Disturbing Discovery of the Day - Unexpected Steemit U/I Changes

in #steemit7 years ago (edited)

“If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not recognize it when it arrives.”
– Heraclitus –


I have a love/hate relationship with Steemit.

You might ask, "What's not to love about Steemit and the Steem blockchain?"

Today I woke up thinking about attempting the next in my ongoing set of experiments in creating my Steemit Library. I was contemplating writing a software tool that any Steemian could use to create their own, more easily accessible Steemit Library / Table of Contents.

Imagine my shock and horror when I went to http://steemit.com/@creatr, scrolled down expecting to have a complete list of all my Steemit posts, and hit a brick wall at the first post of 2017?

WHAAAAT???

I've been on Steemit since August of 2016. I have many good posts that were published before January of 2017. Where are they? Are they all gone? How do I access them? Can I even remember what they were? Do I have to resort to the dark side (Google) to find them again?

I don't want this article to be misconstrued as a lack of appreciation for Steemit and STEEM, and so I'll start out by enumerating some of the many things I love.

Table of Contents

I want to scream!
Image courtesy of Gabriel Matula and http://unsplash.com

What do I love about Steemit?

  • I love the ability to reap rewards by creating compelling content.
  • I love having an online wallet with the built-in latency of Steem Power.
  • I love the amazingly fast, scalable transaction times for transferring STEEM.
  • I love the decentralized, censorship resistant nature of Steemit as social media.
  • I love the permanence of the blockchain.

But there are things that I find annoying, troubling, and at times deeply frustrating.

I hate the Steemit U/I limitations.

I've written about other aspects of the http://steemit.com user interface limitations before, but I have to say that today I am very annoyed and frustrated at the latest unannounced change.

Long ago, and contrary to promises and expectations, I discovered that it is impossible to edit posts after the payout window. This is fundamentally wrong, as content creators should have the perpetual ability to edit, modify, correct, and revise their own work.

To those who worry about ex-post-facto revisionism, I'll point out that all Steemit editing done on the blockchain is inherently a versioning series, and (with the right software tools) the entire history of every revision can be recovered and inspected.

It is also impossible on http://steemit.com to re-steem a worthy article that is past the payout period. This is clearly a Steemit U/I limitation, because the U/I at http://busy.org allows it.

Then, not too long ago, I discovered that my painstakingly constructed Steemit Library was unexpectedly broken. A change in the user interface implemented by http://steemit.com suddenly began inserting a superfluous, duplicate 'https//' into every link, one that does not exist in my source code. What the heck?

And so today's discovery that I can't even list older articles simply adds insult to injury.

What recourse do I have?

My experience with complaining about these things over the course of the last year or so has not been very encouraging. Perhaps in a decentralized system, there is nothing resembling good user support?

I think my ultimate refuge is going to be something I've threatened for a long time now. I may just have to become a developer.

And so I'll make this appeal.

Are you a Steemit developer? Do you know how to do web programming? Is there any such thing as a Steemit Development IDE? How about a "Learn to Love and Access The Steem Blockchain," or a "Steemit Programming for Dummies" sort of tutorial?

I'm all ears.

If you can point me in the right direction, please, hit me with your best shot. I'll be extremely grateful.



~FIN~


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Thanks for your time and attention.
You are why I'm here on Steemit!
I have very eclectic interests and hope, over time, to write about them all.


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I know this is technically a rant but...

I think my ultimate refuge is going to be something I've threatened for a long time now. I may just have to become a developer.

That made me laugh. But moving on, at least I know I have to get all my links and compile them somewhere in case they get... buried forever. When you become a developer, I hope you can bring back editing posts because my foggy brain makes me have little portions that I sorely want to edit. And! Thanks for the busy.org link. I might just go check it out. The UI looks attractive. Have you tried posting from there?

Sorry.. that took another route. Anyway, I hope this gets resolved. Especially since you do painstaking work on maintaining your extensive library :/

Thank you, friend. I'm glad to hear that something I wrote made you laugh! ;)

I will keep working towards being able to edit older Steemit posts, because it is necessary.

BTW, did you know you can may Steemit look like Busy?

Just click on this little widget on your Steemit screen:

Screen Shot 2018-01-07 at 10.27.29 AM.png

And I hope you didn't miss the fact that https://chainbb.com/ lets you access your oldest work?

Take care! ;)

I will keep working towards being able to edit older Steemit posts, because it is necessary.

I cannot begin to express how much I agree with the necessity. I don't go to my old posts as some lines make me cringe.

I have the three lines thing on the upper right corner of my screen and it gave me a list of options like: Currency market, Steemit App Center among others. Checked out the App Center and went O.O

And I hope you didn't miss the fact that https://chainbb.com/ lets you access your oldest work?

Will also have to add that to the list of things I have to check out, busy.org being the first. Thank you and I'm rooting for you.

I think my ultimate refuge is going to be something I've threatened for a long time now. I may just have to become a developer.

This will never get old. Seriously. But yes. Be the champion of our cause!

"I have the three lines thing on the upper right corner of my screen"

You're looking at the wrong thing...

What I'm talking about is below "Wallet" and "Settings" and it changes the way your list of articles appears....

Screen Shot 2018-01-08 at 9.01.58 AM.png

I saw it and tried it. Now I feel like an idiot lol. Thanks for the patience!

No worries! :D

You can see all of your blog posts here:

https://chainbb.com/@creatr

Thank you, @inertia, thank you, THANK YOU!

That's awesome.

I think I still need/want to learn how to access the blockchain programmatically so I can implement some of my ideas, such as automating the creation of my hierarchical library...

But I'm glad to see that https://chainbb.com doesn't impose the arbitrary limits that http://steemit.com and http://busy.org have applied!

THANKS AGAIN!

😄😇😄

@creatr

Right now, your best bet for programmatically accessing historic content is SteemSQL and SteemData.

Thanks, friend. I will investigate both of those options.

I'm really glad you stopped by today; for whatever reason, you had "fallen off my radar," and I'm happy to see you again. ;)

Looks like somebody answered your query. informative read. Thanks for educating us @creatr.

Hi, Troy,

Yes, I've gotten some very helpful responses, Thank You.

Reading through all the comments reminds me why I love steemit. The community. Such talented people, willing to help out. There are no problems in Steemit, only solutions.

Yes, the community is great! I've gotten some really helpful responses.

No success yet; so far, I have tried the hardest with the SteemSQL that @inertia pointed me to. I've tried accessing it with two versions of Python, no luck yet. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

There's some indications there may be problems with the server, and some say they're fixed, but I don't have enough experience with Python to decode whether I'm the problem or the problem is "out there."

I may just have to learn how to interact directly with the blockchain! ;)

Thank you, @sostrin, for stopping by and commenting. :D

I know it's frustrating, my friend, but one good thing that came from your post, creatr, is that thanks to @inertia we know how to access our archive in a clear, concise manner...that's something

You could use utopian.io to post your UI change suggestions and then interact with other utopian.io users on its chat to look for developers who can work on your suggestions and then they post their work on utopian.io so that they also get rewarded for their development contributions.

Steemit.com source code is the condenser project by Steemit Inc:
https://github.com/steemit/condenser

I believe if you keep on making suggestions and following up on how those suggestions are implemented, you will get to learn more about coding and earning rewards at the same time.

Hey, @mkdouglas, thanks a lot for your feedback and suggestions!

I am aware of the github archives, but am interested in learning how to work in the network programming environment. I'll check out your leads... ;)

In discord, the channel is steemspeak where @inertia has a wealth of knowledge of programing. You can message him on here and he will get back to you. Or you can join the discord channel by getting the invite. Let me know if you want it and I can send it to you. I think you bring up some great points that need to be addressed. I too have been archiving my "Tips and Tricks for Paragliding" as lessons that I want people to be able to learn from some day. But if next year rolls around and it all gets moved or deleted my work was partially in vain.

Talk to you later my friend.

Thanks, Cap'n!

And I hope you've had a Merry Christmas with your family, and I wish you and yours a very happy New Year.

Yes, I would love an invite to that channel. All I need is the time and motivation to actually follow through. Frustrations such as today's will push me in that direction for sure! :O

Thanks!

I have no idea but there is a add-on created by @armandocat that has an option to show you all your timelapse in a single bar just click on any date you want to
Even though armandocat seems to be inactive I think the plug in works fairly good, at least it works for the timelapse..check it out
https://steemit.com/contest/@armandocat/mathematics-programming-competition-8-programmatic-solution#comments
index.jpg

Thank you, @kingyus, for the lead to @armandocat...

I'll check that out! :D

Having followed this thorn of yours for some time now, I was upset to hear of changes to all your hard work. Thankfully, we have an awesome community.

I will add one more item. You are a man of many talents, @creatr. Programming has been on my mind to dabble in soon - you take it to another level with your inquisitive mind.

Thanks, friend.

I need to complain less and take more action, methinks... ;) :D

Although I don't understand everything you wrote about, I do have some thoughts. Like you, I wish I could edit my own writing after the payout. There are just some things I'd definitely change. I have enjoyed and utilized YOUR library because I enjoy your posts. I also appreciated you reposting something of mine because you were unable to resteem. I hope you are able to get some resolution.

Thanks, friend. Actually, I've received some very helpful new information. I may be heading down the rabbit hole of learning some Steemit programming... We'll see!

Meanwhile, I have learned and confirmed that re-steem is possible via the busy.org interface, which is useful to know.... as long as you don't need to go back further than 2017... ;)

Total confidence that if there's something to learn, you'll do it! I'll check out the resteem possibility. So much to learn. Rabbit holes scare me, so for now I'll stick to writing. Haha. :)

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