Have read your post and also Bernie's and you both got a point. Loved your analogy with newspaper and coffee. I think that the most important part is reliability of Steemit Blockchain, this is top priority, because without that nothing else would work. It is great to do cool new features and developments where possible but not at the expense of reliability. This work is most of the time invisible to the public. But most certainly if you have the resources to fund or help the community, do it. The more you help the faster your funds grow as well. This is like helping the community and also helping yourself.
I have one quote that states my position very clearly regarding criticizing others Luke 6:42
"You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
I have to agree there with both of you guys. If anyone is concerned with the stability and reliability (does availability fit into there somewhere?) of the network then some of you may be interested in helping me get some witness votes for my project. It's aim is to establish more full rpc/consensus nodes for the steemit network to help reduce some of the strain by providing more resources and simultaneously decentralizing from all those privex nodes. No offense and i'm not saying anything meant to slander or subject myself to libel, but most of the network's hardware is owned and operated by the top 50 witnesses and that's being modest. It's not my aim to compete. It'd honestly be in mine and everyone's best interest to play ball when it comes to things that I'd consider platform essentials (Nodes And Witnesses). It's just simple decentralized load balancing. In my opinion, those things should be separated from the politics involved with high level witnessing even though it is essential that we all participate in some way whether we vote, or simply donate to projects that strengthen the community in this manner. I'm fairly new to steem, but I have set up a few nodes as well as a witness without issue. It seems that the people that should be batting for projects like mine the most either will never hear about them, or try to silence them with a nice conservative downvote. Unfortunately, ignorance will not win out in this case and many have already begun to see the negative effects of a growing blockchain without proper contingency. I established my witness with the sole agenda of using it to finance my project as I cannot maintain nodes on my salary however the necessity is plausible and duty calls. I usually don't do these types of post response (forgive me if I'm longwinded) and writing is not my forte, but I read @yuriks2000 's reply and since @gtg concurred , it felt relevant. I don't use steemit to make money for my family. That is not what this is about for me. . . Yet. . .. Besides, I hate to say it, but It's been easier for me to make a living off of other treacherous, censored social media platforms that bring their own issues, but at the end of the day, they have overcome many of the core fundamentals that we have not from a technological standpoint including high redundancy. Even more importantly, they make it easy to obtain an account for new users making it easy for me to convert my current followers from one platform to another. . That in itself has been my biggest limiting factor here on steemit as it has made it thus far nearly impossible for me to make anything substantial using my current highly supportive (and paying) user base from those other networks. I do see other ways i'd like to help this network grow in the future and in the process perhaps earn the opportunity to become cash flow positive on it. But the technology and accessibility issues need to be addressed first indeed and I'm here to help. In fact, I'd LOVE to help. . I have a background in software engineering, robotics, game development, web design, server admin. . It seems to me that the premise of steemit is to "break-out" from the norm when it comes to social platforms. They did that by making monetization more accessible but it doesn't stop there and this is evidenced by the many third party add-ons and adaptations made in it's favor. Many of them modifying it beyond just blogging (i.e. blocktrades, dtube, dsound). I'm already here and i've already started to play my part but as @gtg said "if you have the funds or resources to help the community then do it". . I don't have the funds but i'm doing it anyways. I'm already vested with my time and my money so I'm not going anywhere, and hopefully with community support I can be as successful as you have been on this platform :P Again, it's not my intention to spread any rhetoric or knock anyone about the job they are doing or not doing. You were one of the first witnesses I voted for @gtg. Even though you are a top witness, I definitely have been unable to escape the massive contributions you have made to this network. Hats off to you! But tell me something, @pumpkin ?
Great initiative @justinadams, have just read about your project and it sounds great, hope that you can achieve this in the near future. Will keep an eye on your project. You have my vote for witness, it is not much yet, but it's a start. Every vote counts, right?
You have my vote and follow! Keep up the good work!
Man, use some line breaks.
There was probably a solid message in there somewhere, but on a blogging site made for internet content authors, that's a wall of text most readers will blur right on by.
Use these sometimes...
<-- empty line here-->
Line feeds make your points legible.
You can also use html like <br/>
Thanks from your attempted readers.
That's very true.