Daily Opinion #10: HF20 - The balancing act of the misunderstood upgrade to Steem
Hard fork complete. But is it a success?
So here we are. Hard Fork 20 has passed, meaning the Steem blockchain has gone through it's 20th upgrade since the beginning of Steem. Yes it was a bumpy ride, but what have we gained as a result? Is Steem itself better off now that the dust has cleared?
I believe the answer to that question is probably a firm YES, but we'll get to that momentarily. Over the last few days, I've seen quite a few posts from other users complaining that it's going to hinder new users ability to post, comment, and vote. But is it really a problem? Or is it acceptable at this point?
There were indeed some bugs upon initial rollout, but we've now seen five quickly applied patches rolled out to mitigate those issues. Keep in mind, we were also warned that it would take 5 days to reach an equilibrium and for things to feel 'normal' again. Were all off the bumps in the road over the last week worth it? We'll have to dig deeper.
When Steemit Inc creates an account for you at no expense, they also delegate 15 SP to you to help you get started. It's kind of like an interest free loan that you never have to pay back, to keep free accounts able to do a minimal (but functional) amount of things on the network. Once you gain your own SP, they remove their delegation so that it can be re-used for other new users in the future. It's kind of like training wheels - once you can ride on your own without them, they set you free and you can continue to have even more power and influence on the network without their help as you gain your own SP.
The actual numbers
I headed over to steemd.com (a Steem blockchain explorer) and viewed the @steem account. This is the account that Steemit Inc uses to create accounts for new users at no expense to them. I went back through their history and found where they had last created a few new users.
Let's take a look at the new account @bonczass - it was created five days ago.
According to the estimate, this account can perform 19 comments or posts, 100+ votes, and 100+ transfers/powerups. It will regenerate every 5 days. That means an average of around 5 or 6 posts or comments per day, and not much hinderance at all on voting. Keep in mind most users probably will post more on some days than others, and their resource credits are constantly regenerating.
Yes, that may seem a little low, but really that is enough for a new account to get started. They can make a good #introduceyourself post, interact some with other users, and be well on their way to gaining some of their own SP. This kind of creates a new culture around Steem for new users. The goal will be to generate high quality content, gain a following, and succeed - instead of posting as much as possible and flooding the network with lots and lots of useless crap.
I for one am sick of all of the 'nice post' comments that some new users would put on 100's of articles per day, flooding the network with useless bloat and making it even more difficult to actually find good content.
Now that new users are a little more limited, they will need to 'earn' their wings before they can comment all over the place. This promotes a culture of high quality content, rather than quantity. I believe we're going to be seeing a lot less spam around here now, and that is a REALLY good thing for the future of Steem.
With less 'noise' and clutter around the network, it will also be much easier to new users to get noticed and gain a following. People won't have to sift through near as much crap to find them, and upvote them. I bet the #introduceyourself tag will become 'cool' again, and whales on the network may take more time to curate this section to onboard new users.
One of the number one complaints that I've seen from people about Steem are the abundance of bots posting, voting, and otherwise bloating the network and making it more annoying to interact. I think this hard fork is an excellent step in bringing back the human element to the Steem blockchain - it's now going to be MUCH more difficult for low SP botfarms to spam and clutter the network. It's going to get a lot quieter around here - but in a really good way.
What do you guys think? Is HF20 actually a GREAT thing for Steem?
And that's the daily opinion.
This hardfork didn't effect my ability to post, comment, or vote, but it sure put a huge dent in the number of upvotes I receive.
My votes went from 175-225 average votes per post to 30-50 votes per post. Earning from 20-40 sbd per post to 1-4 sbd a post. Feels like starting all over again.
I never used bots so my guess is people just can't vote like they used to.
Hopefully this will change too and my vote count goes up.
I think they probably already can vote again as usual for the most part @luzcypher - maybe as of a day or so ago it should be fairly 'normal'. The last patch was applied on Saturday. They maybe just haven't started voting again yet, I think it will probably pick up again soon. I think some automated voting services were also 'down' for the week of the hardfork, seems like many of them are being turned back on now.
Did you say you created a second account?
I'm kind of interested in that. I'm thinking about those kinds of things. You know, we can encourage people not to spam just as much as we can stop people from smoking, drinking, gambling, eating too much, or whatever.
Can we always stop people?
What is spam to you may be Gold Oatmeal to me. It is relative. Like making bad choices which can hurt people. There are consequences for our actions, like drugs for example. People know that but they still do drugs. Same thing here with spam, hate speech, or whatever it may be, OR BETTER YET, whatever we may think it is.
Try Your Best?
I agree, allegedly, generally, it seems that Steemit is getting better, and that RC is helping with that, that it is a step in the right direction. Will we see less spam like you said? Yeah, maybe. I'm trying to agree with you but I also just want you to know that I do not want to stop spam because that takes you down a path of maybe censoring free speech which may include hate speech, spam, terrorism, threats, or whatever. Because these words can be defined rather too subjectively, not objectively, which means it depends on who is defining the word "SPAM" or the other words, etc...
I'll try to address all of those points @joeyarnoldvn
On the topic of a second account, I believe Steemit Inc will give you one account (that they pay for) per valid email and phone number. I created and paid for this account using the anonsteem service. Steemit Inc won't give you the 15SP delegation 'training wheels' to get started with if you pay for your own account, though (and it wouldn't make sense for them to do so). The beauty of this being a blockchain is that you can get an account yourself and not even need them.
On the topic of 'what is spam': I agree that what I think is trash might be gold oatmeal to you, but, I think we can all agree that if a user sends the exact same message over and over again in an automated fashion, that is spam. That is what type of spam I'm referring to in this blog post, and that is the type of spam that this hard fork will likely do away with (for the most part). Unless accounts are able to fund themselves, they probably won't be able to spam very much - that makes it not as advantagous for people to come here and abuse the network.
Thanks for trying to 'see the positive' here. I get what you're saying about censorship, but this isn't at all censorship. It's not stopping anyone from posting anything that they want - it's just stopping people from posting mass amounts of that something all over the network for a very low cost, and I believe that is a very very good thing.
I disagree with automated messages being spam. I disagree strongly. Why, because you do not know what is being automated or not being automated and to which extent. Is it spam to say hello or to say how are you? You can write, "HOW ARE YOU?" many times. So, is saying "HELLO" spam because it can be said again and again. Where do you draw the line of what is spam or not? Which words? Which phrases? What if it SPAM was able to reword and rephrase the SPAM to make it look like it is NOT SPAM? Then, that would be another problem, if you were to try to stop SPAM, that is if SPAM became smart enough to hide, to appear not to be automated, repeated, SPAM, hateful, or whatever. I favor free markets.
I kind of like RC. That is good, it seems.