I don’t know why people can’t just leave a good thing alone!
Why do they have to constantly “improve” it?
Take Coca Cola for instance. There was nearly a riot when they changed their formula in the late 80s, I think it was… People complained heavily and the original was brought back as Coca Cola Classic – and thankfully, they haven’t changed very much since.

Hard Forks in the blockchain world are a changing of a recipe – often a recipe that was working very well. Perhaps it needed a tweak here (changing to a cheaper sweetener, perhaps) or there (adjusting the amount of sweetener to make up for the first change…) Sometimes, though they go beyond that - throwing out the whole original formula in the name of change and "progress."

Steem did this back in September 2018 – nearly destroying the platform. Fortunately, they worked it out quickly and though Resource Credits (RC) continue to be a serious issue for newbies, those of us who had been around the platform for awhile and had enough Steem Power to have plenty of RC quickly went back to business-as-usual.

But it wasn’t always the way.

When I first started on Steem, I had daily issues with “bandwidth” - I was told at the time it was related 100% to my posting/activities. Yet, simple observation proved that incorrect. Often I would go to bed with more “bandwidth” available to me than when I woke up the next morning. It had more to do with competition with other users, nothing to do with my activities at all.

The problem first hit when I was on Steem about two weeks and started losing my delegation as I started powering up. By the time I had replaced the delegation with my own Steem Power, I had few problems. By the time I hit 50 SP I had no problems at all except the rare occasion.

After 8 months on the platform, I achieved Minnow Status and haven’t looked back. When HF20 hit the month after, I had trouble that first week – when everyone had problems and we wondered whether it would be the end of the Steem blockchain as we knew it.

Thankfully, those at the programming end of things listened to us and things got back to normal, for the most part.

Nine months later, I hardly ever think of HF 20 except when trying to help out a newbie – I sometimes delegate SP to people somewhat randomly, because I see someone with good material struggling to post. A 25-50 SP delegation for a few weeks is usually enough to get them over the hump.

Whaleshares version 2

A few months ago, they decided to “improve” things with version 2.
It was fraught with bugs and problems.

But rather than listen to our problems and complaints, they turned the blame on us the users, for not thoroughly testing the new version for them!!! Oh, we’d had three weeks! (I had heard of it at that point - barely - and couldn't log in... and then forgot about it.)

So, someone managed to find a copy of the old one and relaunch it as wls.fintehru.org – same platform, different access point. Worked as well as the older one – though it actually became more stable too. I had no problems with it at all.

HF2 to version 2.5

But now HF2 has changed all that.
I wish I could say it was for the better.

Firstly, wls.fintehru.org can no longer post to the platform. But it gets worse.

Some of the changes are just strange - “Friends” ??? Are we trying to copy Facebook in more than just the blue banner? But okay, it’s not bothering me. That's just a case of "monkey see, monkey do," it's fine.

Okay, no biggie. Just go back to business as normal except that I can't use the alternative for posting. Back to the original... still fighting disappearing tags and text in the text editor that's almost too faint to read... (maybe it's better on a phone, I don't know.)

As usual (for me), I brought up yesterday's chapter and click "edit" - I copied and pasted from the old post to the new one - to keep consistency between chapters. I added my new text and fixed the links and tags... Navigation between chapters is important for me and any readers who come to the book late. Then, I finish updating the old chapter usually before clicking "Submit" on my new one.
I click "Submit" it goes to "Submitting..." then back... it didn't work.
I double check via wls.fintehru.org - nope, not posted. Weird.

So, I go and look for help, knowing that HF2 had happened, maybe there was something weird going on... bugs were frequent in Version 2, maybe they multiplied in 2.5...

That's when I really learned about...

Dabadaba Doooo!

(Thanks for that, Hive account@penderis )

Introducing: (fanfare please)

"Daily Bandwidth" or "DaBa"

(aka reason I am having trouble posting...)

Okay, I lied. I first heard about DaBa the night before I had the failed post. I heard about it, wondered about it and noticed that (apparently) my DaBa was sitting at 91% that evening - I had meant to do an evening post, but never got there.

Before I had my failed attempt at posting, it was sitting at 64%.
After, it was down to 3%.

Maybe that was due to failing at posting. Maybe it was due to the update (which changed nothing at that time.) But in any case, I was suddenly sitting there completely, totally unable to post.

But, hang on...

Wasn't this the same "Bandwidth" thing that Steem THREW OUT in HF20???

Not a Newbie; not a noob either

I am not a newbie. I was in the room when people started giving out the brand new whaleshares for the new platform. Although not the luckiest, I managed to win enough to help me start my account in a very healthy state very soon after Whaleshares went properly live. I had the slider and a nice upvote, from the beginning.

By October, my "share" was worth 6+ WLS - about what it's worth now, thanks to the value continuing to decrease.

Currently, I have 16646 Whalestakes. My vote is worth 6.86 WLS today. I’m not a whale by any means, but I’m no newbie or plankton. As such, I have nearly 30k of bandwidth available to me daily. Apparently, my book posts run around 18k, perhaps a bit excessive, but by no means crippling.

Yet, I could not post.

So, I went for help; and that's when the real fun began.

Running Around... Mixed Results

I spoke to at least five different witnesses yesterday. I won't mention names - though any of them are free to comment. Most of the conversations happened in three different Discord groups and a couple were in direct messaging.

The official story, as far as I can tell include these points:

• Whaleshares was never intended to be a blogging website. It was intended to be more in the way of microblogging like Twitter and Facebook. Apparently, this has been indicated repeatedly during some of their live shows, but this was completely news to me - and one of the witnesses I talked to yesterday.
• My Curie-quality, long, original book chapters, though not specifically prohibited or discouraged are not really what Whaleshares is about. Even my photoblogs would probably be too wordy.
• Large photos are fine - because Whaleshares itself doesn't have to deal with those specifically. (I don't completely understand that, but they don't store them, they only store the location of the pictures...) So, large amounts of text (like this post) are much more problematic. (Despite the fact that in the real world of online storage, text takes a tiny fraction of the storage than a photo.)

OFFICIAL suggestions made to me yesterday (i.e. from a well-known witness):

• Invest in WLS so I can have more Whalestakes... (Yeah, like I'm inclined to do so now...)
• Post images of my text so it doesn't take their bandwidth... (Okay, so now SEO won't pick it up at all... not to mention the fact that now I have to store these extraneous images! Of course, plagiarism detectors won't pick up if someone steals my content either... This is not an option!)

Investing?

I've invested my time - heavily - into Whaleshares. That should count!!! It does, I guess... as long as I don't want to post text-heavy original content on this platform.
Given how difficult it is for people to sign on to begin with (I've known several who have given up due to the many hoops needed to jump...) and the new chaos, I'm not going to be recommending Whaleshares to anyone in the near future (only a couple days ago, I recommended Steem to my cousin... but I hesitated to recommend anywhere else.)

Other Repercussions...

• There are communities who are currently based primarily on Whaleshares such as ScribbleGuild who may not be able to function anymore on Whaleshares. Our purpose was to support writers. We WRITE!!!
• Photobloggers such as those regularly curied on Steem may not be able to function because their prose could be too lengthy.
• Curation posts such as those done by Hive account@phototalent and Hive account@phoenixproject might not be able to do their good works because those posts end up being too wordy.
• All these problems will severely harm those who are new to the platform or whose accounts haven't been as well supported as my account has. Newbies won't be able to blog and they won't be curated and it won't matter whether they're using the "wrong tags" or not.

Conclusions

• I did eventually get my chapter out - 12 hours late.
• I did post successfully on time this morning - and also managed to update the wrong links from yesteday's post (which, btw, didn't actually take any DaBa... so I'm back to some of my Steem theory on the reality of bandwidth...)
• Future posting - I will be winding down my book series on Whaleshares. Thankfully, I'm at the tail end of the current set (another two weeks) - after that, I will not be posting my book posts on Whaleshares. Where my chapters will go next is still up in the air. I'm shopping around right now.
• Whaleshares will still get my photo posts, as they're crossposted on Steem, etc. But I will not be putting much more effort onto Whaleshares.
• I will begin powering down and keeping an eye on the price fluctuation with the plan of transferring my WLS into Steem (most likely). I'm slightly worried that with this latest shakeup, WLS will plummet even further. (While Steem has been gaining ground recently.)
• From yesterday's conversations, there may be a couple of witnesses joining me.

Will I change my mind?

Hard to say.
It depends on whether the witnesses/programmers have listened to us.
Unfortunately, given the past record, I’m not holding my breath.

Crossposted on Steem, Whaleshares and WeKu.