@witnesssurvey has started an initiative called the "Witness Survey" to try and provide our community with a better understanding of where the witnesses stand on various issues. You can read original post on this link. In this post, I provided answers to the questions asked in the survey.
@crowdwitness is gladly participating in this survey, and since most of you don't know, our project @crowdmind is doing regular interviews with various project leaders and witnesses, if you are interested you can join in our discord server.
What is your position/stance on bid-bots (ownership/delegations/opinion)? - @abh12345, @ammonite
Personally I am against bid-bots, never used them and in addition to that I am currently involved in 4 manually curated communities but I 'can' understand people running for quick profit without involving into communities. After all steemit is mostly advertised as come here post something and get money. And with new white bots coming up it's kinda neutral.
What does the witness want to do to make the blockchain more user-friendly and help to on-board new users. What do THEY personally want to see done and what will they do to get it there? - @ericwilson
This is very important question - clear witness vision is first step towards stabile and sustainable blockchain. My core philosophy is reflected in @crowdmind whitepaper - I want to help Steemians recognize whole specter of crowdsourcing implementation in our everyday activities, not only on Steemit but the all Steem platforms. For example, we are encouraging projects and deas which connects online with offline. So when the crowdfunding or crowd creation campaign is launched an successfully completed, it becomes visible in offline communities. And it attracts new users onboard. There is almost unlimited number of possible scenarios - but the Steemians have to unleash their full Crowd potential. We are here to help them.
Do you think votes for witnesses should last indefinitely or should they time out (or perhaps decay over time) so that periodically voters will need to reevaluate and affirm their positions by recasting their votes? - @harvhat
My opinion is that once the witness goess offline mode more than 2 days all votes should be neutralized. Other than that, I can see benefits and some flaws of reevaluation system. First of all benefits are pretty obvious; every 3/6 months there would be some shuffling amongst ranks, and those who do superb jobs will have constant support. The flaw is simply that we need to raise awarness of witness voting for regular steemians - I see lots of unused votes; and forcing them to do this every now and then without really understanding what do witness do would be too boring for them.
Do you think the 30 witness votes each steemian gets is the correct number, especially in light of the fact there are only 20 top witnesses to be seated? - @harvhat
This is really debatable. At this moment we can see that many Steemians dont use their witness votes. We see that as the problem caused by the lack of communication so this questionnary is good example which should be followed by many others. So, to be more precise, I dont think we should care about the number of votes at this moment. Instead of that we should do everything to lower the gap between all witnesses and ordinary Steemit users. They have to recognize their interest in the basic act of voting - and they cant do that if we dont approach them with our campaigns. This is the way things should be done, and among top 20 witnesses are people who developed themselves as Steemit brands - there are great communicators, oppinion makers or projects behind their accounts.
What is a concern or two that you have about the #steem blockchain? - @johnspalding
We have to be organised better. We have great ideas around, but we often miss the important aspects of their successfull implementation. You can have great dApp but without successfull campaing it is just an empty space. We can make the paralel with market communications or 4P from integrated marketing mix. You can't make the product if you didn't complete all previous steps. dApps are products, users are our customers.
What are you hopeful about for the #steem blockchain? - @johnspalding
We believe in Core STEEM philosophy - this blockchain is place where the next geeneration of social networks will be born.
What is the monthly cost of equipment? - @abh12345
Can't really answer it, too many variables. Over what period of time, what kind of equipment?
If I buy equipment over 2 months of running and over 12 months its not the same...
You can find dedicated servers with whole variety of prices from $60 to $500 - and both of them would work - Until one moment when you need to upgrade your machine.
Where do your earnings go? - @abh12345
What earnings? :) - We are running on a negative budget. But we believe in STEEM and what we do. When we were creating our project we knew this is not the 1000 meter race, but marathon. And it is hard to run it, but we are managing to keep our nose above the water. Somehow.
[What are some of your] Current projects? - @abh12345
Crowdmind project is dedicated to finding, supporting and rewarding initiatives that harness the key of four primary crowdsourcing categories: crowd wisdom, crowd creation, crowd voting, and crowdfunding.
[Will you provide an] Alt accounts list? - @abh12345
@crowdmind - mastermind behind crowd-curation initial project account.
@svemirac - used for everyday blogging/reading/curating
What are the benefits associated with being a witness? - @klassic
Sleepless nights, tasteful coffee and lots of guilty pleasure sweets in the middle of the night has nothing to do with it. :) You get some status of a tech guy, and electricity wizard. If you get into top 20 you'll be well rewarded - but then responsibility is much higher and everything is much more time consuming and stressing (but you don't lose on coffee :) ).
How do I become a witness? - @steemingmark
You could google this - way more faster than waiting witnesses to reply on it. Here are some tutorials:
@timcliff's manual way or @someguy123's steem in box
What do you think the SBD [STEEM] price for a new account should be? - @harvhat
Free :) if possible lower the RC cost too;
My opinion is that STEEM price should be as low as possible. Currently I am keeping it at 3.00 STEEM.
What is a witness and how I become a good worker? - @rubaethsyed
By watching what others do and learning from their mistakes, and try to avoid them.
Have you implemented any new procedures for evaluating potential hardforks? - @patrickulrich
No. I started witness after HF20; 3 weeks ago. But I am reading all about current situation and I'm trying to be as fast as possible when it comes to learning stuff. So, learning to fly in the mid air. (Not sorry for my Pink Floyd reference).
How does a new user make the availability of his vote known to the cabal of witnesses wannabes trying to overthrow the current witness regime? - @grimgriz
Invest; bring 5 million steem to your account and power up.
Now a bit more serious answer... Top 20 are there because they are top... Most of them are really experienced, know their way around and most of all they are reliable and trusted by community.
Should we have interest for SBD? - @patrickulrich
No. Especially not in the moment. In addition to that if SBD were pegged then there is no reason for giving interest. It would be more wise to give interest for Vests.
What takeaways do you have from the Hardfork 20 issues that occurred? - @patrickulrich
Tests, tests and more tests; then communication and some more tests.
Do you think 20/21 top witnesses a good number or should there be more or less? - @harvhat
Currently this is one of the minor "issues", as far as I have knowledge about STEEM blockchain there were debates over this before; but at this moment we need to focus on development. Shaking numbers of top witnesses would make too much perturbance in these turbulent waters.
