Is Steem Witness Voting Fundamentally Broken?
As a Steem user, you have the power to go here and vote for up to 30 Steem Witnesses. You can vote or unvote whenever you please, your witness votes are not permanent if you don't want them to be.
Steem witnesses are essentially the miners of Steem, but they are also in a position to either invest their mining income back into Steem, or to cash out and sell. Reasons can be given for either choice, but the end result doesn't care about excuses or reasons.
About twice a year I check my own witness votes, going to each account that I have voted for and seeing what they are doing, how frequently they are interacting with the community and giving updates, and really how connected they are with the core developers of the platform, and what they are contributing to making Steem Better.
I had a surprise a few hours ago when I visited the witness voting page. At least half a dozen witnesses I had voted for were no longer active on the platform. Some hadn't posted anything for 6 months, while others had powered down and their account looked abandoned.
This is expected of course, given the current squeeze on altcoins. But in regards to Steem witnesses, it is vitally important that users keep their list updated, and do a periodic checkup of which witnesses they are voting for.
In an ideal system, all witness votes would be reset after a year, forcing users to re-vote for a witness instead of leaving the same witnesses at the top indefinitely. Instead, a number of top 100 witnesses are exiting Steem and giving up because they can no longer milk the system, or because they're broke. This is leaving a lot of wasted votes, and the remaining top witnesses are by default voted to the top because votes currently last forever. This is ridiculous, and is a huge oversight. It's not the first time I've talked about this either, as the witness voting system was designed with extreme bias.
Were I a more influential Steemer, I would push for the witness voting system to either be completely overhauled to actually make sense, or at the very least have a time limit on a witness vote so that no witness can milk a pile of new Steemians for witness votes - knowing full well that most of those new Steemians will probably leave but still be voting for them.
Please help to spread this message, it's vitally important to the future of Steem. There are bigger issues at hand, but how Steem witnesses are voted for is in dire need of fixing.
Thanks for reading. Shares and comments are always welcome. If you disagree with me, I welcome new perspectives and opinions because it only improves my own. This blog is written in a free writing style, and I am merely offering my own opinion, nothing more.
I totally agree. I can give the name of a few communities that were heavily used to farm witness votes.
Sadly, your post and request will be magically ignored as it already happened before when people started to talk about this issue.
@briggsy, thank you for supporting @steemitboard as a witness.
Click on the badge to view your Board of Honor.
Once again, thanks for your support!
I think you bring up a fair point as a steemian for almost 2 years I really couldn’t care less about voting for witnesses which is sad! I’ve voted for some who have spoken to me directly or I used services they have built and appreciate their contributions to network
I do think that a more active witness section with more oversight is required like for example a witness page where we can see all a witness has done! Almost like an advertisement page where you can compare everything see activity and make your own decisions
I also like your idea of vote reminders that should notify you to check your votes or that your vote is for someone who has been inactive for a certain period of time
It is a great point. I have to go back and dust off my witness list as I bet there are a few there at least who are ghosts.
It really is our responsibility and we have the chance to vote in some active and constructive ones to help drive the community.
Thanks for the reminder!
Resteemed.
Please make a Steem Proposal for the DAO. We need to make this a community place. ;)
The problem with DAO here is that the process will favor the already established power system that is supported by well-known stakeholders (some witnesses pay a % of their witness revenue to X as a form of a bribe to keep certain votes).
Yea.. Too established.. moneyflow.. but there are also some really community-open, transparent and community/platform-focused witnesses. also in the top 20
we just have to adjust money flow.
sneak the community in..
I'm thinking of creating a SPS for a tool, which involves the community more into development..
@dr-frankenstein @briggsy Proposal is up. What do you think of it? Any suggestions? :)
The thing is already taken in hostage by the refund proposal, so no one will be getting anything unless big SHolders decide.
.... told ya
There are over a million Steem accounts, and but a few thousand users today. Unless the witness votes of abandoned accounts expire, all those votes will continue to support whatever witness they were cast on forever.
Witnesses receiving those votes are dependent on them, to some degree. What degree is unknown, and all we can be sure of is that witnesses will oppose removing that zombie support for them because it might cost them money. However, HF21 is presently eliminating the Steem community by demonetizing accounts without support from the ninjaminers, so it's pretty much a moot point anyway.
Thanks for trying!
So.. it's over..?
Yea the Zombie Support is ridiculous. There is so much ridiculous shit going on on this platform..
And instead of fixing that. They just care about the money and take more.
People love em for that "newsteem!!!!!" (facepalm)
Why should ever new users come to a platform with these fundamental flaws? Why should they ever invest?
I mean the newsteem argument was smthn like this: Yea you get 40% less rewards, but that's okay, cuz the price per steem will rise and you make more..
All these newsteem people are totally brainwashed. Think they do business.. In general american people are totally brainwashed with their business bs..
It could be over soon. The #newsteem argument you recite fails to acknowledge that price does not rise when more of the value of content is captured by stake weighting. It falls. Worse, creators aren't going to get 40% less in rewards than they did when user retention was ~5%, it's more like 75% less rewards.
I don't think this was a mistake. I dunno exactly the reason #steemkillers are doing what they do, but I don't think it's an accident they're doing it. The ninjamine has completely centralized power on Steem social media. Steem has never been decentralized. It appears it never will be.
Disappointed, but not surprised.
Expiring witness votes would harm the interests of consensus witnesses. The flags flown on your post reveal how one such witness intends to prevent discussion of such a simple fix to the problem of abandoned account's votes continuing to count as supporting witnesses. Given the one week monetization of votes on content, I suggest witness votes be of one week's duration.
That'll fix the problem.
Thanks!
My witness is @taldor since the first days.
End of the Storry.
One Man, One Voice.
Not 30 pieces without a overview...
Never choose a Top Witness!!!!
This is not good for dezentralizing this plattform!
One day i am a Withness too.
Salve
Alucian