A lot of people who have less information than me or who I have not sufficiently explained my decision think that I am overreacting to the situation. So I will just list a few of the factors involved.
The Experiment
This experiment of whales counter-voting whales to enforce a no-whales-voting scheme to me is an act of desperation that is caused by the self-interested resistance of the large stakeholders in Steemit, that has led to their continuing resistance to the elimination of compounding of the vote power calculation. The evidence is abundantly visible that this experiment has resulted in a distribution that is more friendly to new users, without requiring makeshifts like the Steemit Guild and others.
Hacks to work around problems caused by consensus policies that are destructive
Not only the experiment, and @abit and @smooth also, along with a couple of others, have been running policies in their voting on especially top 19, whereby they withdraw votes from top 19s that are having frequent block misses.
This tells me that essentially a proposal that I made some time ago, that there should not be a fixed block of active witnesses paid equally, but rather progressively increasing block allocations, combined with an automated system of lowering the block allocation level for failing witness nodes, to maintain the majority (over 99%) of the time there being no block misses at all.
This is another hack being implemented that tries to work around proven incorrect consensus rules that Steemit, Inc. refuses to address.
The oldest form of this is the Streemian and other vote following systems, guilds, such as Curie and Steemtrail and Christiantrail. This is also a hack, that took a whole year, despite these user-driven workarounds for the compounding vote power calculations for rewards. Like any hack, it does not work well, and Steemit should have paid attention to the continuing mushroom of this kid of efforts from users, and changed the rewards curve.
But no. Nothing.
Arbitrary and un-heralded API changes
It is fair enough to say that the API in a beta software system cannot be entirely relied upon. Some of the calls may not work perfectly, some may not work at all. But when one is working, and it's changed, and it impacts the business of respected users, like @someguy123 and Anonsteem, as HF18 has done, this is literally money being taken away by Steemit from these respected users. Or in other words, yet another sign of disrespect and disinterest in serving the community.
This has also adversely impacted @xeroc's efforts to maintain a python interface to the Steem API. I have personally run into this problem and the workload has been too much for him to keep it up to date. I went to go and use what was working a couple of months earlier, and discovered it was broken - much of the code is broken, and this was because there was pressure put on him over the use of the name Steem, leading to a waste of resources on rebranding.
Selfish actions by high level members and former members of Steemit, Inc.
The most recent one was of Dan Larimer upvoting his own post to put it high on the trending page. He actually said, and if you do the research, you can find evidence of him claiming he would never do this. Dan is probably the worst offender in this, and this was partly why he resigned. It had nothing to do with the software licence, and I can show you a post from him in March 2017 on his blog where he even says that 'a fully open source licence would result in clones' - which would cause what problem exactly? oh yes, him losing his captive userbase, and not being accountable for bad management and breaking his word.
Also, the picture of his own head on the blog there, which I have snapped for posterity, being so big, is an unconscious signal to his readers that he has a narcissistic personality disorder.
Narcissism is a warning sign that people should not ignore, it means that when the situation suits them, they will stab everyone in the back who was loyal to them. That's you, me, and most of the people on the platform.
Conclusion
I did not take this decision lightly, because despite all the massive problems, the platform has stimulated me towards realising life goals, as has happened to many. The bad in it cannot be thrown away with the good, but because Steemit refuse to throw away the bad, we are saddled (like @faddat's analogy of the steem user community being ridden by a cruel and narcissistic and ugly jockey) with an unsatisfactory situation in which we are being steadily turned away from this and I am not the only one who is leaving because of the gross disrespect of the developers of the platform and the management.
I will continue to keep my witness up and running, for what it's worth, until the rental on the server expires, and I expect and don't mind that some of the people who have supported my witness service with their votes will disapprove my witness... I did a lot of work toward getting it solid and dependable, and easy to manage, but I can't justify anymore supporting a platform that is effectively privately owned, and mismanaged - or perhaps more accurately, controlled in order to keep the power in their hands, when they clearly have proven they are irresponsible.
I remember, that I not always agree with you (for example about SBD), but stil your opinion was meaningful for me and for many other people here.
I believe, the solution is... to separate more Steem and Steemit. Steem should belong to community, and this mean, that community should decide about direction of development.
That's why right now I am working on Steem.Vision: https://github.com/noisy/steem.vision
This is going to be Poll/Survey service build on top of Steem blockchain
this will be like https://steemit.com/@clayop/voting-test-do-you-think-changing-to-a-flattened-curve-is-urgent
but with custom interface, and... the most important, deep analytics:
and..
something what can be helpful for witnesses:
how supporters of particular witness voted for particular question
steem.vision will be mostly asking people about vision and future of Steem blockchain. This should help block or force certain features.
I believe, that it takes time to organize everything. Steemit probably will be driving force for a while.... but we as a community need to prove, that we have voice, that we can block unwanted hardforks or introduce own changes.
This is just brilliant.
Yay for proactive solutions oriented input
Yes you can :) I think we need to do that :) I've seen 2 really hard forks and most people are gone by now :| it's been just half a year for me, which is too soon :)
remember in Oslo, a Steem Foundation was mentioned ;) @noisy
about your poll system could you have a look to this doc, i talk about a decision making tool like Loomio.org but using the blockchain : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C5J7woOVkYlxyBffB8YEx56kq_ZUQKeBZO9QsppG0zA/edit?usp=sharing
transparency at it's finest
Agree... On the other hand.. steemit is still beta version. Just speak up to make this community better. Nice ! :)
I have been recurrently frustrated by the choices on this platform(with my posts on @cryptohazard). I feel like Steemit tries to be a cool-ish social media while being a secure-ish blockchain. Is Steemit that open? censorship-resistant?
Why don't I leave?
Because I am a writer and Steemit gives me an opportunity to mix art and tech. But I am going to concern myself less and less with what is under the hood. Too many questions, too little documentation/answers.
Ignorance is bliss!
indeed... indeed.
@l0k1 - I sympathise with all your points my friend. We do live in a benevolent dictatorship with narcissists aboard. But bad things happen when good men lie down as my grandfather once said, so we must continue on with our quest to be good men in the face of overwhelming odds.
Things can change on Steemit if there are enough good men. When good men like you walk, it murders some part of the world. Stay safe my friend @l0k1 - I wish you nothing but peace :)
@thewiredneuron
P.S. Skim a stone in the Danube for me in Serbia will ya! Cheers pal!
I also endorse this statement. Post upvoted and RS. This is a sad day for Steemit. Good men are rarity here :'(
Ride safe @l0k1.
As do I
3 ducks in a row :) :) :) Go @l0k1!
You didn't even mention the refusal to take countermeasures against the drop in rewards after The Fork, which was avoidable: a sign of total contempt for Steemit users, and a rather silly design decision when you are trying to grow something resembling a social media site.
Again, wishing you all the best, I hope Dawn will soon be upon us 8-).
I will also resteem this.
Excellent point @ocrdu - this refresh time would be fine for a week, but with still 26 days to go, it's gonna be a long haul!!
Good luck. * thumbs up*
So is the marketing 8-P.
Marketing is in early alpha!
Thank you for posting @l0k1.
Your contribution of intelligence, openness, and candor was welcome....reflective of the new generation of Steemians....it seems this choice is a step backwards for Steemit.
One does hope that things can be said in general without burning bridges...using generalities...categories...principles. No names....No T-shirts ...as it were. Being given privy to someones feet of clay is never pretty...however we are human...therefore fallible each in his own way. We cannot change it...we can categorise it and keep moving. If it is something that keeps us from following our conscience the we should move on which appears to be your reasoning and for that you should be commended.
Wishing the very best for you. Cheers.
Edit. Steem to Steemit.
I would wait one more fork. They promised to change attitude... In fact the last HF is a decent sign that something changed... They respected the opinion of the majority of top witnesses. They have also said that they will give priority to implement a more linear reward curve. Also @sneak will introduce us soon a new method (tool) that will make our life easier to reach consensus(or not)... We will soon witness if it is all "empty words" or it reflects... reality
PS I guess you are aware of the new marketing efforts from @andarchy and his new role to our ecosystem(?) ...
Part of the issue that I didn't explain for me is that it's a distraction (quite unprofitable) from the real focus of my life, of realising dreams of building a secure, peer to peer, failure resistant, resilient protocol for all the things that Steem and other similar efforts are a single provider of with a corporate chain.
I wish the marketing guys the best of luck because the crypto world is full of scuttlebutt that's mostly not just rumours.
As for the promises, they mean nothing, and Dan said clearly in that post I linked in the OP, the are not supposed to be part of what they do anyway. Well, the other issue for me is they threw together a monolithic chain that will be a nightmare to apply the principle of 'separation of concerns', which really means a rewrite from the ground up. So instead of sitting idly by while the vested interests fight against change, diverting development energy away from this, which I consider to be the most important thing - because without this the system is a nightmare of spaghetti-like interdependencies - I am going to focus my energy on doing what I think should have been started at least 5 months ago.
See, I read a pretty strong subtext of dissatisfaction in your comment as well, all those elipsises...
My biggest issue of all is that it's not an open platform. I can't fork it, play with a small test user base, to see the effect, so we are completely dependent on them, and don't you think there is something of a contradiction between the exclusivity in the licence, the corporate registration and that centralisation, and the claimed goals of building a fabric?
They box themselves into a corner with these constraints, and nobody is free to volunteer to help them out, and people who do are shunned or even banned from the Git repository (like they did to @faddat, who by the way was just attempting to improve documentation).
No, we need to start again with the lessons learned, and most importantly, completely open development, no corporate governance, and a focus on the most important thing of all: adoption of the base currency. This last one was messed up from the beginning, with the absurd inflation rate, and 9.5% is still too high, and as I have been banging on for so long: The token matters most. Not the SBD, not the forum. It is impossible to get growth in the value of the currency without taking care of these most fundamental things. Userbase needs a bigger pool to make rewards, there is a definite ratio between the price and the number of users.
You too? Thanks for making a point :) That was for the post
But it applies here too, anyways thank you for being here, you were one of the only 5(6) people I have voted as witnesses, because I saw honesty and dedication in you, pushing the envelope and going step by step doing what you thought best, I don't know you but you gave that air of real care so you got my admiration, you are on par with krnel dragosroua liondani furion and bitcoiner :)
Wherever the wind blows you :) Cheers Good Luck and Thanks for all the fish :)
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think it is fair to give them a chance to correct what is wrong. I'm with you on that.
They need to sort out the Steemit Steem account, transparently! You can't say Steem is for everyone with Steemit having control over that much Steem. They always said they would sort it out and I believe it was right to have a super whale at the start....but now, it's an offensive risk to further development of the Steem ecosystem. Developers like lok1 shouldn't need to feel they have to go elsewhere to build.
Transparency, developers and development of an ecosystem. If they are serious, I'd like to see them get on with it with some very rapid progress to something of considerable substance.
If not....despite how much it would pain me, I'll be off too.
I'm sceptical. The steemitblog post about the rewards falling contains
a liean inaccuracy, and the marketing announcement video contained almost no information, and I wasn't able to detect any marketing in the sense that I was taught.Also, it will be hard to market our way out of this.
Oh well, let's hope for the best.
I was very disappointed regarding the marketing post. It was not very professional.
"Not fit for a press release without some changes", as one of my collegues who works in marketing put it. He likes understatements, probably because he is British 8-).
Yeah, he was kind.
My last boss was a Brit and a lawyer, he said sorry as he screwed you over...omg, loved his humor hahaha
I'm staying no matter what happens, I'll be a content creator and try and be helpful and positive. However, when I see a system that skims the cream off the top of content creators work I'm going to speak up...right now the system is geared towards big investors who actually need content creatures to secure their investments, through their protective controlling behavior, investors are chasing away their investment and profit generators.
I don't think there are that many big investors who actually put really money up. There are just a few of us. I think that the problem is that the initial "investors" actually got huge, huge amounts of the currency for almost nothing......... There really is no actually skin in the game of many of these whales. Even at these low prices that continue to sit on huge profits. That's why many of their actions are not aligned with the success of the platform. It is really hard for them to lose in this venture, not matter what they do. Too much of the platform was given away for way way too cheap early on.
I am sadden that you are leaving after investing so much of your time and talents on steemit. I don't understand all that's happening but it's a warning for newbies when good people leave. Just when I thought it was safe to play on steemit.
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Loki, whatever your decision may be, know that I believe you are one of the smartest guys I've ever had the privilege of communicating with. Of course I hope you stay because we are a community but I also know you've got big dreams to chase.
Thanks for sharing your opinion. You definitely have access to more information than most of us. I also feel disrespected with the last HF18, even more after knowing the reset option could be avoided. I'll be around, but I don't like to be fooled!
Thank you. @l0k1, I can learn many things from this article.
I believe the voting curve is the next item to be changed judging by recent statements. Perhaps stick around to see if that gets fixed?
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely; yet we still keep giving people power...
Cg
Need a way to contact you if no longer using steem
For the next ten weeks or so, it's mostly going to become just a wallet that I use. But you can email me at [email protected]
I will also be at the discord server I mentioned in my previous post also. I might drop that link into my profile so people who want to contact me have an easy way.
I respect your decision. Life goes on. Big hug friend.
I agree
The fact that @timcliff is basically the default Steemit community manager but never received acknowledgment for the work he's already doing is a red flag... Whenever I want to find out what's going on in Steemit I go to Tim's page because he regularly updates the community members on what's going on.
^^ Truth. Since the beginning he has been my goto source about everything going on with the Steemit platform. Best witness on Steemit in my opinion.
oh man, you made me realize how much better @timcliff would be as the community manager, much much much better than Andrew(who has mental problems). Need to start a campaign to fire and Andrew and hire Tim
it's pretty f*king obvious!
Loki, I wish you all the best! No matter where and what you do. You are a pure soul. That's why it is hard for you to stay active on Steemit. It is your decision and all we can do is to respect it.
Your post was upvoted, resteemed and featured on Steemit Appreciation Friday No. 11 - thank you for contributing to the community.
Far fetched.
It's great to see an overview of your position, thank you.
If you can't recognise a sociopath by the subtle signs they give, you are always going to be led astray by them. But it's not my business to do any more than warn people what I see. This problem is pervasive in human society, these people have been running the show for so long and their ruses work on most people. But you only have to use your inborn capacity to think to make sense of the signs. I am a very trusting person and I don't like to say things like this until I am absolutely certain.
@l0k1 he's not a sociopath, he's just a geek like the rest of us.
You can tell from his writings. Sociopaths will tell you whatever you want to hear in order to obtain some gain or some advantage. One thing they are practically incapable of is self deprecating humor. They want to be loved, adored but most of all respected and anything less than respect and adoration is cause for concern or fear.
That image is the opposite of the sort of thing a sociopath would put up. It's self deprecating and he's demonstrating good humor by using it.
Not keeping promises for whatever reason isn't the same thing as what is meant when we talk about a lie from a sociopath, i.e. lying to get you to believe "in them". Not keeping his promises isn't a great sign, but it does mean he's not prioritizing his image. A sociopath would prioritize his image above all else.
Not making promises... it was in his own words, and then goes on to say that the licence should prevent independent forks of the codes. Whenever it suits him, it should be free, but not for the rest of us. All I can see is someone who is could never run a central bank, but he can control a chain if he engineers it just the right way.
I hold my position based on thinking back to what I read in the whitepaper that justified the arse-backwards things like 100% inflation and the use of exponents upon the value of the stake. These are two things that sore losers and bullies try to set up in the world around them by the use of threat. This is a way to set up a game so that you can always be in charge of it.
You are missing the contradictions if you think it's harmless or even 'cute'.
Never said that. Just said it's not sociopathic. People can do bad things without being sociopaths. The earlier "evidence" you posted was the pic, and that was primarily what I was addressing. Sociopaths are allergic to self deprecating humor.
You, sir, are a complainer. Please let me know when a platform launches which pays you to blog, and has better payouts than Steemit. Quitting Steemit is like leaving a royal banquet because they served a food you did not like, and then after you leave, you go dumpster diving because you're hungry. Youtube does not pay didly squat for the amount of traffic you receive. Youtube wont even write you a check until you have 50k viewers per month or more. On Steemit, you make a few posts and start earning money... so what is their to complain about.
Steemit is certainly the worst platform ever for getting paid in crypto to blog. It is the worst because it is the only one in existence! Fix your perspective.
Yes, that's right, and it was started up and run for some time by someone who said this just prior to launch:
Emphasis mine.
Not pointing out the fact that the clones could end up being better, no, just 'compete against you'. I would welcome competition if I thought I genuinely was better at it. It's all about the captive audience.
You, sir, have missed the point entirely.
Very few things improve without analysis and criticism. No improvement was ever made by harping on about the good things only. The bigger the blinkers, the harsher the criticism needs to be to get things changed for the better. Voting with your feet is the harshest criticism there is, and, in this case, well understandable.
you sir are one that should be nagged to infinity, I can't get around not getting caught up in arguments with bad logic, Steemit rules everyone with a different mindset and reasons can be disregarded because his mindset is broken, :| please go fix your own mindset or keep being the marketing on repeat :) steemit is so great that steem is earned, blog this blog that, well 2k in 8 months for 2777(lets say 500) posts, coding your balls off and so on how does that sound :)
Anyways it's great that we have another unbeliever leaving so we can buy all that steem and vest it in :) wouldn't you say @crypto-investor maybe invest :) you can be the next light that carries the minnows to the sea of rewards, crypto to the moon :)
nice
You had me, up until ...
All caricatures have big heads. This is not to say that your analysis of Dan is incorrect or correct, just that your evidence backing up this claim is somewhat misguided IMHO. ;)
The main feature is the head so that is why caricature artists blow heads up and exagerate the features larger than life.
Excellent.
Good luck @l0k1
227 votes and only 2 lousy bucks. Almost not even worth the time to write this article. I'm having the same problem. I used to get at least a few bucks for a post. Now it's less than a dollar. Not worth the time for the formatting, coding and picture hunts.
reward pool is moved from a daily reward to a monthly sooo what we were getting in a day we are getting /30 for the first few days, now it should be half payouts and after 2 more weeks we will ha the payouts back to normal :) people have said :D
Golos, being a fork of Steemit, may be the way to success for this type of planform if they can make better business decisions and expand their language offering (are the limited to Russian per agreement?)
Was hard to not flag this comment... (whatever project you would mention)