Thank you for putting it forward that you are in discussions with witnesses for developing standards for testing code.
There do need to be defined methods and standards on how the hard forks are tested...and the code needs to be reviewed.
It should possibly be considered that hard forks need to be reduced in size and possibly reviewed independently as well. Maybe they should be broken into pieces that are named and added independently, with portions possibly being put off and reviewed for longer periods.
As to the resource credits...it doesn't seem like things are properly balanced right now. The smallest accounts should be able to post once or twice a day and make a few comments. Most people only post a few times a day. Everyone should be able to vote 100% on enough comments and posts to stay below 100% VP as well.
Perhaps new accounts could be limited to at most 5 posts or comments. It's possible they could be limited further as well. People that have been here longer and gotten maybe around 100 SP should be limited a bit less perhaps, but still, 5 posts/comments per day would not necessarily be bad.
This 10x increase is a bit too much obviously though, as even with just a bit of SP, larger accounts can spam freely. A limit on some accounts may create an issue if we get some games here, but for now, we should consider if perhaps the curve should be lessened a bit for accounts as they get more SP.
Most people only need to post or comment a few times per day. A limit of 10 comments or posts on accounts of a few hundred SP might not even be noticed, for example, though that harsh of a limit might be a bit too much.
So far the worst post spammers have been reduced by about 80% it seems. Out of the top 10, that removes about 900 posts a day from the chain I think it was.
It is a balancing act at the moment but later on it will be more fine tunable through the delegation of RCs (when that arrives) I think as then they can reduce the 10x and then leave it up to those who want to delegate (like Dapps and communities) which means they can also undelegate if abused.
You make a good point. The majority of the spammers are limited at least a bit by this change. Any ones that want to continue to spam have to hold Steem, which I suppose is a good thing.
I do think they should be a bit more limited than they are currently though. The question is how much.
If users are limited to only a few posts/comments per day until they get at least a few SP, would it really be so bad?
I don't think they have to be limited totally. If you think that if a dapp onboards them and discounts their usage on their platform, they can cut delegation. If a community onboards them they are welcoming in people they have somewhat vetted which reduces the risk of abuse. but if thy do abuse, cut delegation.
The RC delegation can work like the SP delegation earlier so that it erodes as the account earns their own. This means that it takes time to get to the zero point and then earn more to be able to really spam.
Well, the RC delegation does mean that it won't be such a big deal if we do limit the posts extremely...but we'd have to have communities that do those first.
There will also be people that come here knowing nothing...so we would have to watch for new users that show promise, if we limited people too much.
There will also likely be communities that don't necessarily know if the people that register there are going to be quality posters...
It will arrive. just think about now (before) they have to do drives for SP delegations for their users. Pass around the hat so to speak. Delegating SP loses voting power so is harder to give away than 'unused' bandwidth.
The community could welcome in with a better onboarding system meaning the users come in understanding the suggestions. A few front end tweaks would solve a lot of the Spam before it starts.
The community itself starts to police itself and doesn't need to use flags to do so.
Well, I think it does have to be a huge debate on how much is a normal amount that new accounts will be fine with. I used 5 as a restrictive example. The main thing is that we need to figure out something that's usable, even if they have to work a bit to get themselves above that. Kinda like a game.
If we give them too many though, then we have to decrease the speed that the number of posts increases by or it will just allow abuse.
But, if we restrict the number of posts on the tinniest of minnows, they'll wait to post the most important of comments and posts, and work to grow.
But it is very important that everyone debates this, to get the exact number right.
It's not really censorship. If you don't pay for someone else to publish an article in your newspaper, it's not censorship. The fact is that it costs money to run sites. It costs quite a bit of money. The current blockchain incarnation is already fucking huge. Every witness server might be big enough to run this site by itself if it weren't on a blockchain. We can't have people abusing the system and making it harder to run the site. The question is how much are we going to supplement newbs, so they can earn enough to support themselves on here.
If the rates that are implemented are too restrictive, we can establish groups to find people to target for delegations. It's not that huge of an issue.
But it certainly feels like a huge issue when you're a new user and you're told that you haven't invested enough to comment any more times per day.
Of course, if they put in as much as they pay for their cell phone, they could probably get on fine. But we aren't quite that good for most yet.
Everyone pays for hosting. How they do it is the difference. On some sites you pay for it with your eyes on advertisers. On some you pay with your data...and eyes on advertisements, because that's practically free money. Here, you pay with investment and in turn get paid. They probably could just cover everyone with the investments of the larger accounts, but they decided that there were certain accounts abusing the system. To deal with that, they decided to put in this system. Now the question is how much to limit small accounts, because the system as it was originally implemented was thought to be too strict.
As to the value of Steem...it's actually a split. There are certainly a lot of bloggers here that bring value...as well as some that are just leeches, but the actual value of Steem is caused by investors and traders, evaluating a number of factors, including the platform.
They've basically just turned it into a game where you have to level up first to be able to use it constantly. I have faith that many that we want to stay will deal with the limits for long enough that they can grow their account a bit. There will also be groups that pop up to increase people's delegations that appear to be really good users.