Explosion in Steem User On-Boarding

Perhaps one of the least acknowledged work that me and @timcliff do is the daily dealings with stuck accounts. It's voluntary work that I've tagged along with Tim when I started on Steem. It was a spontaneous act on my behalf at that time. I had joined the https://steemit.chat/channel/help channel and started answering random questions from newbies. Little by little, I got more involved in the process and my random Samaritan deeds turned into a bigger responsibility. The most asked questions were and are still related to the sign-ups. As many have experienced, an account application via Steemit.com can be delayed or rejected for various reasons: incomplete or multiple submissions, duplicate accounts etc... For a long time, Steemit has been reviewing and approving accounts manually to filter abuse (robots, spammers, scammers), but unfortunately legitimate users are also affected by the delayed process.

Things are slowly changing, as Steemit is implementing a new sign-up mechanism, as @pkattera and @sneak touched on that in this video (around 9:00-10:30) https://steemit.com/steemit/@ruwan/i-filmed-this-video-of-ned-pkattera-and-sneak-talking-about-the-smts-and-the-future-of-steemit. The new system is still being worked on, and the transition is not yet over. However, the experience should improve over the next 2-4 weeks, according to @sneak.

In the past, me and @timcliff used to process stuck accounts by asking some repetitive questions to the users. It was very tedious, especially with foreign users; pasting a long text to them often led to misunderstandings and wrong answers from their part, which stretched the discussions in order to get the correct answers! Then SteemFest 2 happened and that's when I personally felt the heat. In fact, during SteemFest 2, everyone was away, so I was left alone and helpless (no pun intended) in the #help channel addressing all the issues. When deliverance came, after SteemFest ended, I decided to put up a database system to deal with the increasing number of stuck queries. I won't go into the details of that so I don't give hints to abusers, but suffice to say things have improved from the screening point of view and are faster and tidier than before (Google translation added, to help with foreign languages). Also, it's easier now to keep track of the people we helped. Speaking of which, here are some statistics since I implemented the new system in November 2017. Before that, I have no figures because it was all manual screening, God knows how many users we processed in countless DM's!

Month	Cases
Nov 2017	41
Dec 2017	126
Jan 2018	373
Feb 2018	761
TOTAL	1301

When I look back, I can shout Holy Crap! Those are of course the users who came on the chat and asked for direct help. There are surely more than that stuck in the approval waiting list.

Steem Rising

The numbers are rising. I hope the sign-up transition would unfold quickly or March would be a hectic month. I joined in June 2017, my user ID is 191,643. Today, steem has created Id 776,800 and more. That's a whopping 4x increase in 8 months. Granted, some of those accounts are bots, but the demand is increasing as Steem gains more visibility on websites and forums.

Also, with the advent of HardFork 20, the on-boarding will experience more pressure. Hopefully the new sign-up system will cope with that.

Message To Newbies

When you join the #help channel, or refer your friends to it, please read the pinned messages BEFORE your start asking questions. There's a lot of information there regarding the sign-ups, alternative ways to create accounts and bandwidth problems. It would make things cleaner and easier for everybody if that simple step is followed. As I mentioned, the increase in stuck cases is increasing, and things are getting chaotic in the #help channel already. Please understand that we are volunteers trying to help you. Be patient, as we try to respond within 24 hours.

Also, I gathered most of the information related to sign-ups and put them on https://steemian.info/signup-faq. For me it's easier to paste a link than to tell users in DM's to read the pinned messages.

Where Are Those Pinned Messages?

Two clicks:

As you can see, we have two examples of users who haven't read the pinned messages... although it's clearly stated in the topic: DO NOT POST ANYTHING HERE before reading the pinned messages (in the top right corner menu). Multiply that tens of times daily and you'll get a sense of the unneeded flood of the same thing.

Acknowledgments

I'd like to thank everyone who has given some of their time to help in the channel, @pfunk, @gandalf, @sykochica, @guiltyparties, @julienbh. I may have missed a few, sorry about that.

I'd like to also invite everyone to participate in the help channel, it is public and open to all. People with skills (developers, witnesses) can surely help us cope with the increasing demand.

Thank you for reading and don't forget to support @drakos and @timcliff, your favorite witnesses 😊