The middle of the Andy Livingstone Park, in Vancouver. Photo by me.
Turns out it's been quite a while since my last "witness update" -- almost 3 months. Oof. But if you're aware of what I do, you know I've certainly been around and active through @steemcleaners and @cheetah, and on the chats. I just haven't had the time to do a top-level post in a while!
Life was pretty hectic for me over the summer. I had a lot to do, not just with my internship, but also with school, general life, and of course the latest crypto gold-rush. With summer over, I've moved once again back to Vancouver for school and am now settled in my new suite. Hopefully that means a bit of a return to normal for my life, and a bit less stress (well -- as much as you can avoid while being a Ph.D student).
So anyways, here's a brief update on some things that I've been up to.
Cheetah
With the recent rise in activity after HF 19, daily posting rate and new users saw a massive increase compared to the historical numbers. You can check out some of the statistics here. It's pretty incredible watching Steemit take off in popularity, with a ton of onboarded new users and posts, and the amounts increasing daily.
Unfortunately for my "job", that also means a ton more load on @cheetah. I've noted privately first and now publicly that the direct costs for running her had exceeded $100 per day, simply due to checking tens of thousands of posts per day. Cheetah as a solution to identifying copy-and-paste isn't the most scalable solution, as the cost is directly proportional with activity. So, unless the price of steem also directly correlates with activity, it could be problematic. (Granted, it might be loosely coupled, but not necessarily.) I have taken to automated logging on @cheetah, and just a cursory glance at the logs shows immediately the problem: hundreds of posts per day are copy and paste, and most are plagiarism. In fact, just the number of plagiarized posts per day, exceeds the total posts per day just a year ago when @cheetah was first introduced -- not something I quite planned for!
With the logs, I'm fortunately still comfortable financing @cheetah and whatever overage that she costs with my witness pay. (This is, of course, assuming I stay a top witness. I don't think I would be okay with paying out of my own pocket if I were not.)
Some fun facts:
- I host my own private RPC full node strictly for cheetah, since she absolutely hammers it with information lookup requests.
- Cheetah frequently runs into the 20 second comment limit during periods of high activity (mid-afternoon US, for example), and I have seen her run as far as 20 minutes behind the blockchain trying to catch up with the load!
- Plagiarism, as a percentage of total posts, hasn't really changed over the past few months. The increase in activity seemed to bring a constant ratio of both real users and abusers.
Steemcleaners
I won't talk too much about @steemcleaners, but instead will point you to a recent post:
Keeping Steemit Clean: One Year Later
It's hard to believe we've been at it for over a year now, but the group has been working hard to keep Steemit something we can all enjoy -- free of plagiarism, identity theft, and other abuse. I know that sometimes, as someone recently said, "dolphins can get caught in the net". We do seriously try our best to avoid mishaps. If you really dig into it, it doesn't happen often (one mistake in a ocean of thousands of cases), but the mistakes will always be what is noticed. You can always chat with us if there's a problem, or message members such as myself or @patrice directly. We try our best to be active, but remember it's all volunteer work. Fortunately, as far as I am aware, anything recent has been resolved!
It's sometimes hard to imagine the impact of not having a group like @steemcleaners would have on the site. I often equate it to utility repairmen. We don't really consider the day-and-night effort these people put in to ensure the lights are on, the water flowing, and the gas coming through. But we certainly notice the moment they stop working. So, as usual, I implore people to help out with fighting abuse on Steemit. You can chat with us in Steemit.chat if you would like to help us directly. We're always strapped for manpower and resources!
Witness node updates, and a reminder on security
Time to change topics a bit, and discuss more witness technical stuff. Several people have publicly declared they would un-vote witnesses running 19.1, and I have responded to a few of them with my reasoning for not updating. [1][2][3]
The important bits of my explanation:
Consensus hasn't changed, the latest upgrade is just for P2P stability. This [update] is specifically best for seed nodes, which create the P2P "spine" of the network, connecting the whole ecosystem together. Witness nodes are more of the "brain".
In my case, my witness isn't directly accessible via incoming P2P or even SSH connections. It's locked out. So while I could upgrade, it has zero effect and I see no need to reboot.
This update is a good time to remind all of the other witnesses that the changes from 19.1 to 19.2 should NOT affect your witness node, because it should NOT deal with the public p2p network. Security isn't something that should be taken lightly when you're a top witness. I highly recommend @gtg's guide for a properly secure witness infrastructure, which you can read about here.
Since people who have un-voted me as a witness based on version only perhaps don't understand the above, I have decided to upgrade and am now on 19.2. I guess if it has no effect, why not.
Sometimes, I suppose, perception is more important than nuances. ¯\(ツ)/¯
Note: I have declined payout on this witness update. I am not sure if there is still controversy surrounding witnesses who accept post rewards for their updates. So, if you truly wish to reward me for this post, you can upvote this comment instead.
thank you for all you are doing, as i know how important your work is to the future of this great place. I upvoted your comment for you
Thanks for making cheetah robot.
Great work.i upvote you and follow you.i hope you support me @anyx
Witness update have value, if they didn't then there would be no reason for them.
Thanks for this update!
Thank you for the support!
Pay attention to its page... @skypilot @skypilot
Full upvote. Thanks so much for all your do. When I made my decision to post about the < 0.19.2 witnesses, I almost kept yours active anyway because I so appreciate the value you add here, but I wanted to be consistent. I really appreciate you clarifying the specifics of 0.19.2 as it relates to witness nodes vs. seed nodes and for your comments on my post. I'm really happy to see you posting an update because there are so many users out there who want to do their part and vote for Steemit witnesses but they just don't know what people are up to so they don't know who to vote for. Regular communication from witnesses like you reminds us all how amazing this community is and how hard many are working to keep it that way.
Thank you.
Appreciate the support. :) I definitely see your point about introducing new users to the idea of who to vote for as a witness.
Pay attention to its page... @skypilot
To me, it has as much value as any other post.
Pay attention to its page... @skypilot @skypilot
Thanks for the update.... and for all the work you do to help keep the site "clean." It is a massive task, I am sure... even with some of the other anti-spam, anti-fraud initiatives now starting to work. So a sincere thanks for that... 20 years of content creation on sites similar to this tells me Steemit would be an utter mess (and NOT attractive to newcomers!) without efforts to contain the garbage.
I certainly hope Cheetah continues to be viable... I toss a few upvotes her way when I come across her; I just hope others do, as well. If volume continues to rise... then what? CheetahToo?
Thanks for the support! :)
Really, for keeping Cheetah going the hope is that activity correlates with price. If the volume of posts doubles, but the price of steem doubles, then the cost of running her can still be paid by the logs. If the volume doubles and the price halves, we're in trouble.
In terms of the posting limit, I've been lobbying to get rid of the 20 second comment limit, and do a better job for the bandwidth limitations. So, a low steem power noob might spam a bunch of comments rapidly, but would eat all their bandwidth and couldn't post for a while while recharging. Cheetah I can just keep with high steem power, and have enough bandwidth to do all the posting she requires.
I see you have declined payout on this witness update, so I upvoted your comment. You are the 5th person I have voted for as witness:
Of course not in that order, steemd just list them as alphabetical.
I think that your @cheetah bot is the best bot out there in steemit land.
Thank you!
@anyx can you help me to get off the blacklist from cheetah.Please
https://steemit.chat/channel/steemitabuse-appeals
Hi, I noticed you called out Benji Berigan for plagiarising my content on Monsu Plin. He does not respond to any of my attempts to contact him and has not deleted the post. Is there an administrator that can remove the post? Thanks Tania D Campbell
Unfortunately due to the nature of this website, it can be quite a bit of a headache removing someone else's post. I would recommend emailing [email protected] and telling them of the copyright infringement. They have been able to handle DMCA before, and I'm sure there's plenty more they will need to deal with in the future.
Hi there .. I'm new Here, I need a push , thank you for up vote this post
great post
Thanks for the diligence on cheetah, this would be chaos without it.
Lets kick plagiarism out of steemit.. I support your work @anyx
very good post
Didn't realize cheetah was such a costly project!
Thanks for updating to 0.19.2, the perceptions are finally satisfied 🤓
I enjoy reading this to learn more about steemit and the people behind the scenes I am new and trying to learn the best way to impact this site with what little I can offer. Not being great with computers or coding language it is intimidating but I am willing to try and learn. I will try my best to put more original content and avoid copy pasting as much as possible. If you can provide a link or tips for a new user to just be able to get going in the right direction I would appreciate it. @anyx
I wonder if 'the powers that be' on Steemit would require new users to provide content...as a reference on what they'll possibly be posting on Steemit.
(Though it would be kind of difficult to do those for those who just like to consume content)
sigh
I've spent the last couple of hours looking through the new feed...and...wow...I'm guessing the ratio is now (50:1) in terms of me finding content I'd be interested in following.
Hurrah for @cheetah!
PS: I noticed that the potential payout of this post has a strikeout. What does that mean?
I must commend you for this hectic job you're doing to the steemit community, I also want to bring your attention to (and possibly get more information about upvotes, comments etc from cheetah and steemcleaners) a wrongful trail by cheetah after I posted my personal experience with the police. The article @cheetah mentioned could not be retrieved. When I visited the steemit.chat and reported, they also tried to retrieve the document but failed as the webpage it mentioned http://www.ynet.co.il/home/0,7340,L-13341,00.html could not open. Meanwhile curators distanced themselves from my work simply because cheetah commented on it. Please kindly look for a way of improving more to avoid nailing people wrongly. Thanks
Hello, Dear, I have given you "witnesses" & upvoted you. Can you please also upvote me (& follow if possible)? Thanks in advance.
@space-man
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@space-man/updates-from-dash-conference
Importance of upvoting by jerrybanfield Ref
Congratulations @anyx! You have completed some achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Click on any badge to view your own Board of Honor on SteemitBoard.
For more information about SteemitBoard, click here
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPCongratulations @anyx! You have received a personal award!
Click on the badge to view your own Board of Honor on SteemitBoard.
For more information about this award, click here
I'll try to allocate some of my time to steemcleaners right after I figured out how to.
in the meantime, I voted you as witness, tell me if there's any other way I can help specially to fight spam.
Congratulations @anyx! You have received a personal award!
Click on the badge to view your own Board of Honor on SteemitBoard.
Congratulations @anyx! You have completed some achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Click on any badge to view your own Board of Honor on SteemitBoard.
For more information about SteemitBoard, click here
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPCongratulations @anyx! You have completed some achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Click on any badge to view your own Board of Honor on SteemitBoard.
For more information about SteemitBoard, click here
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPthanks for your explanations. Can you resteem my last post?
https://steemit.com/tr/@gnchmurat/tuerkiye-den-sonbahar-manzaralari-autumn-photos-from-turkey
Nice job!
@anyx, I voted for you as a delegate, good luck!
ID deception
!cheetah ban