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I don’t usually feel inclined to post my thoughts about the state of Steemit. I’ve made some comments in my Rambles but that has been the extent of it. Until today. 

I just finished reading through an exchange on one of the Steem Chat channels between a member of the Steemit Inc staff and some of the witnesses. I wont name names at this point but I can say I’m not very impressed.

## Need for Communication 

The witnesses were trying to get across to this staff member that communication to the community in a timely manner is important. This guy sees the lack of communication as not a problem, nor in need of being addressed. 

He seems to see the number of active users to be too small to care about communicating to. He also seems to think that it’s okay to ignore their concerns while aggressively working to grow the community to 100x it’s current size.

## Need to Remove Head From Ass 

Well, that’s a grand objective. I have no fault with that. However, he needs to take his head out of his ass if he thinks ignoring the existing community is going to contribute to attaining that objective. 

## People Respond to Communication

In October there was a growing number of members of the community who were becoming very concerned about the fall in the value of STEEM and the lack of communication from the founders. It took a while but @dantheman and @ned did hear it and posted on the @steemitblog early in November. 

They posted some proposals for changes in how Steemit works to address some of the issues they had identified. They asked for and received feedback on the proposal. Most of it was positive. The price of STEEM saw a bit of an uptick. It drifted back down but not like it had been.  It has drifted rather than the plunging it had been doing. 

## Hardfork 16 Was Announced

A few days later @dantheman posted on his blog that he was moving forward on implementing the changes and was working on the needed coding. He suggested a tentative release date for Hardfork 16 to be Nov. 16th. People started to look forward in anticipation to that date. 

Nov. 16th came and went without any implementation and no official word as to why it had not been implemented. Now, I know Dan posted it was a ‘tentative’ date but I’ve enough experience in leadership to know that the word ‘tentative’ disappears from view almost as fast as it is written and people will focus on the given time frame.

## Lack of Communication Leads to MisInformation 

This morning @krnl posted about the lack of implementation. He posted based on some misinformation so I wont link to it. But, prior to the information being shown to be wrong, the post generated an animated discussion over on the SteemSpeak channel on Discord. 

Some of the same witnesses who tried to later convince the Steemit Inc staffer of the need for communication to the community heard about the discussion and joined SteemSpeak to get the misinformation sorted out. 

## Props to The Witnesses

The witnesses were correct. Had someone taken the time to post a quick update on what had stopped them from taking Hardfork 16 live by Dan’s tentative date, neither the post nor the discussion would have taken place. There may still have been discussion but not fuelled by disappointment at expectations not met and a lack of communication. 

## Communication is Respect 

The lack of communication and the attitude that it will continue is disrespectful to the people who are active on and care about Steemit. When you disrespect people, they will not remain as goodwill ambassadors for your product. They get discouraged and walk away. 

Ever hear the maxim about advertising, A happy customer will tell maybe 10 people while an unhappy customer will tell 50? It’s true. 

So, @sneaky (oh, forgot wasn’t going to name names, oh well) how do you expect to grow the platform when you can’t respect the people who are here and want it to grow? They need to know not only how things stand but that they are respected by people like you. 

It doesn’t take that long to write a quick update once a week. Even a post that says ‘no change from last week’ is more information than silence. 

In case I’m not clear enough yet: don’t piss off the willing ambassadors with the silent treatment. 

[Photo Source](https://mindbodyspiritualawareness.com/tag/head-up-ass/)

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