If you edit a post or comment, you will notice that the transaction fee is the same, and often slightly higher, than the original post. I suspect everybody finds this annoying and frustrating as edits could just be fixing a few words or adding an image.
I write this in the hope that some of the coding devs will explain why this happens and whether it can be fixed.
The thing I find peculiar is that, if you look at your edit on the blockchain explorer, you will see that it does NOT republish the whole post, but the transaction only includes the edits, be they additions or deletions. So the size of that edit-transaction is much smaller than the original post (unless it really is larger!) and hence the fee should be much lower and commensurate with the bandwidth used for that edit.
Why does the system not calculate an edit as per its transaction size, instead it appears to add together the original post and the edit?
As I said, would be good to know why this happens, and whether it can be fixed to be more intuitive.
If you are interested in pinning down this issue, it is worth doing an experiment. Make a comment, check the fee as shown on the front-end, then compare that on the block explorer - and also write down the Transaction Fees numbers as they do currently change from block to block. Then do a simple edit, say change one word, and again, note down the fee shown on the front-end and compare it with that on the explorer.
I tried this and discovered even more weirdness!!
Firstly, the "tx fee" as shown on the explorer changes in line with the changing fees set by witnesses! OK, so even those do not show actual fees.
So I compared it with the coins in my wallet, to see how much was actually deducted, and... the actual deducted fee was much lower than shown either on the front-end or on the explorer! The platform told me the edit would cost 1.059 BLURT but only 0.098 BLURT was deducted - that is not due to witness fees changing, that's a difference of more than 10x.
This raises another solution: that the front-end calculations are wrong and need to edit their formulas. This may not be as easy as it sounds, as it would need to replicate the "edit transaction".
This also raises a deeper long-term solution that fees should not be virtual transactions. This also raises the amusing spectre of a fee transaction then also costing a fee, but that should be resolved within the code.
Anyway, the upshot above is that, if you write down and pay attention to the fees being extracted, it is possible that you are being charged correctly based on actual bandwidth of any edit.
That in itself should be good news, but I think this needs to be manifestly obvious to users.
If you try the above experiment and get different results, then please comment. Bear in mind you need to write down the numbers quickly before the transaction fees change as the witness set shuffles. Then compare the platform fee, explorer fee and what was actually deducted from your liquid BLURT.
I noticed that was the case some time back that the cost of editing wasn't what it said. I keep a daily spreadsheet for my taxes on various data points so it became obvious almost immediately this was the case. I assumed this was commonly known but in hindsight I guess not as many are recording for tax purposes like I am, lol.
And not many seem to check anything at all before squealing.
I have no idea how many people use the two block explorers we have - seems like not as many as should. They hold far more details than either the wallet or any front-end UI.
We've seen so much of this recently. I even had one guy who is renowned for his loss of control drama threatening to sue me over misconceptions being bandied about with all of this regent business. Then similar happened to me again with double-u who can't escape his tunnel vision need for revenge on mega he also tried calling me out claiming my position was contrary to many things I've actually typed.
For many, not agreeing with everything they wish to believe makes you an enemy so they rush forward saying whatever sounds good slandering their target despite it having no basis in reality.
Reminds me unfortunately on why I love humanity but can't stand most of the people. Many of these folks post constantly on how brain dead liberals are, and have no idea now that every time I read future posts by them with this theme I won't be seeing much difference between them and the libs they rail against.
People would be easier to stomach if folks would embrace the idea that ignorance is nothing to be shameful of and by embracing it, it quickly can become a strength when one moves to use it as a tool for growth. But that would require a humility most seem to feel is beneath them.
How do you square that? lol.
My research in, say, the last 5 years have made me even more pessimistic. Human dependencies have become occult, and hence even harder for most to perceive, compared to base material dependencies.
It's not easy. My underlying makeup wants everyone to be happy and not struggle. But when I get around folks, I find myself feeling drained and not liking many of the masks and ideas they bind to themselves, nor their often demand to impose their ideas on others, demands for others to mirror them. I could do what many of the power brokers do and mirror them and put them into trances but I don't have the desire nor energy for such foolishness. So I try to limit my interactions and be choosy when I can on the frame involved in such encounters.
While my reading on history shows this has always been the flaw for humanity, I believe it has become exacerbated as women have been elevated above men in the running of structures. Women tend to have a more emotional response than men due to our natural roles/strengths being different. Men have had to be more practical and hone critical thinking skills as the one primarily responsible for the building and maintaining of safe areas for us to thrive as a species. Humans are very fragile and unless in groups or in possession of tech are nowhere near the top of the food chain as we have been brainwashed to believe.
In the last many decades things have changed in this bubble of false security we live in that has allowed for positions of feelings to thrive over cold, sometimes even predatory facts. We have a couple of generations now of men who have been forced to view their natural strengths as being toxic and to force themselves to seek to be female in conduct (more emotionally structured). This involves putting aside the strength (toxicity is what they call it) which can lead to nowhere but a cult like desperation of dependency. It is the very thing being attacked as being toxic (natural male tendencies) that allow for an independence.
Probably why the farmers of men have used women to push the idea men are toxic, lol.
It's a good question.
I think the quoted fee should be the amount actually charged. Any more or less can cause problems for the user, and just looks sloppy and unprofessional. We're using a blockchain, right? One of the advantages is that everything is calculated to the exact decimal point, happens immediately, and is stored forever, right? So let's get our code fixed up. If we can't make things match up, that's embarrassing, but at least we could start admitting the quoted fee amount is "just an estimation and the actual fee could be more or less".
Also regarding fees, why are posts, comments, and edits with image links in them so expensive? Are we de facto paying for our images to be hosted? It sure seems that way. If so, why can that "privilege" be taken away from us? Megadrive has been threatening to pull the image servers if things don't go his way. If we're paying for those images to be hosted, we can expect they will remain up. Besides, it sets a really bad precedent, rattles investors, and spooks content-creators, to not have stable image hosting. I realize nothing is forever, but when you know your post is going to look like absolute garbage in just a short time, it's hard to put much effort in. If only your text is part of the actual blockchain, and the person hosting your images is fickle, letting the server go offline for long periods - or worse, saving money by taking it offline - then you will treat your posts as nothing more than FB status updates. Stable image hosting encourages quality content and improves the platform and user experience. I would like to know our images are relatively safe and guaranteed, especially since we are paying directly for them each and every time we use them. Either provide the services and stop threatening to remove them, or stop charging us for them, please and thanks!
WRONG!
Now, you could have approached this in different ways: you could have simply ASKED, so as to acquire knowledge you didn't have; you could even have CALCULATED some fees to check, not very hard; instead, you launch into an accusatory paragraph based on nothing more than one wrong idea that lives in your mind.
Is that sane or healthy for you? Did you enjoy wasting fees on that rant?
FYI 1 MB of images would cost 500-700 BLURT in fees, using the current parameters. Have you EVER seen such a fee?
Not quite! The front-ends are having to pre-process those, as you say, everlasting txns, hence will always be an estimate - perhaps there is a place for a post-processing info that is easier to see than going to the blockchain explorer. However, even then, 3 seconds seems like a long time to wait for the txn to be verified!
I really wish we could pull a report from the block explorer showing all fees ever paid. I have not figured out how to do this. It would be helpful for tax accounting reasons and also just to know how much coin you have helped burn.
Going along with Jacobs reasons for higher fees I can understand how an edit would attract a higher fee. It is meant to make us think before posting so you think extra hard because an edit will cost you also.
But this does not mean that I agree with the logic or the strange occurrences you have pointed out.
Maybe that should have written it in BOLD.lol.
Check the actual fee taken from your wallet for an edit and you'll see it is much lower than the fee estimate shown by the platforms.
The other issues re fees are important but different.
I only have a rough idea of mine because of a spreadsheet I use for my taxes. But not counting today and the first several days after I joined Blurt I've spent 1573 Blurt in fees. Not horrible, although if the fees stay high as they recently became this will accelerate going forward.
Not a bad cost of doing business.
It's actually very little really. Even if using the .02 valuation we had some months ago that comes to 31.46 for me to post here over 18 months. About .40 a week and as many know, I typically write long winded posts and comments.
BTW I just checked the fees for the above post, and the front-end estimate was correct. So it really is just the "edit fees" that may be wrong.
Surely, the cost of editing is too high. Sometimes even I found some places in my post needing to be corrected, at last I gave up because of the high cost only for some minor correction, for example misspelled words, or spaced paragraphs.
Did you read the above post?
Check the actual fee taken from your wallet.
I just removed one single character from a comment. I was told the edit would cost .473, but it cost .282. Still too much! I don't remember what the original comment cost.
I stopped editing anything long ago because of this.
Hi.. Interesting point. I just wanted to check about this.
So editing this to check again..
For editing,
Seems like for editing, Explorer shows the approximate correct value. Anyway as you said fees are change than what shown in the front end.
Was that for an edit of a comment?
Yeah, the difference is much greater for longer posts eg if a post costs 2 blurt and an edit just 0.1 blurt then that starts to make sense. If you look at your edit transaction on the explorer, you'll see all the code, and that could be as long as a short comment.
Yes.. These are the fees for above comment and editing the comment. I also feel the same like posts will have a different structure than this. And as you said in the comment, I think first posting fees will not much differ with the frontend fees and the real value which deduct from the wallet.
I posted a post that costed me more than 3 blurt, I don't see that on this explorer : https://ecosynthesizer.com/blurt/@clixmoney/120k-blurt-power
Maybe just can't find it there. But in the other explorer it's less than I paid. Like about 2 blurt. https://blocks.blurtwallet.com/#/@clixmoney
I also tried to do that before in blurt.live and blurt.blog and that wasn't the same amount. I think from what I remember from blurt.blog was cheaper, that's why I preferred it. But now I think it's the same. Not sure.
The only reality is what came out of your wallet - everything else is an estimate.
Not being able to specify the fee in a trx is kind of stupid. It allows overspending without thinking about it. Users should be able to add to transactions and if the cost would be higher than the amount they specify, the whole trx should fail.
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Thank you sir @rycharde for bringing this up, you really spoke my mind, if something can be done about it, it would really be cool.
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