RE: BlockTrades Witness Report for 3rd Week of August
send two transactions for the same amount of funds between the same pair of users in the same block. Previously the 2nd transaction would be rejected.
@blocktrades what is use-case of sending two identical transfers in the same block as opposed to a single transaction. Is this related to blocktrades.us, and why was this a priority issue?
most notoriously, the vote nullification feature
What is your stance on the current proposal for voter nullification?
users who sign up via facebook to “Share” that they've signed up to Steemit as a means of viral advertising
I am not sure if that is wise before the platform leaves beta. There is much work to do tweaking curation algorithms. The users experience when their votes have zero effect is still not ideal for mainstream viral adoption imho.
I respectfully disagree with this statement, and I think we have very different perspectives on the importance of different aspects of this project. I'm going to try to express my point of view a little bit, apologies for the incoming wall o' text.
Right now there's a major rift in "trains of thought", which I'd categorize into two groups of people:
The statement of yours that I quoted falls very much in line with Group #1. I feel the vest majority of "whales" fall into this category simply because it's the world you guys know and excel at. It's great that we have so many people that know the cryptography end so well, but I fear that not enough respect is being given to the best practices that apply to building a social platform.
I feel we need to lean a bit harder into the social networking aspects, the promises to users, the value we provide them and the new user experience they are about to encounter.
Right now what I see happening is new "uninformed" users end up joining, not understanding any of it, and walking away with the feeling of a broken promise. I'd probably say it's a pretty common occurrence, I know at least two people I've convinced to join that have already since quit "because it doesn't work". They aren't power users, they were just normal people, and their expectations were not met based on what they were presented with.
From what I can tell (using some of the data I've been analyzing), the churn rate is incredibly high right now. The total number of users is growing, but the overall daily active user count is not growing. The site isn't sticky enough for a variety of reasons, with curation rewards being one of them (as being mentioned by @pjheinz in the original comment).
If it is indeed as common as I believe, it needs to be addressed before we just start throwing more warm bodies at the site. The retention rates and turnover will be massive and it will just sour peoples opinion. As someone who falls in line with #2, I can't even begin to express how important first impressions are. I'm also trying my hardest to express these concerns and thoughts when applicable, hoping to gain support for these ideals.
My opinion is more efforts should be even more focused at improving the experience rather than increasing the audience. I'm not saying growth should stop, but a stronger emphasis should be placed upon improvements in the experience. The team working on this website is relatively small and has already done incredible things, but at it's size, it's going to take time to make things acceptable for your average joe. Let's get things ready for joe when he arrives.
I apologize again for this huge response @blocktrades, and again, I hope I portrayed an opposing view respectfully. All of this is an attempt to convey my experiences as a developer and how we can make this platform even more powerful.
IMO, this is an awesome comment. there's only one thing i don't necessarily agree with.
At the end of the day, i think that changing the curation problems benefits "group 1" at least as much, if not more than group 2.
I've basically had this same argument fuzzyvest and chrudtzu in another thread. The notion that you'll find even a very few people willing to make a significant investment in steem power when that significant investment only results in a tiny amount of influence is nothing more than a fantasy.
Yeah I don't have a great solution to the curation situation. It's an interesting one that's for sure.
Is the problem with curation rewards that some people are getting way too much? I've seen very large accounts that are getting 10-100 SP just from curation rewards, which is far far too high in my opinion. There really should be a cap or something on the potential reward.
As someone with ~7k SP, if I find and vote something 3 hours earlier than a whale, there's no reason they should get 100x the rewards that I get.
Actually I was a bit surprised that you thought I fell in the blockchain group as you described. The areas where I'm suggesting more focus should be spent is on increasing the friendliness to the site to new users (creating updated intro material, etc) and preventing the pain of loss of funds (something that I think is likely in many cases to result a quick exit from the platform for anyone not already committed to cryptocurrency) versus a lot of blockchain level tweaking.
It's my opinion that monetary rewards are not the primary reason people use social media anyways (well, I hope this is pretty obvious statement given the success of facebook/twitter/etc), so while the money is an important draw for Steemit, I believe the most important thing is to make the site a place where people feel welcome. I also like the uncensorability of using a blockchain to power the conversations. I'm really not sure we're are so far apart in our goals for the platform, except that it sounds like you would like to wait longer before bringing new people to the platform (i.e. when it's more polished).
I didn't necessarily mean to lump you personally into one group or another, I think it was more the philosophy and the approach. After @smooth's comment as well, I think I may have done more damage than good with my "grouping" analogy. But at least it got some people talking!
It really doesn't seem we're far apart at all. I'm with you 100% in everything you just mentioned. Looking back at what I wrote, I probably went a bit harder than I should have on that single quote ;)
Jesta is 100% on point! The churn rate is really high and "average Joe's" are joining today and leaving tomorrow....
I actually agree with both of you. User retention is an issue but I don't believe that introducing huge instability on the investment side is an effective way to address it and indeed it represents a loss of focus away from user engagement and growth.
If there were some specific compelling proposals to improve user engagement, retention and growth, then I think everyone would be very interested in pursuing them, but does anyone seriously believe that voter nullification is that? I sure don't.
Also, Steem is something new in that it combines both a cryptocurrency/blockchain and and social media platform. Thus it is essential for everyone to appreciate the issues from both perspectives, as well as the recognizing the new issues arising that fall squarely into neither. If we find ourselves divided into Group #1 and Group #2 that is a good step toward failure.
I agree with the points you're making and it's something we definitely need to be careful with.
Now that I think about it, and from your comments, maybe
groupswas the wrong terminology to use. It adds an adversarial quality to it to the comparison. Maybe a better way to describe it would be some sort ofsliding scalein relation to the tactics that need to be employed in order to be successful .I hope I didn't come off seemingly supportable of any form of voter nullification, because that's not the message I want to promote. My goal was simply to explain why I don't think promotion of steemit.com is the answer to the problems we're facing.
I've voiced this concern as well.
As a potential investor, I can attest to the fact that I would welcome a change in the value of the steem power i was buying from "no value at all" to pretty much anything else.
replying here due to nesting:
Most investors, potential or otherwise, would like to have their investment have value. A change in the curation system would be a change in the rules to give investors more for their money. Thats not instability, its value.
There is only one type of investor who would be negatively impacted by such a change. I hate to use the N word, but i think here its appropriate.
Ninjas. The people who have millions or tens of millions in SP because of the "ninja mine" that wasnt really a premine or an instamine, it just had precisely the same effect as either of these things.
I know i know. They invested sweat equity. so theyre investors too. But if you give the sweat investors all the return, and the money investors none of it... well.. what incentive is there for money investors.
@sigmajin, I'm certainly not against changes that I think will actually raise the value of Steem (and I'm pretty sure most whales feel the same way). But I watched a promising cryptocurrency (that I held) that went thru too many changes too quickly (all probably with the best of intentions), and it was pretty detrimental to the coin's value. I'm not against changes, but changes that change the rules for investors should not be taken lightly (and certainly those changes shouldn't be made frequently). Also, when you have limited resources, I think it's best to figure out the most critical issues and focus on those first and while I have no doubt curation rules can be improved, I'd rather see some other issues that I consider more pressing tackled first.
The point that I was making is that Steem Power is locked up for 2 years. The constant tweaks cause (in my opinion) the potential investor to be more wary in investing if the rules of the platform constantly change, i.e. if the rules are unstable, then maybe my investment is unstable.