RE: The Reports from the Witnesses 2018-01-07
Whopping?
There is nothing whopping about the top witness pay.
...and when you ask things like "can you just walk in and claim the position". Absolutely not. Do some research.. read all posts written by @timcliff over the last year and see if he just simply "walked up" and "claimed his position".
He spends countless hours building up and earning his position. We need our top witnesess to be well funded. It is a massive responsiblity and backbone of the network.
The top witnesses are basically the Executives of the decentralized corporation called STEEM. It's not easy to earn the position, it isn't easy to maintain that position. It isn't easy to run a reliable node and keep it reliable.
All in all, their pay is well deserved, and it can be annoying when people perceive that they could have simply "walked up and claimed the position".
@timcliff has earned trust by the community and has his seat voted in. That is not easily done. No, no one can walk up and claim his position easily.
...and I like that.
You can, you just have to buy yourself in or make enough valuable posts to get the necessary voting power.
(parenthesis added) Tim does a great job, but all his posts are a bit much for me. Maybe if you pay me 1000 Steem I will do it.;-)
I had a hunch that this might be the case^^
I cannot say anything about the programming and maintenance end of Steemit, but I have the impression, the witnesses have no clue about the economic end of their job or how to run a consumer oriented business (eg: zero regard that user might not understand them when using technical terms all the time -> "bluepaper").
Also: I like very good pay for very good people, but I think there are several witnesses among the current top100 who just aren't up to it and who also don't do enough for their pay (Tim not).
edit
sry if I added and deleted several times the same comments. Something is wrong here. I'm trying to keep the chaos under control..
In my view there are several top witnesses who are well worth the pay, and some that are not.
I would love to see more individuals come along who are able to add sufficient value to earn a top 20 spot, and work their way to the top. It is not easy, but it is possible. There are several individuals (jesta, myself, netuoso, aggroed for example) that have done it.
A good top witness will be taking steps to grow the value of STEEM. Even though they themselves are making a lot - if they do a good job, they will actually earn the entire community more than what they are paid.
Oh, if that's your concern: I'm not intending to become a witness. I'm just interested in the system and the economics behind it.
I would like to write a speculative post about witnesses, but I fear downvotes. Can you promise me to undo possible downvotes by zeroing them out with an upvote big enough?
It wasn't a concern about you joining, it was the opposite - I would like to see more witnesses join (not less).
Also, I wasn't necessarily speaking of you specifically - anyone who can add value to the platform through a witness campaign would be good to consider it.
Well, my upvote is not nearly enough to counter most of the the larger stakeholders. I also can't guarantee that without knowing what the content of your post is.
In general though, I would encourage people to post what they feel is important even if it means becoming targeted.
If you want to protect your main account, you can create a "throw away" account via AnonSteem.
So that's where berniesanders was born. Whoever that is created quite an atmosphere in which you better want to shut up.