Updated On : 8/9/16
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...A list of all platform changes to Steemit made on 8/8/16...
If Managed to Get Your Attention So Far, Please Keep Reading
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I'm sure by now you've all noticed a lot of changes recently. Yet we have never seen a single post regarding Patch Notes, or a Change Log of any kind when they're rolled out. Many of us have been referred to Github but having looked around on there the change notes are sparse and most changes aren't even mentioned. For those who aren't coders, they're pretty much just left in the dark to fend for themselves.
By now I'm sure many of you have seen the newly updated dashboard when you go to your user profile. I for one love the look and feel of it but would never have known about it until I stumbled upon it the other night. The same goes for the new double digit reputation numbers. We all heard that there was a new reputation system in place. We couldn't miss the new single digit number next to our names, but now they're double digit numbers and there was no explanation for that change or its effect on our accounts.
I'm sure many of us appreciate very much all the time, effort and work the devs have been putting in by rolling out updates every couple days. For all their hard work I would truly like to thank them very much.
I would however like to add that many of the changes have become a guessing game, an almost "Easter Egg" hunt of sorts without patch notes. When an update is implemented we often have to find it ourselves then guess as to what it was for, and often how it even works. I don't mind once in a while finding a new feature here and there every so often, or even running to Github once in a while if I really fall behind while I'm away.
As it stands right now though, many users are just left to guess and stumble about until they find what they think is a new change and then have to ask around for confirmation. This makes staying up to-date on recent patches both difficult and tedious for the majority user base to keep up with.
Most of us would welcome a chance to give credit where credit is due because you guys do an awesome job rolling out updates faster than we can keep up. Without a change log however we're left to a method of hunting, testing, and comparing of notes until we can indeed confirm what a patch was and how it works.
I'm not posting this to down play your hard work in anyway, in-fact quite the opposite. The work of a Dev is often underappreciated, fraught with long hours, sleepless nights of endless coding, bug testing, and lots of Red Bull.
Without patch notes of some kind however, many users are easily lost without some sort of change log to summarize them all. Your hard work often goes unnoticed because of this. More often than not, the hard work done by the Dev's turns into a hunting and guessing game while looking for any changes that may have taken place since our last login. I doubt I'm alone in my above assertions.
I would like very much to conclude this post with a big Thank You to everyone who has contributed to Steemit. When it comes to code, content, and curation; Steemit is truly a game changing platform on every level!
Keep up the great work fellow Steemians!
Thank you for your time and Happy Steeming Everyone!
To all the users out there who read this and feel this sort of thing would be beneficial, your upvote will go a long way towards making this happen. Please feel free to leave any of your questions or comments in the section below.
P.S. :
I'm very willing to help maintain an up to date change log with all the patch notes because I'm sure you guys are busy enough. To do this accurately I would need to know what changes were made and when they were rolled out. I feel Patch Notes would greatly assist the Steemit community. They would both inform users of the day to day happenings, and keep everyone abreast of all the hard work that goes on behind the scenes as it unfolds.
I agree. Naturally, a git log diff is full of noise. Even if typos are never made and all the files are always committed, the git change log shows only how code evolves. That is not a one on one correspondence to a change log, which should aim to document the main differences between the implications of the code change.
In any case, I would like to join you in thanking the devs. Great work!
I agree totally. I did scour the repo and it was a bit rough to see what did and didn't happen because some stuff was incomplete, abandoned, or otherwise a bit of a mess like all Github repo's. lol
If I'm going to make this happen I would need a little bit of feedback from the Dev's to keep the Patch Notes clear, concise, and accurate.
I feel the flow of information could be improved too.
Right now, I'm assuming the situation is that the developers have better things to do than write up what they're changing. It's moving from one feature to another in rapid succession, in attempt to keep the rocket flying.
I know this workflow all too well, there's nothing wrong with it. It's exciting.
We need some people (with free time) to be injected into that workflow. We need non-busy observers to be invited into their communication channels (without minimal interruption to their processes) so they can write up documentation for others. All the developers would have to do is ask for a topic to be reported on.
For some of my projects, I wish I had this opportunity, to just explain to somewhat what I did, and they'd go talk about it.
At this point I'd offer myself to be one of these observers as well. For me it would be a great way to learn even more about the project, it's direction, and how I could integrate my abilities to best serve the effort.
@jesta I know exactly what you mean. Once you start coding this large of a project the work never stops and you'll even find members of your own team at times going, WTF? When did we do that? hahahaha But the rush that comes with it is truly amazing, so I can't really fault anyone for riding the wave so to speak.
This right here, oh god a million times this!!! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I've seen some of your projects and the rep one is both amazingly simple to use and useful but it was buried so fast very few people saw it before it was lost to the insanely disorganized mass of posts (thankfully bookmarked the second I saw it). I'm glad I saw it trending today because it all but got buried the first time I came across it.
As far as being a runner between Devs and Users? Most large scale projects have people to do just that, and only that. I'm not sure the term "free time" would best describe my life but I'd be willing to make time for this project given the opportunity as well.
Now the Million Dollar question regarding this thread is, will this thread even been seen by someone important before it is buried under the deluge of new posts from the quickly growing user base?
Given the math :
(50,000 users) x (Avg. 2 posts a day) = How on earth can anyone read all this before the new posts come flying in and bury it?! You'd have to be a freaking search engine to find anything as was evident when you found my post asking for help when you yourself were seeking help. LOL.
On a sidenote I updated that thread to include specs and a hashrate but someone's all but DDOS'ing the mining cue right now so good luck submitting a POW to a witness before you're tossed back in the cue, back to square one waiting in line again for one lousy STEEM.
My guess is this post was a bit of a crap shoot, but it doesn't hurt to try and get this suggestion out there. Who knows, maybe we'll draw a crowd large enough to bump it enough before the 12 hour window expires and this thread is simply relegated to the archives of the blockchain...
This would be very useful. I suspect the team are very busy and just haven't had the time. Maybe you could have a go and get some good votes on it too until there is a better arrangement?
I'm down to try but the repo is full of all kind of unrelated, unfinished, or abandoned changes so it's hard to tell what did and didn't happen.
Not really sure who I thought I was kidding. This post is going to be buried because Steemit needs some serious reorganization into subs like Reddit. Imagine if Reddit just tossed it all in one feed and said tag it to find it....
@jesta and I were even talking about post clutter the other day and how everything gets buried in clutter long before it's seen.
So are the numbers just a double digit reputation score now instead of single digit ?
@karchersmith
In a way yes, because it makes them a more accurate representation. Rep numbers work just like the Richter scale used to measure earthquakes. A rep of 6 has 10 times the voting magnitude that a rep score of 5 does. Adding the extra digit seems to have been pushed as a method of clarification, but the scoring methods remained the same.
Kind of like saying an earthquake was a 4.5, now your rep says it's a 45 so you know exactly where it more accurately falls between the 2 tiers. Instead of a simple 4 or 5 with the single digit system you now know how far from the next tier of magnitude you actually are. The voting system always took this into account on the backend but the numbers of the single digit system failed to present that level of information to users on the fly without having to dig for it elsewhere.