This doesn't bode well for steem...
Having been on steemit since mid 2016 I generally had the sense of what I wanted in a witness. Someone who was actively contributing to the community be it behind the scenes with development work or someone who was out front and communicated really well with the community. Both reasonable expectations if you want to be one of the select few worthy of being voted into the coveted top 20 witness spots.
I'd like to contrast that with what Steem has now, I give you @parse, the current #16 witness on Steem. He joined in March and has 9 posts and one follower. He appears to be Persian though he got off to an inauspicious start with a member of the Persian community on steem calling him out as a sock puppet. After that he made a few other posts, his most recent post being a several sentence explanation of cryptocurrency in general. This post is both comical because it touts the decentralized nature of what a cryptocurrency should be (Not steem anymore) and for the fact that it is not even an original thought, it is plagiarized.
Here is the @parse post translated from Persian to english-
"Some of the new digital currency that is based on cryptographic methods is called digital currency, cryptocurrency or cryptocurrency.
Most digital currencies are implemented on a distributed basis called blockchain or blockchain chain. The blockchain network also has a decentralized, transparent and unchanging structure. The decentralized concept here is that no person, entity, or organization has control over it. In addition, anyone can transfer digital currencies easily to another person anywhere in the world without the need for any intervention,"
and here is the source post also translated from persian to english-
"Some of the new digital money that comes from cryptocurrencies is called digital currency, cryptocurrency, or cryptocurrency.
Most digital currencies are implemented on a distributed basis called block chains or block chains. China Block Network also has a decentralized, transparent and unchanging structure. The decentralized concept here is that no person, entity, or organization has control over it. In addition, anyone can transfer digital currencies easily and without the need for any intermediary anywhere in the world"
So a little light plagiarism, what else does he do?
Well, when he isn't busy stealing material online, he seems to spend his time begging people to resteem his other posts.
One of those is even more impressive as he found a 2 year old post about cats to drop a fresh comment on to beg a user for resteems who hasn't been active since April of last year. The lone non-begging comment was using one of his 9 interactions on the blockchain thus far to insult @pfunk for calling out his nonsense. I'm no math wiz but that seems like over 20% of his posts are either plagiarism or insults which isn't a good look for a witness. I don't want to overuse this meme but it's just so damn accurate right now-
Now I don't want to say all the new witnesses are this level of terrible. There seem to be at least a few non-sock puppets who are generally interested in maintaining things on a professional level over there. I just want to see competent witnesses at least until I have time to power down and get my Steem out. I do want to try to be forward looking and focus on hive but until I am completely out of Steem I'll be keeping an eye on whats going on over there. It's like when you move to a new house, every so often you still go back to the old neighborhood to see what has changed. If nothing else, seeing what is happening there makes me more thankful to be here, Thanks for reading :)
The place is going straight down the drain with this kind of crap...
The only thing left over on Steem is greed. It was always there, from the abusive bidbots to the circle jerkers on trending. All that garbage can stay over there. So far it feels like Hive is Steem without the baggage, and I hope it stays that way for a long time.
Near future