On Thursday afternoon I published this post announcing a witness chat in the Steemit Ramble discord Friday morning. Now, I wasn’t expecting a lot of witnesses to show up on short notice, but, some to get the conversation and interaction with the community would be great.

Why the Meeting?

The post and the meeting came about as the result of discussion during Pimp Your Post Thursday. Over the weeks that PYPT has been running we’ve had several discussions about witnesses and inevitably find there are people present who had no idea about witnesses and some who have misunderstandings of who they are or their function.

Friday morning, twelve witnesses showed up during the chat, which went from 11am to 1pm EDT recorded and then continued for another couple of hours after. During the informal discussion another five witnesses made their way in.

Here is the audio recording:

Present during the recording were: @arcange, @drakos, @guiltyparties, @jackmiller, @jrswab, @nnnarvaez, @patrice, @sircork, @ura-soul, @valorforfreedom, @yehey and @yensesa

Arriving during the afterchat: @ats-david, @enginewitty, followbtcnews, @therealwolf and @neoxian

Purpose of the Meeting

The purpose of the conversation was:

For community members to meet their witnesses
For community members to ask questions of the witnesses
Opportunity for witnesses to interact with interested community members
For community members to gain a greater understanding of who the witnesses are, what they do and the importance of making informed votes.

The mics were open for anyone to participate on voice and of course in the text chat. The conversation was lively and mostly on topic. That made my job as moderator much easier as I only needed to guide the conversation a few times.

The community members present heard some of the challenges witnesses are facing as the blockchain, and our interactions on it, grow. The witnesses heard a generally positive response from the community members and the often asked question, can the community take action to support the witnesses in resolving some of the challenges?

That’s community in action.

Some of the Topics Covered

Several topics emerged as points of continued interest:

RAM — the rapidly escalating need for witnesses to spend money to upgrade their servers in order to manage increased demand. This puts a growing financial burden on lower ranked witnesses who are not witnessing enough blocks to cover those costs.
Witness Income — questions were asked if the pay structure for witnessing blocks needs to be improved at least in the top 50 as there is a dramatic drop between the top 20 witnesses income and the next 30.
Inactive witnesses — questions were asked about why inactive witnesses are able to remain on the list? Why their votes are not revoked for redistribution to active witnesses and why other top witnesses who should know better are still voting for inactive witnesses.
Questions were raised about the witness page on the Steemit website. Why are only the top 50 witnesses listed when there are currently over 120 active witnesses? Why doesn’t Steemit indicate who on the top 50 list are inactive witneses?

These four are but a sample of the questions raised and talked about. Listening to the audio will give you a sense of the conversation but doesn’t capture some really excellent comments in the text channel. I couldn’t capture and read them all out.

Were Conclusions Reached?

We were able to hear the take on the questions raised from the witnesses present. Many of the problems discussed really do require Steemit Inc to engage with the community and to implement solutions in the coding of the blockchain.

To the best knowledge of the witnesses present, there has been little to no response from Steemit Inc. That is frustrating for both witnesses and the community. This has been an ongoing issue that @ned and his team appear to be tone deaf to the problems raised.

Can We Help?

As community members we have every right to raise questions in our posts about what is happening within our community. We do have a responsibility to learn as much as we can before we raise them so the questions are as intelligent and well thought out as we can.

In regards to the Steemit witness page, we are not tied to using It. Witness @drakos has created a witness page resource that gives you a lot of information about witnesses. You can vote directly from the page using Steem Connect.

WARNING: Be careful that the page has taken you to https://steemian.info/witnesses and that the SteemConnect link in your browser is spelled correctly. You don’t want to get caught in a phishing scam.

So, What Now?

It became clear during this conversation that both the witnesses and the community would like to see more of these conversations. Most witnesses are more than willing to interact and listen to the community. They are busy people and can’t always do so individually, although the good ones will try.

Change of Announced Date

So, I did set a date of April 28th for the next one. I have since had it brought to my attention that date conflicts with the witness forum @aggroed holds on @msp-waves. I also learned I am expected at a Legion convention offline that day as well.

Updated Date

The next witness chat will take place in the Steemit Ramble discord on Saturday, April 21st starting at 11am EDT / 3pm UTC. Everyone is welcome to attend and participate.

Others Have Also Posted About This Chat:

Great to see other participants posting about their perspective on the chat:

Witnesses:

Steem School Episode 64 - Witnessing & What I learned From SirCork & Drakos— @valorforfreedom

Is The Voting System For Steem Witnesses Unbalanced & Unfairly Skewed/Biased? Simple Improvements Might Make a Big Difference Here. — @ura-soul

Witness @jackmiller - BIAS, Market, Savings, Bots. — NOTE: While @jackmiller didn’t specifically reference the meeting, he took part in it and this post does address some of the topics raised during it. So, I’m including it here.