Thank you for communicating.

I appreciate how you are working around the clock, but I also expect communication when something that was working stops working. For the past couple of weeks, for many including me, Steemit has become almost unusable. Before that, it was functional. Something changed, but I don't know what because there's no technical communication about the issues. If those issues are so sensitive that communicating about them would provide real attack vectors, that's security by obscurity which is concerning.

I'm glad you have metrics in place giving you visibility on the time it takes for transactions from the browser to hit your servers. Does that include logging of browser errors? Due to the complexities of JavaScript-based front ends, I imagine tracking the things which time out and never make it to your server is quite difficult. If you do have that visibility, but it hasn't been a priority to discuss until now, that's also quite frustrating. Communication takes time away from development, sure, but it's critical for building trust with this community. I believe it's really important, not something to get to two weeks later. Many share my position on the value of communication and why it should be prioritized higher than it has been in the past. IMO, this post has a theme of "We're working on it" but not much of a "We're sorry for letting you down." Maybe you don't feel an apology is needed, but I think it would have been helpful here. The frustration many of us have had trying to use the site is quite high and though you may know that intellectually, the data shows you can't fully know it experientially. Or if you can, I'm not sure how.

I ran some SQL queries on the steem database to see how often the Steemit, inc team has published comments and posts since the DDoS attack. They are not encouraging numbers. As a SaaS software developer myself, I really strongly believe in eating your own dog food. I hope the team prioritizes this to fully feel what users are feeling along with seeing the data and the metrics in reports. As I've experienced bugs using my own software, I've found it motivates me quickly to prioritize and fix them.

Illustration: Have you ever been on a wifi connection that kind of works but not really? That's really, really frustrating. It's hard to explain how frustrating to people unless they've experienced it. When I talk about the emotional frustration and feelings of the community, it's like that. I hope the steemit team decides to prioritize using the site more often to get that same experiential knowledge.

I imagine you're all under a lot of stress to get things done prior to Steemfest2. I hope you get plenty of rest and meet and exceed your goals. Many of us believe in you, while many others have lost faith and are vocal about their bitterness. My previous post on this topic wasn't meant to troll or be accusatory as I was trying to speak in terms of facts and bring helpful solutions. I hope this comment will be received well. I really do want you to succeed, and I want the community's experiences to be fully validated and appreciated.

Thank you. I look forward to meeting you all in Lisbon.

Again, thank you for communicating. I hope it continues as we see improvements in site performance.