Witnesses, the Blockchain Ninjas, Ancient Wizards, & Purveyors of steem tools!

Witnesses make various contributions to the steemit community such as curation, software development, community building, etc., and for these accomplishments are often rewarded with witness votes. I have had the opportunity to interview multiple witnesses with various ninja skills and high-level wizardry to see what makes them tick, and why they are so passionate about steemit. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, read more about witnesses HERE

It has become quite clear that they are not profiting from the blocks they are rewarded unless they are at the upper eschelons of the witness ranks. The server costs and time they dedicate to their witness is often underappreciated and many "dead" witnesses remain on the list. My mission to spread witness awareness burns bright as I continue to pursue interviews with some of the best and brightest in our community.

Today, Hive account@timcliff whose work most of us are familiar with even if we didn't realize, has been kind enough to answer a few questions for me. This steemit sage is the co-author of the steemit welcome page and acts as a liason between the community and the developers.

How about we start off by telling the steemit family a little bit about yourself.

I'm 33 years old. I live in New Brighton, MN. I'm happily married to Hive account@artist1989. In addition to being a witness, I also work full-time as a product delivery manager for a software development company in Minneapolis. For fun I like listening to music, going for walks in the park near our house, and watching movies/TV.

How long have you been on steemit.com and how long have you been a witness?

I joined Steemit on July 22, 2016. I started as a witness on October 17, 2016.

It takes a special kind of person to share their passion for steemit the way you do, what projects are you involved in within the community?

My role in the community has evolved over time. When I first joined, the platform was fairly new and a lot of the community was talking about all the changes they wanted to be made to the platform. There seemed to be a need to organize all the suggestions from the community and present them to the dev team, so The Steemit Wish List was the first 'big project' I took on. I also spent a lot of time reviewing the issues and pull requests in GitHub, and providing the community with periodic updates of what the Steemit developers were working on.

I eventually got more involved with the development side of things, and started submitting pull requests to the condenser GitHub repository. The first project that I worked on was a collaboration with Hive account@bitcoiner to add the "Quick Start Guide" (formally the "Welcome Page") to Steemit.com. This is the first page that new users land on after they sign up for a new account, and is intended to give them all the basic information that they need to get started. I also worked with Hive account@pfunk to overhaul the FAQ Page to add tons of new content, and make it a useful resource for users to turn to when they have questions about the platform.

More recently, I have started to get involved in the marketing side of things. My most recent project is 10,000 Flyers, with the goal of creating and hanging up 10,000 Steemit flyers in book stores, colleges, coffee shops, etc.

I will also be hosting a local Meetup Event in the Minneapolis / St. Paul area on July 16.

How did you and Hive account@bitcoiner get the opportunity to develop the the welcome page that all new steemians (should) see upon entry into the community?

It was kind of a funny story actually. When I was involved in the "Wish List" project, I was spending a lot of time opening issues in GitHub for the enhancement suggestions that myself and the community were making. I opened one to create a "Welcome Page" that would serve as a landing page for new users after they opened a new account, since I thought it would be a good enhancement. (At the time, new users were basically thrown into the deep end of the pool and expected to learn everything on their own.)

Hive account@sneak (the development manager for Steemit) assigned the issue that I created to me. I was kind of surprised actually. I'm not sure what his actual thoughts were, but I always thought it might have been his way of telling me to actually do some 'real work' instead of just opening issues all the time :).

After thinking about it for a bit, I decided it would be a great opportunity to get move involved and add something of value to the project, so I agreed to it. I had no experience working on GitHub or with the Steemit.com code before, so I asked Hive account@bitcoiner if he wanted to collaborate on it and work on the pull request together. He agreed, and so we did it. It was a really great collaboration effort, and the two of us worked really well together to get it done. I'd happily work on more projects with Hive account@bitcoiner :)

You currently hold the number 6 spot on the witness list and have only missed 50 blocks. That is quite impressive. What has your journey into the top 19 witnesses been like?

When I first started out, I had no intention of making it into the top 20 (top 19 at the time). The main reason was I didn't think it was possible. Everyone said that it couldn't be done unless you knew Dan or were one of the early witnesses that had been around since the beginning. I didn't let that stop me though. My initial goal was just to get to the point where I was high enough to produce enough blocks to cover the costs of my witness and seed node servers.

It took me about 3-4 months to get to that point, and it took a lot of hard work. Some new witnesses complain about this, but it never bothered me. I was making money from my blog posts in addition to my witness pay, so it wasn't like I was losing money. I also always thought that the whole point of being a witness was to do things for the community. If anyone could just setup a witness node and start earning a profit, it would probably attract the wrong type of people.

Since then, I have just continued to try and find the best ways that I could add value to the community. I think to some extent the initial shock has worn off a bit, but I am still amazed and honored that I actually made it to one of the top witness spots. I am really proud of the work that I have done, and it means a lot to me that the people in the community have valued what I've done and voted on me for witness. I hope to continue to serve as an example to newer witnesses that it is possible to make it to the top, but it takes a huge amount of effort to get there.

The transition into HF19 was at first very welcome, but I think we have all noticed the difference in user activity and steep time decay on post payouts. What is your take on the Hard Fork, and how have your steemit habits changed as a result?

I still consider the HF a success, but I think it is something that will take the community time to realize. The initial spike in payouts right after the HF I think setup a false sense of what to expect. The rewards pool had to reach a new equilibrium with the new formula and increase in voting activity, so there was an initial burst of additional rewards.

In the coming weeks, we should see the rewards pool reach an equilibrium / balance, where the amount being paid out per day will be (on average) equal to the amount being added to the rewards pool each day based on the inflation formula. At that point, we will get a better picture of what things will look like under the new curve, and with the more powerful votes.

There has been an increase in abusive self voting, which to some extent was unfortunately predictable. There are always going to be those in a community that prefer to serve their own selfish gains over the good of the community. My hope/belief/expectation though is that overall the majority of the people will still spend most of their influence rewarding other users for their contributions, which is what we want.

The main goal of the HF, which is my primary measurement of success, was to give the users with lower amounts of SP more influence. Despite the abuses of self voting that have cropped up, I do think it has succeeded in this goal. Over time, I think this will be very helpful for the platform, as one of the biggest issues that users have always complained about is the disproportionate influence that the whales had. Solving this is really key IMO to us becoming a successful mainstream platform. Abusive self-voting is still something that will need to be dealt with, but despite that I still consider HF 19 a great success.

As far as my personal behaviour, I haven't changed much. I don't upvote my own posts much, and I never upvote my own comments unless it is to increase their visibility. I now vote for most posts in the 5-25% range, and save my 50/100% strength upvotes for truly epic posts.

What are some overall changes you would like to see the development team make to the condenser (steemit.com), and how can the community help bring about these changes?

Oh boy. There is still so much to be done, but I think it is important to highlight how far we have come. It deserves a post in of itself, but the dev team has really done some amazing work to bring us where we are today.

Some of the key things that I think will be good to address are:
- A seamless signup process, which prevents abuse, but allows new users to get started with an account right away.

A total overhaul of the Steemit.com front-end website, designed with the expected user experience of a social media website in mind, and the look and feel of a state-of-the-art platform.
I'm obviously looking forward to Communities and the official mobile app :)
An infrastructure to allow third-party developers to build tools/apps that are secure and don't require users to provide their private keys.
A more advanced 'search' tool to browse through posted content.
A dynamic onboarding process / tutorial that walks users through the steps of getting started with the website.
Being able to go directly from STEEM <-> Fiat (I know this is hard)
More 'gameification' built into the platform (i.e. get delegated 100 SP when you get your 100th follower type of thing)
A full-blown marketplace where users can buy/sell goods and services with STEEM, which is integrated with the escrow process in the blockchain.

A lot of these projects are things that a team of developers from the community could work on. It would be amazing to see people agree to take some of these on, and collaborate with Hive account@sneak and Hive account@andrarchy from Steemit to get them done.

With the rapid growth that steemit is experiencing comes increased transactions that have to be verified by witnesses. What steps are you taking to ensure that these transactions are processed and blocks are not missed??

I actually run three different witness nodes, spread out across two different datacenters in different areas of the world. I have an automatic failure detection script in place, so if my primary node goes down it automatically switches over to my backup node and sends a text to my cell phone to alert me that something went wrong. Just in case there is an issue with my backup sever too, I have my third backup which I can switch over to manually. I am used to being on call 24/7 for my 'real job', so I'm ready to respond at any time day or night if my servers start having an issue.

There are currently 27 non-functional witnesses in the top 100, thus it seems to me as if nobody is paying attention. How important is it to vote for witnesses and why should the community vote for you?

I think it is extremely important for the community to take their witness voting seriously. There are a lot of witnesses who are working hard to add value to the community, and I know from experience that it means a lot to them when they get recognized by witness votes. If the community wants to see more people involved as witness and contributing through their campaign, they should do their part and vote for the ones that are doing well.

One thing to consider for people who don't know much about witnesses, is they can set someone up as their 'voting proxy' at the bottom of the witness voting page. This allows them to pick someone they trust to make good witness selections, and delegates the witness voting to them. (It can be revoked at any time.) While I would encourage all users to take the time to get to know the witnesses and vote on who they think is best, picking a good witness voting proxy would be the next best thing.

I try to let my witness campaign speak for itself. I highlighted a lot of my projects here, and there are more listed in my 'official witness post'. I continue try and add value to the community in the best ways that I can. If you have any suggestions on how I can improve as a witness, I always appreciate the feedback :)

OK, so now that you know what these wonderful witnesses do for our community, the least you can do it vote for them. Dead witnesses verify no blocks, so cast your votes and make sure our blocks get verified and not dropped.

First, point your browser to https://steemit.com/~witnesses

Vote away, using your best judgement. If you want to know more about a Witness, be sure to visit their Witness feed. You can always add in a witness who is not in the top 50, or you can choose your favorite witness (or other steemian) as a proxy and delegate your votes too!

@timcliff witness thread

At the time of the interview, Hive account@timcliff was ranked #6, he now occupies the #4 spot..Congratulations!!

Previous Interview threads

@ausbitbank
@aggroed
@theprophet0
@neoxian
@someguy123

Upcoming Interview threads

@dragosroua
@reggaemuffin
@followbtcnews
Hive account@netuoso

You can verify how well these witnesses are doing their job of verifying blocks a couple of different ways and this may also factor into voting choices.
Stats on Witness activity are available at
Steemd & Steemdb