I had decided to stop posting these, since my last post was getting flack from some of the other witnesses (see comments in my previous witness post for details), but a couple of other people have since commented asking me to resume posting, so I've decided to start posting these again anyways. If other whales want to downvote these posts, so be it, I suppose my reputation score can stand the hit.
Depending on how much I have to say at any given time, these posts may not be strictly weekly. Over the next two weeks, I have a really busy schedule related to Peerplays project deadlines, so I probably won't post during that time unless something important comes up.
One thing I did like about making these posts weekly is it was a nice way to keep track of where my time goes. Two weeks have gone by, and it's already hard for me to remember exactly what we worked on during that time. I used to think I have a really great memory, but it seems to work better for facts/figures than for daily events, especially when my days tend to consist of jumping back and forth between a lot of different tasks. Sometimes I long for the days when I could just focus on one task for a long stretch of time. But it's hard to report on those tasks too, since then you sometimes struggle to say more than “continued work on x” unless you can figure out some nice way to describe your sub-goals in a way that makes sense to anyone besides yourself.
What I remember of the last week or so...
Not surprisingly, the thing I remember best is what I've done in the past few days. We've just added some new Steem-related trading pairs to BlockTrades:
STEEM → ETH
STEEM → DOGE
STEEM → DASH
STEEM → LTC
(we already had the other direction for these pairs)
New bidirectional paths for Steem Dollars:
SBD <-> ETH
SBD <-> DOGE
SBD <-> DASH
SBD <-> LTC
We'll also be adding support for some new coins soon and we'll add Steem/SBD pairs for those coins too.
The Politics of Steem
On the political side of Steem, the debate continues as to where Steem and Steemit should “go” next. I continue to oppose to what I consider premature “tinkering” to the voting and curation system. The most recent case of this is https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/323. At the very least, as suggested by some other witnesses, I think the threshold for such a vote should be more than a majority (at least 2/3 of all witnesses, for example). I've also heard several other curation-related proposals which I don't think have yet made it to the stage of github issues, but I haven't heard any yet that I think have a solid story to support them: they seem more like experiments to me, and I think experimenting with the heart of the value proposition for Steem Power is a risky operation.
Instead of tweaking the curation system, I'm still advocating for more changes to the front-end of Steemit. This is because I believe that Steem is first and foremost an open, decentralized social media platform and that the user experience is more important than the rewards system. The platform should be easier to join, doing things like adding images, audio, and video should be extremely easy for novice users, the tagging system should work better, there should be more ways for users to interact with each other, there should a clear place on the Steemit site to get help and find information about site usage, and the latest revision of the post editor feels terrible to me (this is the first big post I've made using this version so I hadn't noticed it till now, but ultimately I resorted to editing this post in a separate editor using raw HTML). Everyday billions of people use social media sites that are tightly controlled by the site owners and who pay nothing to their users. If we focus on adding the types of features those sites already have and keep our system open and free, with the chance for rewards, I think we're sitting on a winning combination.
I do believe that the rewards system is an important force for attracting new users, but I think it's inevitable that not everyone is going to be able to make lots of money by authoring articles. First, most people aren't great writers (I hope this point isn't too controversial). Second, non-native English speakers are at a distinct disadvantage when trying to write English articles and the majority of powerful voters read English.
One way that we can spread rewards around to users that aren't great English writers is to accept the idea that finding good articles and translating articles written in other languages is a useful function, as long as proper attribution is given to the original source. And if we're willing to give decent rewards to such posts, I think we will reduce the cases of unattributed copy-paste posting. Note, this doesn't require any changes to the code of Steem or Steemit, this is just a proposal for a cultural change.
Final Note
I met with the Steem team for lunch last week, and I was pleased to see they had added two new members to the team, including a new front-end web programmer. But I still think they can use more web guys, so if you're a skilled javascript programmer, I hope you will consider sending your resume to Ned. I think they generally favor employees who are willing to relocate, but if you're a rockstar maybe you can negotiate the point if it's an issue for you.
It just occurred to me that witness updates like this could make for interesting video material. Maybe a segment in our SteemSmart show?
@blocktrades don't you worry about you're reps , honestly where you standing now (reps) you quite hard to shake you back down , just keep doing what you think good for us , there may be someone doesn't agree with you , there always be someone acts like that in every platform , this is ain't no one person game , find you're niche here or maybe you already have .
Keep up the good post and stay positive .
:)
Excellent update, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and activities with us. I think the Witness Report is a good idea, so thanks.
I'm saddened to see that you haven't posted in awhile. You did a great curation tonight for my post that effects everyone (re: power outages).
I'm going to follow you, and I think that you still can bring a lot to the table by your posts. Please consider writing. If you understand steemit, and I know you do.. money clouds issues, but not people who have something to say.
I look forward to your next post. Please express yourself. I'll be looking for it.
Thank you for posting. Transparency is important, and I appreciate you sharing what you've been up to.
Good post , I up voted you as a witness also
blocktrades, Keep up the great work of what you feel is right for you. No need to worry about forces against your strong force so much. But can understand your concern. Glad you have thought it over and posted what many want that support you overall.
Great update, thank you! But, we are waiting for you in #foodchallenge and #food, and look forward your support!))
Thanks for the updates.
It is useful for us to know who the witnesses are and what their thinking is about the platform. It makes it easier for us to decide who to vote on as witnesses. My vote doesn't count for much but I only vote for people who I see contributing to the community.
I share your concerns over issue number 323. I think these things need to be discussed on a more prominent forum than github before they are implemented otherwise it looks like authoritarian control on a decentralised platform.
I would prefer a special account and channel on Steemit that is purely for platform discussion. That way there are no accusations of things being hidden until implementation and there is also no confusion with @dantheman's personal posts.
Also thank you for bringing up the issue with the post editor. This is one of the worst parts of the user experience and frankly I wish I didn't have to use it. It was a complete nightmare trying to right my most recent post due to the length.
Which .html editor would you recommend?
Anyway thanks for letting us know what is going on it is appreciated despite other witnesses giving you flack:)
I don't have a good recommendation for an html editor, I just did a raw edit with a text editor, horrible as that sounds, but probably someone else can chime in with a good html editor choice.
I usually post with markdown, but I made the mistake of copy/pasting my post straight from openoffice writer this time. I think it would have worked better if I had pasted to notepad first, then copy/pasted that into the Steemit post editor. But this is exactly the kind of detail that no normal user should have to be aware of.
OK well hopefully the team can get to work on sorting this out. Thanks for replying:)
I use notepad++ to edit the raw html before posting. The program is free (but PC only), and its basics are very easy to learn. Will new site users take the time to learn rudimentary html just to post on steemit? Probably not.
If your running linux or Windows I highly trying Remarkable. It's a markdown editor but has toolbar buttons as you would expect in a word processor. Either way markdown is pretty simple and worth learning.
Also many articles are produced in English by people that speaks it as a second language. I'm from Argentina, my first language is Spanish, but I prefer to post in English at this moment, because I aim at reaching a global audience.
Maybe in the future, steemit.com offers a multilingual platform and just because of that many more users that are not able to speak English will join and produce more content in other languages.
If the whales, such as yourself are too busy to vote and curate, which I think you stated, what does that mean if you hold most of the voting power?
Some whales are too busy to curate, but I don't think most are. The general solution in such cases is to delegate curation partially or totally to other people. For my account, I mostly curate at night, and my wife curates during the normal work day. There have been various suggestions for ways that big accounts could "sell" their curation rights to others via some blockchain mechanism (for example via a market) and I'm not opposed to something like that, as long as it doesn't tie up too much development time. This could make Steem a more interesting investment for someone who wants to take a speculative long term position, but doesn't want to curate the account. But, in keeping with my main theme, I think it's more important to focus on what the site offers normal users.
That would be something worth looking into by I would say all whales there are a lot of great content that is still being missed... there are also more than 100 so called whales that can be having helping hands on curating.. is there not? if something like that does happen steemit will growing to bigger strides. My opinion is of course you cant look at all the posts or content there is but if each whale had 2 or three helping hands you know that would make a dramatic effect for the better part. Regardless keep on posting.
I have 20 CPU s maybe I can make some steem..
I think the early adopters such as yourself are very busy, and not necessarily the standard users of Social Media. Although, I completely agree on your points, focusing on development of networking features, I also like the idea that people are at least considering we are losing early adopters due to marketing saying "Make Money" and the system not following through on that. Thank you for your answer. I like any idea that spreads out the task of curation, with all due respect, you are great at many things, but I am not sure you are the eyes of the end-user.
I'm sure I don't qualify as a standard user of social media. But even if all the whales fell into that category and they curated 24 hours a day, a lot of people still won't make money if the requirement is to write great, wholly original articles in English. If you can write an article like that, I fully believe that you will get rewarded by Steemit now. But I think Steemit needs to do more than that, to capture a really big audience. At the very least, it's got to be competitive in the back-and-forth type of conversations that occur daily on existing social media platforms.
Agreed.
thanks for posting again
Thank you for posting, as a new user last week. (I am an expert now) I was very concerned about a lack of communication from the leadership team.
I don't mind if the price falls, I don't mind if there are bugs in a beta site.
I get really nervous when there are no leaders in site. This comes from my background as a consultant for Startups. Leaders are people other people follow, where they wouldn't have gone before.
Hope voting system will change and making it better not as easy to target certain person.
Not fair, why there are rules to prevent people what we want to post? I would understand if offensive.
So, have any ideas from the steem guys where the site is going? I for one would love to see steem rewards for: recruiting users, and an ad networks funded by steem.... Many people have "other jobs" they would love to promote and letting them pay in steem to others users for that promotion would be a great idea...#justspitballinghere ;)
We appreciate the update on your activities, @blocktrades.
|Instead of tweaking the curation system, I'm still advocating for more changes to the front-end of Steemit. This is because I believe that Steem is first and foremost an open, decentralized social media platform and that the user experience is more important than the rewards system. The platform should be easier to join, doing things like adding images, audio, and video should be extremely easy for novice users, the tagging system should work better, there should be more ways for users to interact with each other, there should a clear place on the Steemit site to get help and find information about site usage, and the latest revision of the post editor feels terrible to me (this is the first big post I've made using this version so I hadn't noticed it till now, but ultimately I resorted to editing this post in a separate editor using raw HTML). Everyday billions of people use social media sites that are tightly controlled by the site owners and who pay nothing to their users. If we focus on adding the types of features those sites already have and keep our system open and free, with the chance for rewards, I think we're sitting on a winning combination.|
I completely agree with this. Steemit wants the masses to come but the masses want to do things quick and easy.
💋 @halo 💋😇
Encouraging debate is important, comments need more upvotes from those with power.
I think posts that inspire more comments should get more visibility, if not sp rewards.
Thanks for the time you give to Steemit, and please keep reporting.
Thanks for posting. I enjoyed reading that you share some similar thoughts to my own regarding the platform and its appearance/ease of use.
Thanks blocktrades for the insight.
I'm happy to hear that more user friendly features are being thought about all the time, I find that i've had to use several different sites and plugins to get the kind of experience I would normally expect from a social media site.
Steemd - to view activity
Steemwhales to view stats
Steemification to have notifications of activity
esteem for mobile app
I think many of these could be eventually integrated into the main site itself.
Also, I'm happy to hear that you recognise the difficulty which non-native English speakers have in reaching an audience that primarily reads English. Although my native language is Chinese, I think that I've had a little bit more success than my other countrymen because I insist on keeping my posts bi-lingual or even some in full English. The concern is that those who don't have the background to write a full article in both languages will feel disadvantaged and eventually leave.
I've seen @anwenbaumeister make some some contribution to the chinese community by arranging the translation of some good English articles into Chinese, but there is no such initiative on the contrary.
A common concern raised in the cn community is that there is a clear barrier of entry to signing up to steemit as a regular Chinese user. As you know, facebook is inaccessible in China, and most users do not have a reddit account let alone one with reputation. This is making the propagation of steemit usage in china quite difficult, even amongst the small proportion of English literate users (Which itself is a very large number of people). I'm sure that when you say
You have already thought of the issues I've raised regarding Chinese user signup.
Thanks again for the report and I look forward to reading the next one.
Thank you for you post.
I was have an idea some day before about how to take attention for a newcomers and spread rewards to good one authors who still don't have it.
A agree with your point about findings good articles and collection of they by local group people and local translation.
My idea was in giving a temporal vote power for an group or some users for short time who will make some curation.
But this vote powed for this period will not allow to user vote for himself and upvote more than twice a day same another author. Curation reward can be splitted between "whale" and delegated curator unit.
Also don't allow make power down for delegated curator in this period of time.
By this way lot of local languages issue can be solved also it can help make more uniform distribution attention to good content.
But it's still just idea I has call it "King for a day" and I have no idea is this possible to realize on the platform.
Maybe it will be some multiplier coefficient to existing user power or maybe something like "vote power loan".
Anyway I want to make this platform better as many other people who care not about only they profit. I know some group peoples who discuss about the ways how to make something better there.
But I don't know the way how to bring idea to the developers or powerful persons on Steemit.
I spend a lot of time on rocket chat and open to discuss.
This is a great idea. There will be more quality content and not-English writers
can receive some compensation for the lack of non-English whales. Thank you!
2 points
1 - why dont you do what others do, by finding 4 or 5 people that can have your posting keys and upvote for you. Or easier set your account to a person you trust on upvoting and anything he upvotes, you will too
2 - I think atm, we are also mising a couple of very good marketing people, that can casue a "virus".
I was into bts from pts, and 1 thing it missed the most, was good marketing. Unfortuantly i can feel that the same problem arises here, so far we've been rolling on our own (a lot of enthusiasts like @knozaki2015 @theycryptodrive myself and so on), but to succeed it must come from the core team
Its great to see you have resumed posting again, and I do hope the others dont flag you, It terms of improving the platform there is really allot of good open source stuff out there that can be integrated into the steemit platform and modified if need be.
Thank you for you upvote my art)
You have my vote @blocktrades!
Best regards from Berlin, Jonas
Great post and great read! And I also want to say thank you for supporting my posts!
Sir I'm new here and I have a few questions if you don't mind, what does it witness in steemit, how can I vote for a witness?
I'm non native English actually I don't have the courage to write a article, if I write only comments is it legal on steemit?
when I try yo upvote some time I get error message asking me to add more steem power, what does it mean?
I'm really confused can you please answer to my questions :)
Hi, Alex, welcome to Steemit! 1) To vote for witnesses, click on the "triple bar" icon on the upper right corner of your page and select "Witnesses" from the menu that appears. 2) Yes, you can certainly just add comments if you don't want to make posts. Posts tend to be the most profitable, but starting out with comments is a good way to get familiar with the platform. 3) The error you're getting is because you're running out of Steem Power, so you need more to vote more often. We just noticed this issue yesterday for some new accounts, so the witnesses are pushing now for more Steem Power to be allocated to new accounts so that they will be able to vote more often with their initial allocation.
Thank you sir for your answer, sorry if I will ask you again, actually I can't install the steem wallet on my computer I'm using windows 7, I have error message saying that it was not compatible, I have buy some steem too with what I have earn here to power up
Can you send me the exact text of the error message you get?
https://steemit.com/war/@rolik/ukraine-and-russia-will-be-a-war
guys please write your think
Great post
Thanks
People very angry, especially here. If a person has a great reputation - one of its drawback it can kill a new user. Thanks for your posts. Write anyway!
I agree that the front-end needs some updating. I love Steemit, but it looks like a website from a decade ago. Kind of like the huge pixels of Minecraft just as we were all getting used to photo-level graphics.
Great post @blocktrades :)
Thanks :)
Whatever the reason was for the flags I am glad to see your witness update. Give me a little insight about what is being done and behind the scenes. Thanks
@blocktrades i realy enjoy your post! u do a really good job .. i would be happy if you follow me :)
Fuck the whales they are all greedy POS ANY HOW. That's why Steem is falling they are greedy
I want to ask for your input based on your post. I have been thinking a lot like you that there can't just be readers. Rewards will go down (also agreed) and I just wonder about how new users could be rewarded..... I had a thought and was wondering if it is even possible..... would love your eyes on it.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@clevecross/stuck-on-timeets
Where is my friend @blocktrades? :)
I am front end UI, CSS and JavaScript developer/designer and could not agree more. I think an update to how steemit.com looks, works and feels is the most important change that could be made.
I also, think we need to create a tutorial that takes a new user through steemit.com makes suggestions and explains how things work on the live site as they use it, not some video or something like that.
Excellent posts and love the weekly updates and worthwhile content that u write about steemon
Nice article! Welcome to my blog @alex2016
Agree! Informative!
As a minnow I would agree that improving the UI is where the effort needs to go. As a new user the things I want to do first are 1) find the content that appeals to me 2) find the people and groups that appeal to me.
A point about author/creator rewards. There's a lot of talk about this across the network but I'm wondering if we are forgetting the Pareto principle? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
That is, in any similar ecosystem, 20% of the participants will receive 80% of the rewards.
In any creative industry you can think of- art, literature, music, the Pareto principle applies. It's just the way it is.
Old post but it was very important for me. It's a good knowledge. Thanks.
Regard
Nice