Actually executing a hardfork early is the one thing you don't want to do early! I get what you're saying, and in most cases you would be right, but Hardforks are scheduled in at the blockchain level. The blockchain team released the Hardfork code last week, which you could consider "early," but inside that code was the specification that it would occur on the 25th. The only way to change that would be to go back and change the hardfork code, which would only give the witnesses less time to review the code and exchanges less time to fire up their own version of steemd 0.20.0. This very incident proves why it's so important not to rush hardforks and the firm date ensures that everyone can switch over at the same time.
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Thanks for clarifying.
Just out of curiosity, what is undergoing the HF exactly - Steem, the Steem blockchain, or Steemit? Many simply do not understand the gist of it all. If the crypto Steem were HF'ing, wouldn't that mean more crypto (like BTC to BCH)?
All of that information is discussed in recent @steemitblog posts. The short version is that the Steem blockchain is hardforking, but thanks to Steem's governance mechanism, when Steem hardforks it is more like an "upgrade" and so no "sister-chains" like BTC or BCH are created. Steem moves to a new fork and the old fork is abandoned. Cryptocurrencies themselves do not fork, only blockchains fork. New "sister-currencies" are only created when a blockchain forks, but the old fork of the chain continues. So BTC exists because someone created a new fork of Bitcoin while the old fork also continued to run. Since there were 2 blockchains they needed two different cryptocurrencies. Since only one fork of Steem will continue after the hardfork, the currency of that blockchain will remain STEEM. This hardfork contains no changes to the STEEM currency.
Thanks for such a concise explanation. I know I learned something today!