I would like to get input from the community on this topic. Please reply in the comments below with your thoughts.
I plan to use the information in a post that I am putting together on how to be a good witness.
I will be splitting the liquid portion of the payout from this post between all of the users that contribute to the conversation in a valuable way.
A witness should consistently educate all members in the platform. Once a week, pick an ideal day to promote and tell us your progress.
They all should together voice their opinions and reassure us how steemit is doing.
All witnesses should use a channel or a tag and lay out their progress and help all steemians build trust in steemit.
N.B.
What is a witness duty on steemit ? All I know, witness creates block for steemit and they get compensate well. Please advise.
I will actually be creating a post on this topic in about a week. Stay tuned :)
Some other users may also reply to your comment with their thoughts.
Cool !! Be waiting for your post.
As a witness @timcliff your post will fill more blanks.
Thanks.
Keep on steemit!
A few specific items:
I think weekly is a bit too frequent, but I agree that they should definitely be regular.
Regarding witness involvement in spam control, plagiarism, child abuse, etc. and regarding mediation (re: your flagging war point) I think esteemed (eh? ;) ) people of the community can do this. It can be the case that witnesses do this but should not be required of them. To be honest I think the larger stakeholders have more of a responsibility here.
While I don't think much changes week by week, especially on the node reports, the nature of Steemit and that almost immediate drop from attention of most posts after the first day is why I would suggest a weekly post(which really could be a cut and paste when things haven't changed).
I feel witness should bring different things to the table and be more focused on whatever their niche is then trying to cash a very wide net.
While I would agree I want to see some kind of update or least them being active here weekly.
What would be cool is if ones that had similar things they bring to Steemit would get to gather and create a collective blog from time to time more on a month scale. That invites in community engagement where there are several witness their thought the day to interact with it till it closes.
I’m not sure how much working together if any happens behind the scenes.
As far as the disturbing illegal things going on this site I can only hope Steemit Inc. is working on dealing with that more. Just flagging it is not enough when it comes to certain things even more so if their servers are storing it. I don't know if witness have a more direct commutations line to devs to deal with things like that faster or not.
3 primary wants from wintesses:
Another thing I'll add, but didn't want to edit the original post:
I don't want witnesses to necessarily issue long weekly updates. I think the long updates should be limited to important updates either monthly or quarterly, and monthly may be too frequent.
The other thing is that witnesses shouldn't feel obligated to push the platform in one direction or another so long as overall growth and innovative change is taking place. We need to keep Steemit and open and accepting place of free experimentation.
Well said. Everyone is trying to help the value of STEEM rise but there are many ways to do this and a witnesses long term vision for steemit is extremely important.
When I voiced concerns that in the near future, steemit could become saturated with SEO-like articles, primarily for advertising purposes and that regular people would have a much harder time getting their material seen, the response from a few witnesses was "Why do you care? Your account will be worth a fortune since you were here early on."
I would like to see witnesses who are more concerned about the environment and culture of steemit because this place is more than a money making opportunity for me and a lot of other regular users, whether they realize it or not.
Bravo! Indeed! And I'm sorry some of the witnesses gave you that response. Hoping @jesta @timcliff @gtg and others see this and take note.
Seen and noted.
I'll try to get to know these witnesses as well. Thanks for mentioning them. :-)
I love this one, clear and to the point of what I'd see to be the core responsibilities. I think this is the best answer here if I could just add that they need to be able to actually run the witness server and perhaps a seed too.
Agree, they certainly need to be able to run the blockchain well. Sort of a bare minimum requirement from my perspective.
I always felt someone declaring to be a witness covered these things in their starting witness blog.
Perhaps they should consider a monthly or a quarterly update that references these things if they have not been covered in a recent witness update post.
Totally. I wasn't aware of the starting witness blog, but if they can link back to it that would be helpful. General navigation around Steemit needs to be improved so that this would be easier, too.
Active
Weekly to bi-weekly witnesses updates on what they have been up to. While I understand not every week will be blog worthy in what they are up to. They should keep people up to date as a way to engage with those who have either voted for them or are thinking about doing so.
Community member. While they do not need to be active 24/7 they least need to show up to Steemit a couple times a week and blog or leave comments. It makes it easy for anyone checking up on who they vote for to see if they are still active and more importantly what are they up to outside of witness report.
Witness servers themselves. They need to do the best they can to keep them running and not missing blocks. They should also keep them updated or inform everyone in a blog post on why they are not updating to the latest version.
Someone who has been with Steemit for at least 3-6 months depending on how active they are. It takes time to not only get to understand how Steemit works and make friends but also have some kind of track record. I also want to know if this person is committed to running as a witness in the long run. It’s easy to show up and two weeks later think “oh I’ll be a witness” than a month later moves onto the next project in cryptocurrency that catches their eye.
Impact on Steemit
Use their reputation to support projects/communities. There are a lot of different communities out there focusing on all kinds of things. I feel this is important that they are willing to help grow, support, and even promote it. It shows they care enough to get involved to such a degree in something that they are risking how the public view them based on what happens to the project/communities.
Passion. They need to have a passion for something. It could be anything from fighting spammers, working to improve quality of life, engaging with minnows, going out and spreading the word of Steemit. Whatever it may be they need to care enough about something that is trying to solve, create, or bring value to Steemit.
Have opinions and are willing to speak their mind. With how much power Steemit gives to a witness I don’t want it to be filled with a bunch of “yes” only people. Those who agree with anything no matter what not wanting to anger someone. If they have no backbone then they won’t stand up and speak out if they witness something that needs to be improved or addressed. Therefore, their impact on Steemit itself is very little.
Knowledge
What is this person bringing to the platform being a witness that others are not? That’s great if they are expert on blockchain technology but what is something new they are going to bring into the eco system? What personal experience and knowledge do they have that will further progress the platform?
While I don’t expect every witness to be an expert on everything they should least have some basic understanding of quite a few things. If they can’t even format a blog, know how to reach out for help when their witness server stops working. Then, they have far too much research they need to do before they should even try to be a witness.
Well first of all, engaging with none witness users about what they'd like from witnesses is a great start.
I'd like to see communities made a top priority as I think they have the potential to really help content creators connect witheach other and potential readers and improve the culture of steemit. If we connect based on interest and a sense of community, our posts are all more likely to be read. The current layout of steemit is a bit unorganized, making it really hard to get your post read after the first hour that you post it, even with a fair amount of followers.
I think more witness support for manual curation and manual curation initiatives would be fantastic. I know of OCD, which I just made a post about...if there are any more manual curation initiatives, please tell me (curie is half and half if I understand correctly). Since it seems bots are here to stay, the least we can do is create a culture where manual curation and real engagement is encouraged as much as possible, and actually practiced by whales. I'm not sure what kind of changes to the structure of steemit could be introduced to encourage this, but witnesses do have a lot of influence so just continuing to voice support for this kind of behavior might be mildly effective.
I should also add that I like when each witness has their own unique contribution to the platform, whether that be App development, community engagement, promotion or education on how it all works behind the scene. I don't need weekly updates but it's important to know where the witness stands on important issues, decisions and debates.
I see you engaging a lot here, I found you in the comment section of multiple non-trending posts and just realized you are a high ranking witness, that makes me feel quite good.
I'll be voting for you as witness!
meep
Cool, thanks :)
I'd like to see a bit more transparency. With witnesses explaining more of the why Change X was implemented rather than simply announcing that it was implemented. Witnesses obviously discuss among themselves possible changes. Pull back the curtain a bit.
Yes, it would be cool to know more about all our witnesses, not just some of the popular ones, all of them. And to know what kinds of debates go on behind the scenes and who is on which side of each debate.
I agree it would be nice if before a witness node update was required came out witness posts about why they choose to upgrade or not. Then all those who posted their thoughts where collected and put out in a single blog like @timcliff Reports from the witnesses expect only focused on the update and not other things.
That way the community would have an easy way to view all at once all the witness and see which of them are actively doing their best to stay on top of changes and sharing their opinions on the matter.
With that said that is kind of how it is and might just be creating over reduces.
What I look for in a witness first and foremost is communication of what they are doing. If they are unable to do that because of time constraints, having some sort of public relations is essential to me. A good example of this is @jerrybanfield's post today showing what the top 10 witnesses are up to. I also make an effort to promote and support witnesses who I know are working hard for this community. (How can I vote for you if I don't know what you do?)
Number 1 also is integrity. When I see the efforts witnesses go through to help others, it gives me confidence that they are not just here for the payout. So I suppose I judge integrity by what type of service these witnesses bring to the community. It is easy for me to see how helpful people like you @drakos, @rycharde, @reggaemuffin, and @netuoso are. (incomplete list, just who came up off the top of my head)
I will include the ability to act quickly when the community experiences crisis. many witnesses got my vote during the bandwidth crisis, simply because I knew that they were there for the people who lost service during that time (above mentioned included in that list but many more I mentioned in my "easy witness voting guide" at that time)
Willingness to take a moment of time to answer the concerns of the community, bandwidth crisis, for example. More current would be the "Voting Abuse" crisis, which you highlighted from the new whitepaper is part of the role of witness.
I will come back here and update this comment if I can think of any other "essentials". Thank you for everything you do @timcliff!
Saludos, soy de Venezuela y nuevo en esta red. Entiendo que los testigos son lideres de divisiones de trabajo virtual que llevan el peso de la avanzada en la criptocurrencia; es decir la hoja de ruta a seguir en el caso de estimular y generar confianza en los hacen el crecimiento de la red.
En tal sentido lo primero que debe promover más que informes largos y repetitivos como los que hace el capital mundial es centrase en hacer valer los valores y principios que los que participan en este movimiento
Saludos. Documento mi trabajo de testigo en informes de testigos periódicos, que publico aproximadamente una vez al mes. Si está interesado en ver lo que estoy haciendo como testigo, puede revisar esos informes. Si hay algo que sienta que debo hacer además de lo que ya estoy haciendo, hágamelo saber.
Just like how a dictionary or glossary does it.
How to be a good witness: For example, see @timcliff
..and please don't be humble or shy about it. I've watched you evolve for months (and soon years) doing this your way Tim, there is a lot to be learned from you, and you openly share yourself to everyone. Thank you.
Thanks @intelliguy! Appreciate all you do as well :)
I expect witnesses to be competent, trustworthy, and active members in the Steemit community. They should have extensive knowledge about cryptocurrencies software and network. I think the goal of witnesses should be to contribute positive, valuable information to this platform. If they strive to have the qualities I listed above then I think they will be great witnesses for Steemit. Thanks for sharing! It is great to see leaders on this platform continue to try to improve and grow Steemit. Stay hungry! I am looking forward to following this thread.
Engagement is a big one for me.
I like to think through the possibilities for directions the platform can take; and I know you do too.
I'm looking for someone who is actively looking for input from the users.
Most of it will be dross; and someone with a thorough understanding of this environment from a technical and a game-theory perspective will hear a lot of suggestions that are unworkable or undesirable.
I personally don't need to hear point by point refutations for any suggestion I make; I just want to know it's been understood and considered.
You've been fantastic in this regard.
That's what I'm looking for in a witness.
Its responsibility of witness to educate the member to rule of this community and help to each other.
Engagement with updated information about the Steem currency like why it is going up and down. Showing some in-depth reports in an easy way that a layman could easily understand. Building a team of people that you think can help you with your future projects and giving newbies a chance to do so. Adding to above, encouraging other whales to contribute to this platform by reading other's stuff as well. I am very happy to see a few whales like Stella Belle and Aggroed who care about others and help people start on this platform and even rewarding them for their work. We could easily contact them via steem chat or discord and they are very kind and always available to answer our questions. However, most of the whales are just doing what a good business man does, no issues but to encourage good users here, there is something out of the box they all have to do!
Much of what was mentioned below.
*Delegation, community projects, etc..
I expect a witness to care for steemit and share their thoughts on various issues. I expect a witness to be human and post about their various interest and passions.
If ask, what would I like to see in a witness? I would say, more involvement overall. Many apparently get stuck in the back working and forget to show face.
I think some of them care so much about Steemit they might squeeze it to tight! Some of them I do get the mad scientist feeling from and I can understand why they choose to work in the background.
Does make it harder to vote on them thought if they are not willing to be more open!
I agree, it is hard to set expectations when they have so much demanded from them. However, we would just like to say hello.
Hmm. From the witness itself? I think it's more important that the witness are active. Some are very very active, they spread Information, they help new Users, they invest so much sweat and diligence.
But some do this not.
Activity is for me the most important part. 😊
tl;r You have license to be a witness with your own focus.
There are so many good suggestions here already. Can I please add that:
I don't want witnesses that are clones of each other. I'd like witnesses that bring their diverse perspectives and experiences. Yes, there are some technical requirements, but I don't expect that any human can do all the things we'd like witnesses (as a group) to do and do them well.
So, I don't mind a witness who picks their "platform", a witness that is more open about how they see the future of steem and talks about their plans for getting steem there.
Some witnesses will be more inclined towards the blockchain and algorithms, some towards reliability of the infrastructure, some towards the community. I think that's good.
I agree that diversity of talents in our witnesses is critical to the health of this community!
pro - deo
what you do with the nodes you probably do best already
edit : upvoted for the visibility
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro_Deo ? i.e. work for free?
sorry - no just for the people :)
I think it's important that witnesses do what's in the best interest of the community.. which is why it's great you are asking us to leave input in hopes we can continue to improve the steemit community!
I think first and the foremost thing should be to maintain steem dollars @1$...anything below that shouldn't be accepted....apart from that I guess steemit community engagement and initiatives from witnesses should be treated as a benchmark to judge the witnesses
Thanks for asking!
I'd say I'd like them to honest, with integrity, caring about Steemit and it's users and wanting to do all they can to create a better world through Steemit.
Regular posts on their opinions and what sets their soul on fire to do good!
Interacting with authors and building a strong community.
Now I'm new to Steemit, so maybe that's not the role of witnesses. I find all the nodes and technical stuff so complicated, I'm looking for caring people who want to interact! :)
Accountability, transparency and reliability.
As a witness I spend time using my skills and experience to benefit the community. Since my skills are in development and systems administration I have been writing open source code for the network, hosting servers for users to benefit from, promotion STEEM in the real world, and helping bring awareness to hidden spam and wasted witness votes.
I don't think a witness should have these particular skills, but from what they do have they should find a way to help use them to benefit the community.
You are a great example. By providing this level of questionnaire to the community, and since your posts get many more votes than a new user, you are enabling more awareness about this stuff. Therefore, as a witness I would like to see you continue to use your influence to help consolidate the various witness posts (like you already are) and make them get more attention thru the community.
I also think large, established witnesses should try to help lower level witnesses that they can see are putting in great effort but not getting the most recognition.
I expect to see witnesses that take a best effort mentality when it comes to updating their software. Several fairly high up witnesses are still on 0.19.0. I don't think this is really acceptable, but some will argue that the update isnt required.
Furthermore, I expect witnesses to be at least partially knowledgeable about the theory of the STEEM network, what DPOS is, how it differs from Bitcoin, and other technical details that can be turned into a sort of "elevator pitch" for potential investors.
I expect SteemIt to come up with a way of providing funding and assistance or delegation to the witnesses and users that are providing above and beyond the average user. These people are directly benefitting SteemIt Inc bottomline and deserve recognition.
Reach out to @ned regarding the STINC beneficiary if you haven't already.
I'll keep it short and simple. Do not toil in obscurity, keep our house clean from spammers, create and support projects, be in touch with the people.
It would be nice to see witnesses come together from time to time and make a public stance to Steemit Inc when something needs to be addressed that is not in form of a blog. It ques the community in as well that things are not being addressed.
Something more to deal with spam be great. They seem to have taken the other path and that's just ignore and don't worry about it instead...
Good to see a top witness reaching out.
Personally, I am always interested in the community engagement/work of a witness, apart from the stats. A heart for the community wins votes as much as confidence in the technical abilities of a witness.
eventhough i have voted some witness already, i have no clear understanding of what the witness really doing and how they progress.
just like the other, maybe there should be an update from the witnesses so that we all know what they are doing.
I am just a newbie here.
I want witnesses to advocate for greater distribution of rewards as that's the major problem with steem. Without any changes towards a fairer reward system, I'd like to witnesses distributing a good percentage of the rewards they get. I think they should pay for their hosting costs out of those rewards, keep a bit for themselves and give away the rest.
Witnesses can give some of the money they make and this have some advantages and disadvantages. If they give too much money they might simply get outranked by other witnesses who keep more.
We shouldn't forget some people bought for many hundreds of thousands of USD worth of Steem. This is not speculation. This is well documented. This money trickles down sooner or later. Whales can't see all the posts being posted every day but sooner or later money trickles down and also Steem is getting more popular by the day.
Thank you for your input by the way.
A witness is supposed to provide quick, responsive and smooth blockchain operation.
You probably meant, what do I expect from a hard hitting poster in here.
I noticed your dedication to fighting abuse of tags, but some scammers and spammers flourish like cancer here.
Watch this one:
cryptopie
He is almost too big for you to deal with. It needs some cumulative operation by ausbitbank, berniesanders, someguy123, etc.
You tell me what is wrong with this account.
Please follow sherlockholmes' work and see how bad it is here.
padmakshi is also not very far from being out of control, and mindhunter simply migrated his SP to another account.
If you want to know how it is done, I recommend again to follow sherlockholmes' work.
From an account to follow, I expect more !originalworks , and less resteems.
Those resteems make one a bad choice to follow, unless they are of supremely high importance.
Artworks are not to be resteemed!
There are simply too many more urgent and more beneficial things to share with the world.
Interesting view.
I forgot to mention this, but was un/lucky to get a nasty reminder:
https://steemit.com/steemd/@stimialiti/steemd-com-is-down-for-more-than-a-hour-now
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To support our curation initiative, please vote on my owner, @themarkymark, as a Steem Witness
It would be great to see the witnesses more active on the platform my friend and give support in growing the community.
Also would be great if we could have them divided into different sections when helping out. Like some just focusing on the food tag, some on the life tag, some on crypto tag and so on!
What i want from you as a #witness , i want you to interact more with people i mean with people (steemit community) ,i want you to use you power for the good & for others not to for own self share what you have with others then you will live happy , happiness is not by gathering but by giving be sure of that be humble you were nothing but Steemit makes you what you are today sorry i meant steemit newbie and steemit community ...made you what you are so it is your time to give back ......maybe this few word can make you a good witness and maybe not cuz it depend on what you're made of........
one last thing i want to say #i_will_be_a_witness and i will work hard to be a good one ♥
and thank you @timcliff for asking this question you are a #good_witness
I'm just a newb but brought a decent amount of influence to steemit. I beleive they need to be more transparent on steemit. You and Jerry B are doing a great job by the way! 🙌🏼
Hah swing some of that influence my way ;)
Thanks :)
Witnesses are group of people who are engaged in supporting the working capacity of the platform itself. They influence the development of the network, support the cost of the tokens, analyze and check for the availability of all the releases offered for the network. They are should be the first to write explanatory posts about all innovations and so on.
Upvote and resteem to involve more participants in conversation)
In my view, a witnesses should be a also a person that helps the network to grow, and in this direction I see two urgent needs:
I think you do a great job at being a witness @timcliff. You engage with the community a lot, and not just on Steemit, but IRL too. As far as other witnesses goes, I'm not sure. Maybe they should follow your example. :)
Thanks :)
I want to have more ideas and knowledge to share with our community and in that way improve their life style about steemit i want to create more quality content to share with friends here. Regards
I would like to know a list of changes they want to see and changes they don't want to see that might be coming.
I saw this is the apr issue recently when the price of something dropped and some witnesses want apr and most don't. I think you should have it but way low. Be 2X whatever the usd apr is and you are gold.
But if apr is too much work - skip it and take the option off the wallets so we don't always see the zero.
Thank you for doing this extra job. I don't know what it is, but it seems way hard.
You are welcome to follow me as well.....
Less spam and more action towards copy-paste works (so more spam). Oh, and better rewards for everyone ;) haha :P
How would the witnesses go about accomplishing those things?
As I am not into the technical side I can't tell, but they are here to decide where things will lead right (and what will be implemented). I think the simple answer would be to implement something that prevents users to continually write the same comments.
I want to know about the existence of the witness and the power of steem power, whether it is interconnected and the influence of the witness against the nominal vote? Maybe it's just me. Thanks for sharing @timcliff
good idea..upvoted
I expect that they will raise the rate of Steema and sbd :)
Can you please explain what you mean by this?
Sorry for my English. I meant that the price for Steем and Sвd should grow very much, and I would like the witnesses to take care of this.
Ok, that makes sense. How should they go about doing this?
If I knew the answer, I would try to become a witness :)
I think we should somehow burn Steем, for some actions. To demand began to exceed supply.
tbh, still don't really know what they do.
I think I read something about verifying nodes, but alas, I write blog posts and that keeps me busy enough...
Honesty
Hope to learn from you please.
What exactly is a witness in the sense of Steemit? A witness to how the platform is developing? What users post? How much invesments/payouts/resteems/ etc are done? Is there an introductory post to witnesses?
Thank you! Stay Steemed!
There is some good basic info on that in the FAQ.
nothing. but everything.
Can you elaborate?