A politic answer if ever I've heard one. I understand that you are trying to give the impression of answering a question, while really addressing nothing that was put across in my original comment. I've worked in PR @andrarchy, I know the game. Good move actually not responding to my comment but rather someone else's on the thread. That's a degree of separation, but I'd still hope/ask for a response to what I've raised in the original comment.
So, are you going to answer to anything I've said? Why exactly should anyone have confidence in a platform where the largest stakeholders, and architects (steemit.inc) are working with the people who pretty much everyone agrees are ruining said platform? That is what you are doing by your continued acceptance of bidbot owners in consensus witness positions. You can try to brush over it as much as you like, but while you have a little cabal of vote sellers in the committee of people who make the decisions on what gets changed at code level, there will never be any meaningful change. It's almost like that's what you guys want? Please just give me, and anyone else who's read this comment, and voted it up to the top, a straight answer on why steemit.inc remains complicit through it's impartiality? Use your stake to get these people out of consensus position and then use your stake to stop these mechanisms in perpetuity. Or explain why you won't?
I'm not sure how communities and SMT's will address the issue of your endorsement of these detrimental mechanisms (bidbots) through inaction.
If the plan is to remove all reward mechanism from the steem token so that it's similar to Etherium as a base token people have to purchase to build communities with their own POB functionality, then I can see the potential that this might allow regulation against vote selling, but that would entirely depend on the people running each community.
I do appreciate you responding to my comment, but I think it's something of a nothing answer to the concerns I've raised.
Imagine a steem where steemit.inc lead by example to keep the platform functioning as it was envisioned in the whitepaper. I would like to see that version of steem given a chance! It has been around 2 years since the hard fork that allowed bidbots to become so prevalent. 2 years of you sitting on stake that could have been used to positive effect to stop this massive leech of value and dumbing down of the outward face of the content discovery pages. I would argue that it's the destruction of the trending/hot pages that destroyed the forward momentum steem had, thus sending the price on a nose dive. Yes, steem price would have depreciated with the bear market, but not half as much without our front facing content pages pretty much a joke.
Do something about all this... with your stake! It is not too late to salvage a nugget of gold out of this shit pile. Saying that a new development of communities and SMT's will save the show, while doing nothing to stop the original development (steem) from being further damaged is counterintuitive. All of these new developments are just things to hope for; hypotheticals' for tomorrow.
Sorting out how the steem ecosystem works right now is not a hypothetical, it's something that can be done to improve things now, and for the future.
There is no 'plan' to do that as far as I know but it is something that various people have suggested and discussed as a possible destination once all of the pieces are in place.
My own personal view (which means little in and of itself) is that this is something we should seriously consider if EIP doesn't either work reasonably well or at least show significant promise that a few additional tweaks could make it work well.
We can haz whale experiment back?
No, but it is possible that EIP could turn out similar in some ways (or not; we will see).
I'm turning blue holding my breath.
I just don't see that appeasing the ~10 accounts that profit most from the status quo has worked out for us all.
Absent some horizontal to the distribution we are wasting our time with rewards for posting.
I've been very fortunate here, I'm in to the bitter end, but it is unlikely that I would still post here just for the creative outlet, there isn't enough audience for that.
It is possible that EIP gets rejected due to some stakeholders looking after what they perceive to be their self-interest in milking rewards. I've definitely considered that.
It is also possible that EIP still won't work to accomplish something other than self-rewarding, and we can't come up with something that does, in which case yes we are wasting our time with voting for rewards. I've considered that as well.
Thanks for the conundrum greedy people!
The most ironic part is that they would benefit the most from mass adoption taking steem to it's true market value.
Cutting off their noses to spite their face.
Smdh.
Scorpion and frog. It isn't really the fault of greedy people for being greedy, it is the fault of a design which fails to function in the presence of greedy people.
What is your opinion of Steem marketing? You, as founder of Monero (if I'm not mistaken), have some knowledge of this. And it seems that Steemit Inc does not listen or respond to users. Only to whales or to those who kiss their feet for a delegation. I always see you committed to Steem, but I have never seen an opinion on Marketing (maybe I missed it).
I didn't know. I've seen you mentioned on the Monero team page and because of this, I assumed you were a co-founder.
And why have Steemit Inc or witnesses done nothing about this? You do not consider it vital? Beyond what users can / could do from our place, is it insignificant about what witnesses and Steemit Inc. could do. Do you not think it is time to change or remove the person responsible for marketing at Steemit Inc?
To review a bit of history, Steem's design was derived from Bitshares, and Bitshares had workers in addition to witnesses (workers being equivalent to the SPS which is to be added in HF21). Under that model, the role of witnesses was narrowly to produce blocks. Other work needed to support the chain, including marketing, would be done by workers submitting proposals and getting direct funding. To simplify things when creating Steem, workers (as sell as another role called committee) were dropped and rolled into witnesses. Witness pay was set relatively high with the expectation that witnesses would carry out many of the funded responsibilities when were given to workers in Bitshares, which could certainly include marketing.
Under this model, in the first six months of Steem's existence witnesses did carry out a lot of marketing. I personally worked with another witness (who is no longer involved with Steem) and we paid to have advertisements designed and then paid to run them on various platforms. Other witnesses did similarly. This effort was somewhat successful and brought in the first real wave of users to start using the chain as well as helping to give Steem a higher profile among cryptocurrency investors.
Unfortunately it turned out that model was not sustainable. Despite some efforts to collect and track this information, the work being done and paid for by witnesses was not clearly identified any central database. Understandably, many stakeholders were frustrated, particularly given the steep price declines that happened at the time, about the amount being paid to witnesses and the lack of clarity about what was being accomplished. It is also likely that some witnesses were doing very little, though I both think this aspect was overstated and I also think that the appropriate recourse in that case is to vote those witnesses out or failing that, accept that other stakeholders don't agree with you and you have been outvoted. Nevertheless, that is only my opinion and not everyone agreed. Overall there was a lot of frustration resulting from the bundling of the worker/funding role into the witness role.
The outcome of this period was a change rolled into HF16 (pushed mostly by Steemit Inc, but ultimately approved by witnesses as well) which cut witness pay by 80% and refocused the witness role back on block production. It was stated at the time that workers were still likely not need in Steem because Steem already has a system to vote for funding, which is posts. People proposing to do marketing, development or other tasks could make posts and get rewards to pay for the work. There was some recognition even at the time that this would not be an ideal method for ongoing work, and the possibility was left open that workers could be added 'later'.
Well, fast forward to 2019 and it is by now clear that posting has not been a good method for funding work (such as marketing), and we are finally on the verge of adding workers in form of SPS included in HF21. Hopefully what gets funded using SPS will include some good marketing. That being said, Steemit Inc. is still by far the best-funded entity in the Steem ecosystem and if they don't also contribute to some marketing, then the budget for marketing, and the resulting marketing, may remain anemic. We'll have to see how it works out.
Let me repeat what I said above: We have no authority over them. As far as I know, at this point they don't even have anyone responsible for marketing, or if they do I have no idea who it is. They appear to want to operate on a shoestring budget and do the bare minimum of focusing on essential development and operating the steemit.com site, and while I may find that unfortunate or even unethical, there still isn't a damn thing I can do about it.
We can give them our opinions, which there has certainly been no shortage of. Apart from that, all we can do, really, is try to evolve Steem (such as with SPS) so that it can accomplish more things on its own without relying on Steemit Inc.
You would be much happier over on Punlish0x ? https://www.publish0x.com/?a=BDbDqjxdl2
this is what steemitinc needs to address in specifics
for 2 years, I opposed the interference of steemitinc in the vote game; time has proven me wrong.
my argument has always been
SP holders get to use that power however they wanted
But I never extended that argument to
That includes the SP of steemitinc, which can be used to decentralize the power of abusive whales
Great post and response to the concerns. I lost faith thanks to bots, vote selling and lack of understanding+communication from the leaders at STEEM.
I also believe there is a huge market for a platform like Steemit and i use to promote it to everyone but as you say its been 2 years and nothing has changed. And the one-liner response from @andrarchy makes me more confident i did the right thing believing in the project.
The points you bring up are major major issues and @andrarchy saying its one of the things they work with is just laughable.
What ideas have been discussed in 2 years? What are the alternative solutions your considering?
Seriously you dont think people are so dumb to just trust your without any factual information.