So after the RC system goes live, the user experience will have to change and the new system will need time to reach a new equilibrium.
That being said, as the transition goes on, users will likely notice some changes in user experience, though it is difficult to predict what those changes will be.
But while the system is searching for equilibrium, the appearance of these phenomena might actually increase.
The changes in user experience should only last around 7 days. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to know exactly how things will unfold as the system relies on unpredictable human feedback.
As with the RC system, there are a lot of unknowns with respect to how this will function IRL.
All of this is not very confidence-inspiring. If there is so much uncertainty and if these protocols are as important as is being claimed, why was the testing period not extended and the testnet not expanded until more reliable feedback could be obtained?
We're being asked to accept a hard fork with such a high level of uncertainty because one entity believes it will be "better." And then we're being told that witnesses ought to accept it and ought to set specific parameters...again, because one entity believes those parameters will be best for everyone, despite this same entity expressing such a low level of confidence about new user behavior and system feedback.
This is precisely why such large changes to the blockchain protocols should not be coupled with other protocol changes.
There is far too much variability when adding multiple changes at once, especially if the magnitude of the changes from one protocol could be so severe that you feel the need to issue multiple cautions/warnings to users.
Before I'm castigated once again...
I'm all for trying the RC system. I think it could be a viable solution for better allocating network resources - something I have been talking about for quite some time. But I believe that such a big change to the system ought to be more robustly tested and introduced to the blockchain by itself so that we can see more isolated and reliable feedback when it comes to user behavior. The level of uncertainty expressed in this post is worrisome, taking into account previous hard forks and large-scale user behavioral changes in the past - specifically following last year's hard forks.
This is certainly not the first time I've mentioned all of this and I'm certainly not alone on the matter. It would be nice if it were taken seriously one day by the Steemit, Inc. dev team.
You can see my previous commentary about HF20 here:
https://steemit.com/witness/@ats-witness/steem-hardfork-20-thoughts-on-velocity
Steemit itself is still in beta.
This reply to any questions or criticism is apparently still in beta as well.
Or, how about, Free "Mana"?
Clearly @ats-david was right to be concerned. We can all now see the implementation was botched and may have been avoided by taking the time to get one major change done right.
Careful buddy, you know how they get when we make wise and logical assertions based on our professional experiences in similar endeavors, that essentially get gas-lighted as "negativity" or "whining". I'll bring you a castigation trauma kit though, no smart man should be left on the battlefield alone. I've had just this sort of conversation with @inertia, over such things as the last breakdown, which looks like a dev left a local workbench test param in the code that made it all the way live. This is what #comments in code are for - "#following param should be reverted before deploy" and co-programming or peer review before typing git update and git commit, and git shit like that. But hey, basic entry level programming things like that were met with "peer reviews? that's the witnesses job." Okay, and I concede that ... to a point... but when there are dozens of undocumented changes (repeat need for comments in code) in a gazillion lines of code, I'd say it's kinda up to the code changing dev to at least make sure the changes can even be noticed for review.
So there's that.
To @inertia's credit though, my conversations with him, and his direct involvement in an improved test net, give me more confidence than I ever had in a steemit inc dev before his involvement there. He's wicked smaht.
You needed more than 30 days to run the testnet? If you thought it needed more testing, why didn't you activate your witness on the testnet?
The testnet went live for HF20 4 days ago. before that, it was running HF19
It also went live for HF20 on the 10th (
2018-09-10 22:00:00 UTC):https://github.com/steemit/steem/commit/cbbec58a6b4a4e4dee142a5dd4227a03ce9c1989
Until the real hardfork, every time the testnet starts, it bootstraps on HF19. Then it reaches the time when the hardfork is set to activate. So it's happened twice. Once on the 10th and again on the 20th.
Good thing there's an obvious place to know when all these starts and stops happen and we don't have to stop building our own projects and shepherding users in communities and explaining whats going on during outages and such long enough to also watch an off chain location for git commits just in case they randomly happen now and then :D
But still even if we DID notice random things in off chain places, 14 days is not 30. Just saying, from your link above:
Update testnet HF time
testnet-09102018
@mvandeberg
mvandeberg committed 14 days ago
There was also the initial announcement:
https://steemit.com/hardfork20/@steemitdev/hardfork-20-testnet-details
Related github:
https://github.com/steemit/steem/commit/3a0f9448bb1e59af7835e444c80ea094aab627c2
So that one activated HF20 on
2018-08-27 17:00:00 UTC. I remember there being two. I guess there were three. I probably got that mixed up because of the halt.As others have pointed out, it wasn't running for 30 days.
As the guy who is allegedly in charge of the testnet, why didn't you tell anyone that there were some major uncertainties and very low participation... i.e. - that this hard fork was not ready for deployment?
Also, as a STINC employee, why do you not address the exclusion of witnesses from the private channels where there is more accessibility to information, testing, and discussion?
You ask why I didn't activate my witness on the testnet?
At #60 on the witness list, I have neither the financial incentive/support to robustly test the code nor do I have the influence to make a difference on hard fork acceptance.
I have been intentionally excluded and ignored by the dev team that creates and proposes the hard forks to be considered, so I have little motivation to help them with testing.
I had no plans to upgrade to version 0.20 anyway, unless it was already accepted by the top witnesses, which I cannot control. I do not approve of the hard forks that STINC has been proposing since last year, for the many reasons that I have already publicly stated.
The fact of the matter is - your guys screwed up the code, the top-20 witnesses didn't bother to test the code, and you went forward with deployment anyway, despite knowing about the negative RC balance problem. And you can't deny the fact that faulty code and unaccountable yes-men as top witnesses (who have the blessings of STINC, both publicly and privately) is a continual point of abject failure within our system.
So, if you have nothing else to add except more snark and deflection from the very real fact that the company you work for is vastly incompetent, then save it for someone who may actually give two shits about your poorly-crafted, preemptive damage control efforts.
And it's pretty ironic that this response had to come two days late.
Don't ya think?
That doesn't matter on the testnet. You could have been the top testnet witness.
Doesn't matter. The announcement was public.
It appears you are saying that you also had no plans to test.
Apparently, everything is after the fact. Did you raise any of this when the testnet started?
Read those points again, but try comprehending the full sentences this time.
I had no desire to accept this hard fork, so why would I help test it for the people who constantly reject/ignore me and/or my input, at a cost to me that I cannot recoup via my position on the witness list? Do you ever consider context, or are you simply not capable of that? I mean...I made it pretty clear. I numbered the reasons and made them short and to the point.
And yes, I have raised concerns about hard fork proposals many times, including HF20, before and after the testnet began, as recently as the night before the HF20 update. But as usual, the STINC team ignored me and those concerns. Scroll up to the top comment...the very thread where you're commenting now.
But not as a post.
Yes, I make posts about hard forks as well.
https://steemit.com/witness/@ats-witness/steem-hardfork-20-thoughts-on-velocity
Anything else?
Yeah, according to that post from two months ago, you had your doubts about HF20. You had no evidence, just a sinking feeling.
Remember, folks. When ats-david gets the heebiejeebies, you'd better pay attention. He's like some kind of prophet. He doesn't need evidence. Just listen to him and everything will be great.