Can I get a witness? Who to vote for? [Witness]
Things are about to get real.
It's been a while since I wrote a post like this. No holding back now...
Warning: This is going to be a long post. Please just read my questions below, or comment with your favorite witnesses in the comments below.
Save this post for later and read everything only if you really want to know my perspectives on the character of what makes a good witness, and the challenges of finding out who they are.
Time to Get Honest
For some time I have been taking for granted how to appropriately select witnesses to vote for. In fact, I feel completely ignorant on how to appropriately choose a witness.
Instructions: You get 30 votes for witnesses. There are hundreds of witnesses. Please use all of your votes. Make sure you only pick the good ones.
Many of them rarely speak in public, because it is easier make private agreements with powerful people to remain on top. Some of them are dead, but you can still vote for them. The top witnesses will determine the future value of the entire steem-based economy.
Your witness selections are very important for your success. Choose wisely. Good luck!
It is like voting for political candidates for a congressional district or a judicial panel that is supposed to be non-partisan. Even if I do my research on them, they might suddenly do a 180 degree turnaround later in their career and stand against everything they said they would do. They might even do this silently without letting any of their constituents know.
Who are the best witnesses? And why?
I have several votes still to cast, and I can count the number of witnesses I have conversed with on one hand.
Comment below and recommend your favorite witness to me and others.
Please tell me why you prefer certain witnesses. A name alone means nothing to me.
Here are my questions about our witnesses:
What are their top three topics that they most frequently post or comment on?
Are they associated with any beneficial communities? Evil secret societies?
Do they have less conflict of interest than other witnesses? Why?
Which witnesses are using their earnings to benefit the best parts of the steemit community the most? Which ones are raking it in, and cashing it out?
Which witnesses are most likely to stay, even when the next big social media crypto platform launches?
Which witnesses, dare we say, are dabbling in shady tactics? Underhanded deals? Secret alliances?
Proof-Of-Trust
These question all concern me very much before I toss a witness my vote. Very rarely do I get to meet any of them, or get to know who they really are. Even though I post a few times a week and check my feeds throughout most every day for deserving posts to be rewarded, I almost never cross paths with a witness. I have a theory about that... more on that later (see The Opposition below).
Is your favorite witness a well-known username and a quirky icon with a catchy introduction post, or have they established any authentic, ongoing Proof-Of-Trust? Has anyone actually offered to meet them one-on-one in real life and posted their reflection of how trustworthy this person seems to them? I would like to know if we are dealing with an honest intelligent people-person, or a slimy cave rat who never sees the light of day.
The Bigger Picture
Everyone has a different set of criteria. For some it might be as simple as "Hey I like you because you voted for my post." For others it can get a lot more complicated. I think I definitely fall into that category.
I have this big problem called morals and values.
Despite what you have learned, morals are not a right and wrong, black and white code of ethics written by the Church or the State for us to adopt as ultimate truths. They are actually conditioned into our personalities through our DNA and what we are taught from our environment.
Personally, I grew up in a Christian household, and so that conditioned me to honor certain values such as the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I didn't wake up and know this to be true because some spirit guide told me to believe it. I was told this over, and over, and over again until it was ingrained within me.
These nonsense rules rarely helped me to succeed in life, apart from a few favors granted by people who happen to appreciate and recognize these same values. In fact quite the opposite. Often times following the rules I adopted means I get the sloppy seconds, and I am okay with that. Being true to myself gives me peace of mind that I am in harmony with the Universe. It means I try to be considerate of others, and hope they would do the same for me. Often times other people don't do the same for me, because they don't have the same values and morals and me, or they may not even notice my actions or understand my intentions.
The Opposition
There are always people who will oppose me and what I stand for. Honor. Truth. Fairness. Kindness. These are a few things that I stand for.
Yet I always notice it is the people who are lacking these qualities who often rally together any time there is a power grab available to be taken. They have the hunger, the greed, the drive. I don't; at least, not in the impatient state of mind. My opponents would rather kick me out of the way as an obstacle than consider what I am standing in their way for. I'm the one voluntarily pointing out the rules they wrote that have been broken, and they are the ones lecturing me on how inappropriate it is for me to belittle them. After all, they know what is best for everyone, and they've been doing it for years, they have an education, they can recite Star Wars in Klingon, blah, blah, blaaaah...
That is why I believe those with more drive than honor are fundamentally at odds with each other. They must stand firm in what they believe is best.
How can they coexist unless they can put their own true selves aside?
Amazingly, some enlightened humans are capable of doing such a miracle: compromise to reconnect.
It is about Connection
It makes me feel warm and fuzzy knowing that I am casting my votes for witnesses who cherish some of the same core values that I do. That they care about how others may feel about their actions.
- That they want to help the community.
- That they are preventing evil scum from taking advantage of nice folks like you and I.
- That they aren't using underhanded tactics, and playing fair to get to their current position of power.
- If I knew they had some of the same interests as me, that also makes me feel warm and fuzzy.
Anything we have in common deep down inside is what really counts to me. It's called the Law of Attraction.
Conclusion
If you read this post, it means you have some time on your hands. Do yourself a favor and research your witnesses a little bit. Check up on what they are posting about. Snoop around. Which ones have you spoken with? Are they really, truly worthy of being a witness, or do they just seem nice because they upvoted a post and left a kind comment?
If you are a witness, please do not take too much offense. I am known for being snippy and masking tough love underneath shade. Sometimes I say things I don't really mean, but I actually do, sort of. I really don't expect witnesses to have to reveal all their intimate life details to me or others. Nowadays we are only expected to share such vivid details when we register for an online holdings account.
"One a scale of 1 to 10 how would you rate your Ex in the sack?"
Please don't bother upvoting this post.
Yes, I could care less what this post earns. I am not going to pay for bots or resteem services. This is something I just had to get off my chest. Another one of my late night rambling rants. Maybe I'll get some late night comments back in return. I do these kinds of posts once in a while just to let my followers get to know the real me a little deeper: good and bad. Authentic.
A little spicy wisdom to give, and some salty words in return. It is enlightening when I get to know others, and we can share that connection moving forward.
What I really need is knowledge and truth!
Apologetically and honestly yours,
@creativetruth
I would recommend @steemcommunity they are a newer witness as such they are still trying to get up to higher ranks. It is run by two people @abh12345 and @paulag who are amazing people that believe in building a community and that engagement is a very vital part of steemit. I interact with both sometimes a couple of times a week and they seem genuine and have love for the platform.
They both run a League of Excellence that supports different kinds of engagement from comments to curation. Every week they give out small rewards to the top winners many times it could include delegation to help someone along.
Both of them contribute to Utopian-io weekly by creating data-driven blogs that can focus on a wide range of topics. Which could include looking into retention rates, bidbots, how different tags are performing, how different communities are doing. They often want to find the information they can extract from the blockchain to showcase positive things or bring attention to something.
Because they are strong believers in engagement they are both in quite a lot of community far too many to name. Including their own community as well.
I do believe they have less conflict of interest than another witness as they do not believe in using bidbots. They delegate out their own SP to support causes or as a reward for ranking well in there League of Excellence. They think that is the best way to help someone grow and to give back to the community around them.
As far as the earning they make from being a witness. Right now they are just looking to break even on running the server. They also do have their own projects that they are paying out of pocket for such as League of Excellence. I’ve also seen one of them donate money out of their own account to support content that was looking to create engagement. They also do upvote and reply back to many of the comments they get. Including once trying out a bounty system a couple of times to reward out of pocket comments made on blogs as trying something new and seeing how it impacts engagement within there own comment section.
Overall I think these two are rather invested into steemit as a whole and will be around for quite some time. They spend a lot of time looking for ways to improve things such as creating the witness in the first place. Their data-driven blogs can take quite a fair amount of effort and time to create as they look and search for different kinds of data. They have a passion about them that you can see in how they conduct and interact with others on the platform.
When they see an issue on the platform they want do more than just talk about it. They want find a way to draw attention to, devote their own time, or help support someone in coming up with a solution. for instance one of them brought up the issues of someone trying steal keys that people mistakenly have posted and as a result of that post someone else made a bot that also goes out looking for those keys and helps secure accounts.
I hope this answers some of your question. I’m a bit tired so I hope this made some sense and has encourage you to check them out further and perhaps even vote for the witness. Their witness announcement goes over quite a few goals they have in mind. You can slowly start to see things happen on their own personal blogs.
Thank you @enjar. Even attempted to answer all of my questions. Very valuable information.
thank you so much @enjar for that wonderful posts about @steemcommunity witness
@creativetruth as a witness I do not take any offence to what you have said, in fact it seems we sit on the same side of the fence.
The role of a witness is to ensure a secure steady robust reliable scaleable platform or at least that's what some believe. I believe this is only part of it and there is much neglected when this is the only focus, along with selling votes and not concerning themselves much with the day to day operations that require the human touch.
Yes we do need a technically awesome world class platform, but whats the use in a platform 'People' are absent from. Witness like myself and @abh12345 (@steemcommunity witness) work on the ground with people day in and day out. It may not be as financially rewarding as developing apps on top of steemit , but its personally satisfying watching steemians grow
Awesome reply! Thanks for taking the time out here, and every day in what you do to go that extra mile with the human touch.
Especially like your mission statement "to ensure a secure steady robust reliable scaleable platform".
Steemits white paper says
"One of the primary goals of Steem’s reward system is to produce the best discussions on the internet."
This line is under the heading 'Payout Distribution'
the only way we can achieve this is human activity :-)