I hang out in steemit.chat's general room a lot. It's a guilty pleasure, that helps me make a lot of social connections, that help grow my account.
Unfortunately, though, we get pretty much every newb with a problem in there.
Lately, that means a ton of new users that have run out of bandwidth.
It sucks.
The bandwidth issue, not just that they come in with every problem. That sucks too. Also the fact that many don't try to research their problem before coming in to ask.
Search engines are your friends. Unless they keep massive troves of data on you, and then sell it to other massive multinational corporations.
Even if they did power up like $50 though, that's less than 10 Steem. It wouldn't be anywhere near enough to fix their bandwidth issues. Even $250 wouldn't let them fully escape the bandwidth monster. It would help extremely mitigate the issue though, for now.
So here we are, suffering from yet another pay to win mechanic. Yet another thing that makes it especially hard for new users.
What's gonna happen when there are even more users? We're not even close to a large social network yet.
What's gonna happen if they fully peg SBD to the dollar, and Steem rises higher and higher, and it gets harder and harder to power up? New users won't be able to do anything without someone choosing to delegate to them, or spending as much as you might in order to buy a new computer.
How are users from countries with lower income averages going to start here? What about when they're faced with the dilemma of cashing out more than they earn in a month, or powering it up, to be able to post more?
And then some large user posts an utterly fucking useless reply to me, and I think, "This is why we're having bandwidth issues."
Of course, it's not. Well, it's part of it. It's all of the people doing useless crap. I personally feel perhaps it should be a bit more evenly distributed.
Just because a user doesn't have a lot of SP doesn't mean they aren't worthwhile, and just because a user has a lot of SP, doesn't mean every comment they make is worth making.
We are in a drought right now. We have a ton of new users, and we're having a bandwidth shortage. We should all be conserving bandwidth together.
Photo By: Courtesy Photo (source)
Stop making the commoners conserve water when you're watering your mansion grounds with thousands of gallons per day.
Stop posting useless shit.
Tell people to conserve bandwidth.
Don't reply to everything, unless you have something worthwhile to say.
The minnows are suffering, and we need to work together, so new users have a chance to earn enough to power up, and be contributing members of this ecosystem.
At least until they adjust how they conserve bandwidth, so it effects spammers more, and good new users a little less.
I understand where you are coming from and this is an important topic, but instead of cutting back on interacting on Steem - we should find a solution which fixes the problem instead of delaying it.
Spammers won't care about your proposal - only the good people will care - and those are 99% not spammers.
I'm not familiar with the Code of Steem / Condenser, but it would be great to have the option to delegate bandwith.
Because that way - I could delegate at least 50% of my bandwith (which is pretty much unused) to other users, without needing to give away my Stake of Steem.
@ned @almost-digital @gtg @sneak @ausbitbank @jesta @abit - what are your thoughts on this? Would really appreciate your opinion, since you are a lot more familiar with Steem than I am.
Voted for Visibility
my bandwith is always between 90% - 97%, so that would not be a problem. I'm pretty excited if that will work
Delegate bandwidth only: That is a nice idea. currently you can delegate Bandwidth by delegating SP. Not sure, how this can be separated.
Because bandwidth is directly related to the current reserve ration. -> What your upvote worth is-> your SP
But the separation of those would also give spammers more advantage and incentive. One account for spamming, and one for upvoting. The perfect circle-jerk..
If this were possible, it would bring about great improvement to the majority of active little fish. Being one, I'm in contact with dozens of complaints every single day from the ones who comment the most.
These are friends who would give me good feedback on all my posts in the morning. Now they have to cramp all their usage in the night because days are dead with -10/-50 kB available. (And who's to say spammers don't do the same?)
We have to give priority to quality posters, regardless of size. I think bandwidth delegation would solve a big part of this. (It could even be added to your smartmarket initiative.)
I wasn't proposing that we shouldn't do normal interactions. It is a social network after all. I was just saying that due to the current situation, perhaps we should occasionally reconsider making a comment if it really isn't necessary, for example.
There is no way to delegate only bandwidth, and I'm not sure there should be. I think the excess bandwidth so many users have though, during a time when new users can barely post, is proof it needs to be adjusted.
Maybe the majority of spammers won't care, but that's because they aren't affected, because they have come up with ways to make SP. New users can't even post, while bots make comments all over the place.
I'm only advocating that we tighten our belts, until this gets fixed, because it needs to be fixed.
I had this big problem as well. Couldn't do anything until a friend delegated me about 40SP. The thing is, new users means growth for Steemit, so if we do not help them and make it easy for them to use the platform they won't stay and Steemit will just stagnate or even worse.
It's ok to conserve our bandwidth but that's not gonna cut it. We need a long-term solution. Currently, if I am not wrong Steemit has about 50,000 active daily users. I don't want to think about the bandwidth problem if we are going to hit 200,000, 1M daily active users and even more...
Thanks for bringing awareness to this problem @geekpowered
You are exactly right.
And what you said someone did for you is another short-term solution for individual users. I hope that more delegate to good new users to help with the bandwidth issues and give them a chance.
I'm told they can eventually increase the block size, but that too sounds like it's just pushing it down the road. I don't think the system as it is works exactly right. It should be effecting large users as well.
I am relatively new to Steemit so I don't have the technical knowledge and understanding to propose a solution. The bad thing though is the people who could take action don't seem to notice the newcomers' struggle
PS: I am glad that this post got great upvotes and people will probably start to see it :)
They could take a tiered approach which diminishes bandwidth increase at a specific ratio, that is, the more people "pay to win" the less benefit they get for it. It might reduce investment incentive BUT, it wouldn't reduce the power and stake, which is more important than bandwidth.
I personally prefer gradual increases over tiered systems.
I think the entire system is at risk if new users can't actually use the system, including investment. Why invest in a platform that can't grow? So, even if something decreases investment, it should still be considered, if it addresses an issue as large as this one.
Has there been a solution in discussion? Because what I hear is always... In the future everything will be OK.. The blockchain can handle it.
Maybe the blockchain can handle the transactions, but it doesn't seem to be able hlto handle the amount of user, 50k/day is nothing.
But all whales want more users.. Stinc wants to spread their SMTs.
Not sure, but currently steem looks like a ponzi scheme.
Pay to win.
Why not increase the blocksize?
If it is just temporary, minnows could at least use the blockchain again, u till it is fixed,, by magic, I guess.
No word, how the devs want to do that.
I think they are not aware of it.
https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/1800
That doesn't even touch the issues for small users.
And don't tell me spam.
If 35k new à counts are generated by steem the last days, they are just plain incompetent, if they think, all those users won't even Blog 3-4 times to get the first steem experience.
All in all, very short sighted moves going on here.
< rant off >
Yeah, you're right in that often the answers are somewhere along the lines of everything being okay in the future. I've even repeated it myself occasionally. It is still in beta, but they need to address a lot of issues.
I don't know if they have any plans to try to fix it. I know that increasing the block size will fix it for now. I don't know how long it will fix it for though, and whether or not they will solve the issue before the next time it comes up. I personally would prefer if they would at least put forward possible solutions before doing that.
Spam happens on every network, it needs to be factored into any system design.
ned's vision is to have 100000 Apps build on Steem by 2020.
So he thinks already pretty big, but there is only so much a team can do.
Currently we have 0 apps on the blockchain and already massive issues.
Wouldn't it be better to stabilize the basis first and dream afterwards?
Does this look promising to you?
https://blockchain.steem.pl/
Since Monday 2018-1-29 9:00 UTC, there is no free bandwidth. I is constantly addjusted.
Would you have much confidence in it as a new user?
@isnochys
2020 is 2 years away. My guess is that SteemitInc is currently busy with SMT's - but I'm pretty sure that they are aware of the bandwith issue and will try to fix it. Take a look at my comment above.
2 years away and still no proof of concept for SMTs :(
I was thinking today that they need to perhaps delegate whatever minimum amount of steem you need in order to post like they currently do to get you up to 15, the problem is 15 is not shit.
here are my thoughts on the subject yesterday:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@funbobby51/bandwidth-some-bandwidth-my-kingdom-for-some-bandwidth
That's part of the problem. They had to decrease delegation due to the number of users.
If they don't address the issue, more people and groups are going to have to start delegating small amounts just to allow users to post. It is one temporary solution for some individual users, but they can't possibly help every user.
It's definitely going to slow the growth, especially as Steemit grows, but is there a way they could remedy the situation? Or is it a building block of the chain?
I'm sure there are quite a few ways they could address it. I'm not certain if they will until it gets a lot worse though. I can hope they will though.
A lot worse? I dread to see what that's like. Two weeks straight of not being able to interact for 6 hours was a bit nuts for me.
This is really interesting. Have not run into the bandwidth issue at all personally, but have been wondering about the scalability of this platform. I think being mindful of posting good content will only help in the long run, but that is a lot easier for those of us from privileged economies. If I were developing this system I would focus on growing users from developing economies as there are & will be huge #’s of new internet users looking for income from the internet. They may not be big initial investors in dollars but their time & attention value will soon dwarf what Facebook has been able to produce in the USA. Have no idea if that is even possible on the technical side, but the more people with power willing to grow this organism from the bottom, the bigger the organism will get.
Hi @geekpowered,
Thank you for your advice.
Can you, please, take a look at this case and lets them know your thought?
https://steemit.com/steemit/@chloeroy/supporting-minnows-we-are-supporting-the-steem-future
This should be much more than 40SP, right?
Thanks.
They probably need to be delegated at least up to 30 SP each, 50 would have fewer issues though. To have no issues...I don't know.
Even 10 SP each would be enough to let them post more often though. For that, you don't need a whale. Even a minnow of a few months old likely has 10 SP to spare.
I wish you luck. You'll likely need it.
I would suggest they watch their bandwidth on steemd. There are times when they can post likely. Your steemd would be the following, for example:
https://steemd.com/@chloeroy
I personally think you need to show that they're worthy of delegation though. At least link to their profiles, if not have them each do posts as to why they deserve delegation, and what they will bring to steemit.
In general, we need a whole lot less shitposting here. I do believe there should be some sort of consequence to continually posting low quality content. It would be nice to see a feature that would hit whales as hard as it would minnows. Sorta like with driving under the influence. In Denmark, that is ticketed based on your monthly income, so everyone gets hit equally hard. Would like to see something like that being implemented
They definitely need to do something that affects large users just as much.
I find it a little difficult to come up with a perfect system, but I know the current system is wrong.
I can post pretty much all day, to everyone, and not even come close to using my bandwidth, but a new user can only post once?
Seriously this is becoming a big issue and it all started this year. I always dream of steemit becoming the greatest social media of all times and i still believe. We are having new members always and its still increasing, let the bosses know how to resolve this issue. Thanks
I had no idea the bandwidth was such an issue for new users. I started back in June but never had any problems with bandwidth. I think it's odd that it'd be throttled to such a degree - is this an issue with the architecture of the site itself? Conserving bandwidth seems like a temporary problem for something that could potentially become a much larger issue - a site of this magnitude should be easily able to handle its current user capacity.
The problem is with the growth. With all the new users, the amount delegated to new users is being reduced, which reduces their bandwidth cap. Combine that with more active users, which means more bandwidth is being used, and they can pretty much only post once per day. They pretty much can't network, which kind of makes it less of a social network.
I thought you were not bothered from chatting to you on steemitchat, now I know you are okay. :-) you got my vote. (not that my vote is worth much at 0.03c)
I'm totally an ass.
Eh I edited that bit out I will have you know :-)
There you go, wasting bandwidth...
It only works well at night here, so I can edit post and stand on my head doing it, it is the day time lock out that sucks, on average 8 hours, even at 80sp, tis broken, some fecker needs to fix it, and every time I ask a witness, oh my god they can be rude. So I go sit in my quiet corner, while they let the steem out of their ears. ;-)
In their defense, they do get it all day now.
Mainly because it's a major issue that they really need to address.
Apparently it is nothing to do with them, allow me to quote you one from last night "Then you haven't asked the right witnesses, as most of the "good" ones would explain that, though we get 10000 questions a day from random strangers, and we arent google OR responsible for the things you mentioned asking about even a little bit."
That was actually one of my biggest questions when I first got started. I couldn't do anything because I had no Steem Power, couldn't even power up from within my account.
Ended up buying Steem Power through Blocktrades and seems like I'm going to have to buy a bit more.
Kinda sad really to see so much useless posts coming by.
This really is one of the most selfless post I've seen. This bandwidth issue is really frustrating. I happen to have experienced in this past week and my activity on this platform has been greatly reduced by this. I really hope something is done about it. Thanks @geekpowered for voicing out for us. You the voice of the street. Lol
Whenever I got this problem I assumed it was my fault for posting or some other such cause. However when I would wake up in the morning and try to post something I would still get the error which led me to believe it was something wrong with steemit. It sucks how people who have massive amounts of STEEM power can just hog the bandwidth and get paid handsomely for it. I have started to consider selling off all my SBD to buy myself some STEEM so I can compete better.
You should absolutely power up, even if just a bit.
There is definitely a problem with some users using too much bandwidth. It's likely a lot of users using too much bandwidth. Every time a user says something like "nice post" they are using bandwidth. Everything uses bandwidth. When it's super busy, it ends up depleting the pool, and all the new users have to wait, whether or not they are posting or commenting too much.
It's a matter of a ton of people using too much bandwidth when we're having an issue though, so it's not any one user.
The system, as it is, limits bandwidth based on SP, and hits new users the hardest. I think that curve is a bit too steep. It should effect older users that are commenting too much as well.
New users deserve a right to have a chance at the very least.
There is at least one good thing about this though, it's likely making new users be a lot more careful with what they post.
But how can bandwidth be increased? Not for a single user by powering up, but for everybody?
The only way it can be increased for everyone is by increasing the block size.
But how the limit is distributed can be adjjusted.
Ya, when my dad joined he ran into this problem right away, kinda ridiculous, it seems like it could be an easy fix too, if we could bring enough attention to the issue so the steemit devs saw it.
PS. what's steemit bloggers and how do I join?
The easy fix is to increase the block size. That does need to be done eventually, but I would prefer the issue be fixed first.
Unfortunately, Steemit Bloggers is closed right now. They're a discord server that helps with a number of things for users. They have post promotion, as well as an upvote bot, and two different user highlight posts.
They will be open again in a month or two, but only upon member referal.
Oh, sounds like a really cool program, maybe if I blog hard I'll get noticed haha
@geekpowered i think time has come for steemit to makes its UI more user friendly..
as it becoming an headache for new people like us to understand its working
it really sucks me to death
I think the topic is interesting, if every time we make a publication we are broadband and I think a solution would be the publication limit for users, the use of the band would be smaller and could be a momentary solution to find a solution definitive to the problem. This is from my point of view. regards
I take this opportunity to invite you to see some of my messages, to see what they think. This is the link
https://steemit.com/biology/@antoniodpz/diabetes-thoroughly-studied-treatments-care-and-studies-part-2-3.
regards
What I learned to do is post during off peak hours. And that usually is past 3 or 4am onwards until abt 9 or 10pm our time.
At least that solves the bandwidth problem for me. Not sure about how my post readership goes though. Seems to be suffering. 😂
Even if I get to post on peak hours there's still the other minnows problem. Ah to be a minnow.