RE: A fundamental change to my witness voting behavior
Hi @pharesim
Thank you for your willingness to speak openly about Witness Voting at the highest level.
As a new witness (teamed with @paulag and using @steemcommunity as the name), I can see it being harder to change a profitable approach, than it is to start off with your values in place and nothing to lose financially.
We have opted for a few 'policies' which are almost guaranteed to block us many larger votes (no bid-bot owners, no bid-bot delegates), but as we are just beginning, we can only move upwards - and we will do this without ever feeling we bought it, traded it, etc.
Your decision to drop Jerry fits in with our approach, but of course, bribing other witnesses, and trying to sell free materials crossed him off my list long before I ever thought about becoming a Witness.
On reading @lukestokes' excellent reply, I concede that many newer witnesses lack the proof of experience and knowledge, and we are no different here. As a seasoned witness, I would not take lightly the decision to cast votes down to lower tiers until they has been on the block for a little while, and perhaps actively responded sharply to an outage - we have not had to do this thus far.
In our favor I feel though is the community aspect of which Luke also alludes to. We currently both run engagement competitions, and I would suggest that as far as text in comments on the blockchain over the past month and of the year to date, my numbers a fairly solid. @krnel recently used my competition to distribute some of SP out to accounts he could trust to share amongst the community.
I'm well aware of the number of top/mid range witnesses that have probably read this post, the lack of comments from them speaks volumes and probably indicates that initially and sadly, there will be not a great line forming behind you - Once again, thank you for standing up for your values, and for what you see as the best interests of the platform.
Asher
Edit: Sorry, just to add that I would really like to see any commencement of talks regarding votes casts by 'dead accounts'. Clearly this is more detrimental to the older witnesses, almost in a sliding scale from the oldest down i assume, but it is just seemingly unfair, and not right to have votes cast permanently from a user who is unable to change that vote ever again. How / where can this be raised? Thank you.
I've got to get you as one of my witnesses already! :-D
That would be splendid :D
And that Ash, is why I think you are so awesome!! :)
Edit: Sorry, just to add that I would really like to see any commencement of talks regarding votes casts by 'dead accounts'. Clearly this is more detrimental to the older witnesses, almost in a sliding scale from the oldest down i assume, but it is just seemingly unfair, and not right to have votes cast permanently from a user who is unable to change that vote ever again. How / where can this be raised? Thank you.
Ive made much noise about this. Nobody listens, Asher.
EOS has a good approach on that with a vote decay over time... Worth giving a look
This was discussed at Steemfest2 and it made a lot of sense to me also. I figured it would be something we could implement without too much trouble (didn't Golos do something similar also?) Has this been brought up much lately? If so, I haven't seen anyone promoting a PR for it. If people want it, let's do it.
Here is a man who is listening! I know witnesses who want some discussions on this matter, I just don't know where they should be held/directed at?
bringing it to the witness discussion in the Steemit Ramble on May 19th might be a start.
Just checked my calendar and I am indeed free :)
well that's good to know. @shadowspub is the person behind the chat and will be hosting it in the Ramble starting at 11am. She'll be posting about it. If you want to listen to the last two she has them posted on her blog.
I attended the first two, and they run on my network @SteemStarNetwork, but I'll be in Tennessee at a steem meetup there that day, recording my episode of Hots or Shots with Jonny-Clearwater that day. I trust my mid-level, engaged, in-touch, and active witness peers to lead the day, and as usual, I bet we see at best, the typical one or two top 20s show up, because most of them cannot be bothered to care too much about users anymore, and only go on aggroed's elitist clique driven insider's shows where no one will hold them accountable for anything uncomfortable. Because echo chamber.
We would have to write a hardfork and get it accepted by the very people, many of whom, have tons of these dead voters on them....
I see, that is... probably not going to be easy. Let me find some data to present. It may not be as bad as people suggest. Back in a day or three...
I started gathering that data a while back before we began talking more often. It's way out of date now, but I was stuck and seeking some input from @ura-soul on the matter. I still think it's worthy of discussion and research.
My proposal, btw, is only one facet covered, but it's the only one we could feasibly do without fear of sybil solutions around it or other things. And that is to let votes stay, but if a witness is "red dead" (not active) for 90 days, that allows time for tech repairs, billing issue resolution or other reasons to be dead briefly, but at 3 months, votes should be reverted to their owners and removed from dead witnesses. Three months is enough time to say, yep, He's Dead Jim!
Yeah there is that side too, and 3 months doesn't sound unreasonable.
I was wondering about dead voter time limits and criteria. I assume a cast vote (on content) could work, but then we have accounts voting on trails. So maybe comments need to be used? Unless there is a 'last logon' date somewhere?
I'd say it's safe to consider someone a dead witness voter when they didn't change any witness vote for some time, let's say 6 months to a year.