The lapses are not as bad as the unwillingness to accept responsibility. Any witness who falls into the later deserves to be dropped

I definitely need to do more research on witnesses as well as be far more diligent in keeping up with voting for and following their policies and actions. The H20 rollout and how things in general have been handled this week made that very clear..

I think Steemit Inc need to make sure the code is fully tested before the witnesses can enable it.  I heard it was tried on a testnet but obviously that didn't pick up the problems.  I'm not overly concerned, as long as something is done to prevent this situation happening next time.

I am glad you made a post like that. Many think that voting for a witness is just a game...like: _**"what the fuck...let's just hit that button."**_

But it's not. It is great responsibility. And even if our votes don't have the same weight, a vote is always a vote, and should be given to those who deserve it and are here for the good of the community. 

If they disagree with something, having the nerve to say it out loud. And of course to possess the necessary skills.

PS I'd love to read an article (obviously from someone who knows details) about the weight of every vote....

I’ll prime this comment the fact that I’m pretty much a noob to this and I read witness related contents now and then! I get your totally get you argument about being a responsible witness, you can’t just be a money stakeholder you should have a tech background to be able to read code, understand methodologies and be able to QA in testnet environment!

But if there is not real competition in the witness realm then it means their is going to be ones that aren’t fully qualified or if the highest order ethically running their nodes! It still seems like a cloak and dagger practice with most steemians not knowing or caring what they get up to even if they are like you said a last line of defense! 

I also wanted to know what happens I’d say the top 20 do become say more strict does that mean that development of steemit grinds to a hault and be counter productive too? 

Posted using [Partiko iOS](https://steemit.com/@partiko-ios)

I can't believe how @ned and company could release an obviously untested fork onto the community for the witnesses to scramble to hash out. Good intentions on the surface, but bad management to throw something at the wall and hope it sticks, when it clearly wasn't debugged/tested/quality controlled enough to miss a massive error.  If it was a tiny issue that slipped through the cracks, that happens. However, this was a crater of an issue.

Do all witnesses have to be tech/code gurus to effectively hold the role?  In what is often a political or popularity contest, that's far too much responsibility to put on people who can be elected in without formal credentials.

I am glad that you are finally seeing the light.  The top 20 are our gate keepers. Many of which would not be there if not propped up by the@freedom / @ pumpkin witness vote. We need to deal with that issue soon. 
Edit: you see the dark blue line. That is @freedom/ @pumpkin. 
![dpmpp3narcqmdpp0js4l.jpg](https://ipfs.busy.org/ipfs/Qmb4PSqLoG8RgRbKAFSnpkA3DAdVm37ETyTRK8Q88EFnZs)

This is what we get until we learn to code.
It could've gone worse.
Now can we go back to a reward curve that rewards popular content?

To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.
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@whatsup,
I think witness should have ground knowledge of coding! Otherwise, this type of problems might arise! Anyway, this is why we need a powerful testnet! Coz reading a code that done by someone else and get a clear idea about what will happen there is a myth for most of us! Only genius can do! So, it's better put everything in a testnet and run all types of testing to find bugs! 
I hope these principles might add in future with next HFs of the STEEM!

Cheers~

as far as I am concerned I am a novice when it comes to a lot of the intricate things on this blockchain. However with the recent events on the blockchain like the dlive issue and now  hardfork, it is apparent that we need more accountability and transparency and better representation. the sustainability of this blockchain depends on it. it is not about spreading faux optimism when things are going bad. I really do a lot of insincerity, and we need to looking into those we are voting as witnesses

I never bothered with voting for witnesses before at all. Steemit Inc delivering flawed code and, above all, top witnesses dropping the ball and not being either unwilling or not having a realistic possibility of properly reviewing the code will not do. 

What proportion of the total stake does Steemit Inc control? 20% Or more?

I think that while there should be a line between what the witnesses do and supposed to we must be careful put too many requirements as there are some witnesses that admit that they do not work with code themselves but do perform more people facing activities which are important as well.  I’m afraid to call this what one called the political side of the job but it should be done because the witnesses are the governance part of the blockchain.  Another positive fallout of all of this is clearly the scrutiny now involved in the process to choose witnesses which is what we who have stakes need to do with more caution.  However, I do believe that testing must be done before voting from the witnesses and I belong that their stakes should be accountable for that responsibility. Somewhat controversial but only that way can we all have skin in the game.

It's definitely a time to reconsider our witnesses.  I've removed all my votes and will be spending a lot of today researching the witnesses that I'm going to be voting.

Since the beginning of my time on Steemit, I have proxied my witness vote.   I am not confident enough in my own knowledge to make informed choices, so I second your thoughts on proxy services that are qualified to evaluate witness skill levels.  

In the meantime, in my spare time, I research and read, trying to better my understanding of the blockchain, and security and witnesses so that one day I will be able to make informed decisions on my own behalf.

Thanks for translating this into English - it's only because of people like you (who can communicate) that I even begin to understand any of this stuff.

I am delegating my witness vote to ausbitbank because he seems to be really on to it. But I'd like to hear your opinions on witnesses.

And any opinions on this response?

https://steemit.com/dtube/@clixmoney/2l7bulix

I would like to make this comment to highlight an unacceptable situation.

So in the development world you would normally have 3 different environments. 

1. Dev Environment
2. Test Environment
3. Live Environment

The Devs test whatever code they are currently working on in the Dev Environment. After the code is tested in Dev said code is pushed into the Test Environment. The Test Environment should be a copy of the Live. This is where the witnesses should go and do Quality Control in order to insure that the code is ready to be pushed to Live.

As of this moment. This sort of software testing is not in place. I agree with @whatsup that the Witnesses should be QC'ing the software. However the basic tools to do the sort of testing that needs to be done are currently not in place. This is a major fail.

As it stands the current method for deploying software to the live environment is deficient. Developing software and deploying to live without proper QC is irresponsible. If you did this sort of thing in the real world you would be fired. 

@ned changes need to be made so that we do not go through this sort of disaster again.

We need to compile a list of witnesses who actually can read the code.

While I have been clear in my own mind that witness vote selling is ridiculous fir security of the blockchain, I have generally voted for witnesses based on commitment and vision. But I still have empty witness slots, and want to vote for the smartest code readers with independent minds. Who are they?

I'm also still struggling with this and following the discussion. @dragosroua tried to clarify the roles to start with, maybe that helps you too in deciding who does what and on what basis to vote a Witness in or out: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@dragosroua/clarifying-roles-and-expectations-in-the-steem-ecosystem-a-hf-20-post-mortem

The witnesses should each release a detailed explanation of who they are and what they are about.   These Witnesses should be elected the same way that we elect presidents of our respective countries. 

We need to _dig deep_.  We need to _know everything about them._

  I would love to see each and every witness make a post that was something like 4 pages long that detailed every aspect of their ability to be a reliable witness.   For that matter, I love my anonymity....but I don't think any witness should be allowed to anonymous.  We rely on them,  they need to reliable AND accountable.

> ...I am left wondering how to evaluate who to trust as I watch patch after patch being applied as soon as it is developed with no obvious process (Let's hope it is going on behind the scenes)

5 patches/replays in 5 days and we are supposed to review code updates. Somebody give me some emojis right now 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

At rank 65 ish, we are losing votes because of the daily down-time to patch.  We'd be better off on 20.0, not missing blocks, irrelevant to 'critical' updates we've not got time to read before applying.

A few things though, vote selling and profits are not on our agenda, we're trying to do what's best, but without access to top 20 slack, any witness that tells you they are not winging it right now is talking shit.

I'm strongly against making the act of quality control the responsibility of the witnesses. *Evaluating* quality control is the witnesses' responsibility, but we need a new structure of rewarding testing and documentation, because bad things happen if you load that onto the witnesses.

Particularly, requiring a witness to be a code reviewer ends up requiring code reviewers to be witnesses, and popular ones, because code review is only rewarded via witness rewards. What this ends up meaning is that you lock out people who are interested in development but not in system administration and witness politics, which is the large majority of good devs. It also essentially restricts the potential working dev population to a couple dozen at a time, and makes it so that someone who has put a lot of work into understanding the Steem code can have that work devalued by a single significant witness unvote.

The people who have/want to develop witness skills should be the witnesses, while the people who have/want to develop code review skills should have a different path to success, one that suits that skillset and encourages them to communicate their work to the witnesses. We already have a strong model for how this could work in Utopian. That could be copied for Steem development if the SP for it were available.

There is that temptation to say 'hang it all, my vote counts for little anyway' and just let the people in charge do what they do while hoping for things to continue running smoothly.

Some witnesses really stepped up during this and have helped me to fill up more of my witness vote spots. I hope it's a wake-up call and we see a bit of shuffling around in the top spots. I also hope to see more witnesses put their hand up and let us know what they think they could maybe have done better. 

Hey, @whatsup.

It's obvious that Steemit Inc is running the show here, and perhaps rightly so since they've been the ones developing the blockchain. They have definite targets and goals in mind, and it is not the social media aspect of the blockchain, but who they can bring through big time investment to STEEM. Their chips are all in on SMTs. From what I've read, the witnesses were behind the eight ball on this hard fork to just go with it so as to not delay SMTs, and perhaps that's where they've been all along with previous forks or decisions.

My concern is and will continue to be that as long as this is the case, the technical expertise is secondary to standing up and saying, hey, we won't stand for this. You need 17/21 to reach the super majority, or so I've been told, which means we need at least five to hold out. If that goes against the wishes of big SP stakeholders who actually do vote, one in particular, than those witnesses are gone, despite the best efforts of the rest of the community to keep them in. It would take some convincing of non voting whales to overcome that, and a lot of those have continuing ties or had ties to Steemit Inc.

So, I believe we should take our witness voting seriously, if for nothing else, in preparation for the day when it does matter more, but at this point, a few whales can basically determine who's there, and who's not, and the chief controlling whale no one knows who it is.