, or indirectly pay for it.
When we for instant are connected to an energy grid and in addition buy solar cells, put them on our roof and supply unused energy back the the energy grid, we change from consumers, to prosumers - meaning we become producers when we supply our solar energy back tot he grid.
Consumer =/= customer.
If I order flowers for my wife, she's the consumer, but I'm the customer.
I'm paying, therefore I'm owed customer service.
I've never paid a cent to STINC, so Ned doesn't owe me customer service.
A customer doesn't have to pay for a service in a direct manner. We actual create (partially) a value for Steem and Steemit UI, we pay with our time spend, with our knowledge we share in the community; With our activities/projects we define and execute using the Steem blockchain and services around it.
Using your explanation, anybody who offers service without a direct payment involved from the user (the customers and consumer) towards the service owner (the supplier) does not have any obligations. Facebook therefore does not have any obligations to its users? Skype doesn't have any obligations to its users? WhatsApp doesn't have any obligations to its users? WeChat doesn't have any obligations to its users? Whole businesses are build around these free services. These service owners are earning a lot of money because of all these free users. With the third industrial revolution, producers and consumers, suppliers and customers definitions and models changed.
Yes, agreed. More information is better.
that would be great and calming if honest and genuine
that would be great and calming if honest and genuine
agreed ;)
We all know you guys are busting tail, but I agree with @liberosist, it's nice to hear from you guys fairly frequently.