The Witness (Circle Jerk) n-Person Prisoner's Dilemma, and the richlist Witness Votes - Some solid numbers for you to digest
I
slept a really good 5 hours last night, woke up, and then fell asleep again and less than 28 minutes later woke up out of a dream. I have some kind of sleep disorder, as diagnosed by a sleep lab, except they called it 'idiopathic hypersomnolence' which is doctor code for 'the data says there is a serious problem but it does not fit into any boxes and we cannot establish causation'.
In any case, after waking to what wasn't really a nightmare, just weird, where suddenly a woman and her infant both suddenly fell asleep at the same time as I was talking to the mother, for some reason I thought I needed to lift the baby and put it on its back somewhere... Strange dreams, and stranger sleep patterns, I am for sure a mutant.
This was all just a prelude to what thtis post is about, the idea that was in my head when I woke up, for what reason I cannot yet fathom - to tabulate the witnesses, mark the self-voting witnesses, and count how many of the witnesses are voting for each other. This is a completely manual tabulation, and the inter-witness witness votes are conveniently easy to calculate just by doing a search with any decent text editor.
This does not provide the vital numbers, which is the amount of vote weight supplied by each witness, which I think can rightly be called a circle jerk. You can see that there is several with all but one top 19 voting for themselves, and the winner for highest SP voted on himself is @smooth, though this is only the obvious visible data with one level of depth analysis.
The witnesses who are self voting have their usernames in bold, though I really wish I could make them also bright red.
I promised data, and this took me nearly 2 hours of manual work. In the near future I will be doing a lot of this tabulation using automation, and it will become a daily post series of highest powered voters, highest powered self voters, the pairs of users with the biggest amounts of steem flowing between their accounts, historically (I will make a pretty giant graph picture for you to scrobble around and see who is at the centre, of the money, the votes, and so on), until I run out of questions.
It could take some time. I am one of the most curious and open-minded people I know. Almost nobody notices as many things as I do, when I actually look, of course.
It just occurs to me after @pfunk found an error in my manually entered tables, that a lotta people are going to get mention notifications. Oh well. This data, which is not nearly as in depth as I would like (like counting the vote power from witnesses voting on witnesses) is not available anywhere. This is vitally important information, if we are going to decide whether this should be an acceptable situation.
Not that I expect there will not be probably impossible to dissolve resistance against making any change that stops this circle jerk. And that's what it is, any average person will see it this way.
| Witness | SP | Votes for | Votes from Witnesses |
| @good-karma | 486058 | abit anyx arcange arhag ausbitbank bitcoiner blockchained blueorgy busy.witness cervantes chitty clayop fubar-bdhr furion gtg jesta klye liondani lukestokes.mhth pfunk roadscape roelandp smooth.witness someguy123 steemychicken1 teamsteem thecryptodrive timcliff | 12 |
| @roelandp | 186368 | abit anyx arhag bhuz blocktrades chainsquad.com charlieshrem chitty clayop complexring datasecuritynode furion fyrst-witness good-karma gtg jesta joseph liondani pfunk pharesim riverhead roadscape roelandp someguy123 steemed steempty steemychicken1 wackou witness.svk xeldal | 16 |
| @gtg | 106953 | abit anyx arhag bhuz blocktrades boatymcboatface chainsquad.com charlieshrem chitty clayop delegate.lafona furion good-karma gtg jesta joseph liondani masteryoda pfunk pharesim riverhead roadscape roelandp smooth.witness steemed timcliff wackou witness.svk | 18 |
| @timcliff | 32310 | abit adamm aggroed anyx arhag ausbitbank bacchist bitcoiner blocktrades busy.witness cervantes clayop curie drakos furion gtg jesta klye lukestokes.mhth neoxian pcste pfunk pharesim roadscape smooth.witness someguy123 teamsteem theprophet0 timcliff witness.svk | 13 |
| @jesta | 39045 | abit aizensou anyx arhag blocktrades busy.witness chainsquad.com charlieshrem clayop complexring furion good-karma gtg joseph liondani lukestokes.mhth nextgencrypto pfunk pharesim riverhead roadscape roelandp smooth.witness someguy123 steemed steempty thecryptodrive timcliff wackou witness.svk | 16 |
| @furion | 53990 | abit aggroed aizensou arhag ausbitbank bhuz bitcoiner blocktrades blueorgy busy.witness chainsquad.com clayop complexring curie dragosroua furion good-karma gtg jesta joseph liondani pfunk roadscape roelandp smooth.witness someguy123 teamsteem timcliff wackou witness.svk | |
| @pharesim | 500762 | abit aggroed aizensou anyx arhag busy.witness cervantes clayop curie followbtcnews fyrst-witness gtg jesta joseph klye liondani neoxian pfunk pharesim reggaemuffin riverhead roelandp smooth.witness steempty steemychicken1 thecryptodrive timcliff wackou xeldal | 16 |
| @wackou | 505848 | abit anyx arhag bitcoiner blocktrades chainsquad.com charlieshrem clayop cyrano.witness delegate.lafona furion good-karma gtg ihashfury jesta joseph neoxian pfunk pharesim riverhead roadscape roelandp smooth.witness someguy123 steem-id steemychicken1 timcliff witness.svk xeldal | 12 |
| @klye | 27252 | abit aggroed aizensou anyx ausbitbank bacchist bayareacoins bhuz boatymcboatface busy.witness cervantes clayop drakos fubar-bdhr furion good-karma gtg idnit jesta krnel neoxian pfunk pharesim proctologic roadscape smooth.witness someguy123 steempty teamsteem timcliff | 12 |
| @bhuz | 211158 | abit arhag au1nethyb1 bhuz blocktrades boatymcboatface bue busy.witness chainsquad.com clayop complexring cyrano.witness datasecuritynode delegate.lafona gtg ihashfury joseph klye liondani pharesim riverhead roadscape roelandp smooth.witness steempty steemychicken1 wackou witness.svk xeldal | 10 |
| @pfunk | 133523 | abit aizensou anyx arhag bacchist bitcoiner busy.witness charlieshrem chitty clayop complexring fubar-bdhr furion good-karma gtg jesta klye liondani pfunk pharesim riverhead roadscape roelandp smooth.witness someguy123 steemed steempty steemychicken1 teamsteem timcliff | 16 |
| @xeldal | 307696 | abit arhag au1nethyb1 blocktrades clayop complexring cyrano.witness datasecuritynode delegate.lafona ihashfury kushed pharesim riverhead roadscape roelandp smooth.witness steemed steempty witness.svk xeldal | 10 |
| @anyx | 27011 | abit aggroed aizensou anyx arhag bhuz chainsquad.com charlieshrem clayop complexring curie fubar-bdhr furion good-karma gtg jesta joseph klye liondani nextgencrypto pfunk pharesim riverhead roadscape roelandp smooth.witness someguy123 steemed wackou witness.svk | 16 |
| @riverhead | 9194 | abit aizensou anyx arhag au1nethyb1 bhuz blocktrades busy.witness cervantes charlieshrem chitty clayop complexring gtg jesta joseph klye liondani pfunk pharesim riverhead roadscape roelandp smooth.witness someguy123 steemed steempty wackou witness.svk xeldal | 14 |
| @roadscape | 819944 | abit aggroed agoric.systems anyx arhag bitcoiner busy.witness chainsquad.com charlieshrem furion good-karma gtg jerrybanfield jesta joseph klye krnel liondani lukestokes.mhth pfunk pharesim riverhead roelandp smooth.witness someguy123 thecryptodrive theprophet0 timcliff wackou xeldal | 15 |
| @arhag | 679,536 | abit anyx arhag bhuz bitcoiner blocktrades busy.witness charlieshrem clayop delegate.lafona furion good-karma gtg jesta joseph klye pfunk pharesim riverhead roadscape roelandp smooth.witness someguy123 timcliff wackou witness.svk xeldal | 18 |
| @clayop | 54897 | anyx arcange arhag ausbitbank bhuz bitcoiner blocktrades cervantes clayop delegate.lafona furion good-karma gtg ihashfury jesta klye liondani lukestokes.mhth pfunk pharesim roelandp sc-steemit someguy123 thecryptodrive timcliff wackou xeldal | 17 |
| @blocktrades | 1069815 | blocktrades chainsquad.com charlieshrem clayop datasecuritynode furion gtg riverhead smooth.witness steempty witness.svk | 13 |
| @someguy123 | 15104 | abit aggroed agoric.systems anyx arhag ausbitbank blockchained boatymcboatface charlieshrem chitty curie furion fyrst-witness gtg jesta klye krnel lukestokes.mhth pumpkin riverhead roadscape roelandp smooth.witness someguy123 steem-id teamsteem thecryptodrive theprophet0 viva.witness wackou | 14 |
| @smooth.witness | 23177 + @smooth 889306 | Proxies @smooth: abit aizensou anyx arhag bacchist bhuz blocktrades blueorgy boatymcboatface cervantes dragosroua furion good-karma jesta klye pfunk pharesim smooth.witness steemed thecryptodrive theprophet0 timcliff viva.witness xeldal | 18 |
So now we know how @smooth holds his spot in the top 19.
Next, I show you the vote habits of the top 10 in the rich list, who are the most influential in terms of how they affect the witness schedule.
This one is gonna open your eyes, in particular, because otherwise, @smooth is the biggest influencer within the witness schedule, as is @abit.
| Username | SP | Witness Votes |
| @steemit | 70795303 | GOOD. This account does not vote on witnesses. |
| @freedom | 7192729 | Proxies from @pumpkin: aizensou anyx ausbitbank bacchist bhuz bitcoiner boatymcboatface bue busy.witness chainsquad.com curie cyrano.witness furion fyrst-witness good-karma gtg ihashfury jesta klye krnel lukestokes.mhth roadscape roelandp someguy123 steemychicken1 thecryptodrive timcliff wackou witness.svk xeldal Does this look familiar? |
| @steem | 4919512 | Thankfully, also does not have any witness votes. |
| @dan | 4166967 | arhag au1nethyb1 bhuz boatymcboatface chitty clayop complexring datasecuritynode delegate.lafona gtg ihashfury joseph liondani masteryoda pfunk pharesim riverhead roadscape steempty steemychicken1 theprophet0 wackou xeldal Another list full of familiar names |
| @ned | 3553508 | Unlike Dan, Ned does not vote on witnesses either. Ned clearly has some sense of common decency and decorum. |
| @blocktrades | 2774351 | blocktrades chainsquad.com charlieshrem clayop datasecuritynode furion gtg riverhead smooth.witness steempty witness.svk We already knew he voted for himself, but you can see that his votes have a big part of making the top 19 |
| @val-a | 2546380 | Another Stinc employee/founder, I believe. I wonder when exactly the order was made that they may not vote directly. Blocktrades obviously didn't get that memo. |
| @mottler | 2233970 | Also no votes on witnesses. Good Whale! |
| @abit | 1965991 | Proxies via @abitmore: abit aggroed agoric.systems arhag ausbitbank bacchist bhuz busy.witness cervantes chitty curie felixxx furion good-karma ihashfury klye liondani neoxian pfunk riverhead roelandp smooth.witness someguy123 steem-id thecryptodrive timcliff viva.witness wackou witness.svk Another very familiar looking list of names |
| @databass | 1693502 | Another good whale, not throwing his weight around. |
I'll leave it up to you, to decide what you think of this, but voting record is something everyone always talks about with politicians and the super rich in wider society.
Clearly several of these people don't have any concept of how bad it looks that they are using their power to influence who will stop Stinc from inflicting rubbish, half-baked hardfork code on us.
Pretty sure there is a giant circle jerk at the top of the witness chain. I'm just not sure it's nefarious yet. Most of the top folks have been working on projects for about a year together at the least, and many started from the BTS days. I've found it pretty hard to break into the crew, but I'm also an asshat at times so I think I'm to blame for that. So, yeah, the network of people all keep a close circle, but I kinda think they're doing it to keep the best interests of the community around. They don't just automatically jump on any witness, but timcliff and someguy are both outsiders to the BTS crew. So, they do let folks in.
Many countries are repsented in there.
IDK. I think it's more of an autoimmune precaution than a full on circle jerk and I say that from a perspective of currently being excluded by the majority of the people you're listing.
Also, I self vote. I did it initially to make sure I could even find a block. I've never thought to remove it. I think I'm a pretty good backup witness. So, why would I not vote for myself. I have pricinciples of Peace, Abundance, and Liberty and I think I uphold them pretty well. Also, it's my stake so "get off my lawn" as it were. IDK, the self voting doesn't bug me. The cirlce jerk is an annoyance, but for now I still think it's more healthy than not as long as they keep allowing people into it that do good work and help this platform.
$0.02
Aggroed.
PS nice article. neat info. I don't think it's all nefarious, but leave space to believe that it could be.
I simply think that the parameters of the game make it corrupt itself. That's neither of the two options you have considered.
Wow, a whole two. And you are saying this is the old-boys of BTS? nice. And that's ok?
I've determined that I simply need to close my eyes to this. Complacency and self satisfaction, like Nietszche's fable of the camel, the lion and the dancing child. Time for me to cast off the angry lion suit and pick up the flute.
They cannot be persuaded to see themselves as othters see their stink.
Well, you are using words like corrupt and stink.
I think perception matters. Do I think they have rigged the game. Yes. Is it truly corruption... meh, I don't think so. The game may not be fair, but I dont' think it's a matter of capturing that wealth just for themselves so much as making sure dickwads don't get access to the keys to change whatever about the chain whenever. But I'm sitting on a mole hill and they're still up in the stars. So, what do i know?
I htink it's good to ask questions. I think it's probably not in your best interest to lob accusations.
clearly the rot has already started to set into your brain as well because that is an incredible bit of double think you got goin on there.
William S Burroughs little proverb is my guide in this matter now:
“Do not proffer sympathy to the mentally ill; it is a bottomless pit. Tell them firmly, “I am not paid to listen to this drivel — you are a terminal fool!” Otherwise, they make you as crazy as they are.”
I'm not sure I've seen your alternative. Color me interested.
@aggroed I think it is time you define fairness. Because for me it's really about win-win for the most people. Skewed income percentiles we know very well from our society and I would not like to see them here but reading your posts it seems they are here as well. I agree with @elfspice (so many great people here!)
That's exactly what I think as well.
Besides barring that the barrier to entry is not too big, what holds other people from becoming a witness and vote for them?
Interesting research but essentially useless. I agree with @pfunk. There is absolutely nothing wrong with self-voting. Any user can vote their Steem Power any way they want. After all it's their Steem Power and not yours.
So why does @ned not use his giant SP to influence it, if it's so socially acceptable?
I don't know you'd have to ask him. Just because you can doesn't necessarily mean you should.
I don't think I need to ask him, but it would be great to record a skype chat with him to get his answer so the people can see what our fearless leader thinks about this self-voting business. I am pretty sure it will be typical politician weaseling.
So I don't expect an answer, so why ask?
It looks bad, that's why.
What kind of a house were you raised in that pinning medals to yourself for your own self-declared successes is not going to lead to ostracism?
By the way, I estimate you just gave yourself already over $1.20 in our conversation here. How does that feel?
Feels good. I need to put my Steem Power to work to pay myself dividends. Otherwise I could just post on Twitter or Facebook. I use it freely both ways, on myself and on everything I come across that I like.
I prefer to win the support of my peers and especially those just ahead of me, who can put a dollar on my post when it really does something for them. In a Prisoner's Dilemma, I am the one who only rats if I have evidence aside from the crock of shit the interrogator is trying to pass off as the truth, or in other words, I cannot be persuaded to rat... I am the non-defector. That's why I hate this system with self voting.
I am not understanding what you are trying to say with the Prisoner's Dilemma analogy. However upvoting yourself and gaining support from others are not mutually exclusive.
Sure. Let me explain briefly.
A prisoner's dilemma is a situation where there is two options.
The simple 2 party version, there is 3 possible outcomes:
Good job, transparency ftw!
The problem of higher-up circlejerk is actually really concerning to me, but I got no solution for it other than raising awareness and that is exactly what you did.
Thanks @valued-customer for bringing this to my attention.
I'm curious about the mentions of proxies. I do not understand whether the accounts that mention proxies are granting their proxy, or receiving the proxies of others.
Could you clarify this for me please?
Rather than manually voting, you can give the task to another user. Or, as with @smooth.witness, @smooth does the voting, and his witness votes the same. Another user has some account called @pumpkin, which I suspect is in fact an alt account.
I understand what a proxy is, I just don't understand which way the proxies are going in your post. Who is granting the proxy, and who is granted the proxy?
Sorry if I was unclear, or if there is some way to understand from your post that I am just too dense to see.
If it says vote is proxied on a user, that means the named other user makes the votes that apply to the user who has proxied to another.
user 1 proxies -> user 2
user 1 < votes as set by user 2
Proxy means acting on the behalf or as an intermediary or go-between. Like an agent or so.
So, where you wrote:
All of the names after @bitmore give @abitmore their proxy? @abitmore votes for them?
It's exactly what it says. @abit's witness votes are proxied from @abitmore, and after the colon is the list of who @abitmore votes on (and thus @abit)
It's the same user, a different account.
Ah, thank you.
I am a witness, and I vote for myself because I consider myself a good witness. I don't really see an issue with this. I also don't really have enough stake for it to really make a difference, but that is a side point.
I also voted for other people that are witnesses. I choose my votes carefully based on who I think is best. Some of the witnesses who I am voting for are top witnesses, and some are not. Some of the ones that I am voting for vote for me too, and some do not. I am not really doing any type of vote trading or anything like that... I don't see how the fact witness are voting on other witnesses is a huge surprise, or even a concern. If there was evidence of vote trading or other stuff like that, then I would say there is more of an issue, but the data that you presented isn't really evidence of that.
That's the current rules. You are making best use of them, as you see it. The question is, are those rules optimal for a beneficial equilibrium?
I say, it is not, because it encourages incumbency. I think the platform needs frequent churn. So this is the rules I would propose:
update_witness, in this you imply that your stake in the account should be applied to yourself only. This is kinda implicit, but this makes it quantitative.The results of this would be as follows: At some point, a witness would decide they want to spend their witness pay on a project they have been talking up. This then shifts them out of the moral hazard of having a vested interest in maintaining their position as witness, and they then focus their resources on implementing the scheme. Usually the scheme will also make them money.
By falling out of the witness schedule, during power down, for however long they wish to do this, they allow backup witnesses to move up, and become beneficiaries of their successful winning of votes from their election campaign.
If they run their witness well, of course they can stay in there as long as they can keep their votes. But naturally there will come a point where they want to 'retire' for a while, and have the ability to spend what they earned.
Then others can get the same opportunity as well.
The witness schedule should churn more, and the rewards pooling in it, should act as a brake on the 10% of the rewards pool, or so, that it comprises. The longer witnesses stay in, the more they hold liquid assets off the market. This helps reduce selling pressure, and benefits the community indirectly.
It's a little bit like, when you get elected into parliament, you have to divest yourself of assets relevant to your field. This is cognate to the liquidation of Steem Power. If the minister of health has shares in a drug company, if they are caught with this, they can be permanently banned from office. And rightly so, because they can make rules that unduly benefit themselves.
This last point, in a nutshell, is why I believe that this is the long term sustainable, and beneficial way, to eliminate the influence of people like Dan and Smooth, who are or have at various times been earning both as a witness, and a big wheel. It's corruption, pure and simple, and you know it is.
It looks bad to the people outside the platform, and the people inside. It is the incentivisation of abuse of privilege, of earning an income that, in terms of risk and capitalisation (rental of servers, maintenance of server) is relatively low, and the benefits of colluding with Steemit, Inc. which is supposed to be the one job you guys are doing, flipped on its' head.
What you are proposing would just end up with a bunch of users creating sock puppet accounts, and voting for themselves just with a different account.
Preventing a power down only stops new earnings from being used for voting, but the new earnings are only a very small percentage of the stake at play for witnesses voting.
A lot of witnesses need to power down too, to cover the costs of being a witness. If you prevent them from powering down you limit witnessing to only the people that can afford the costs out of pocket.
Churn is great when it means newer more active and valuable witness are replacing older less useful (or more lazy) witnesses, but churn just for the sake of churn is a horrible idea. There are a lot of witnesses who have been around for a long time, and continue to add a ton of value by remaining a witness. To throw them out just for the sake of putting in someone new would be a big mistake for the health of the platform.
The real goal should be for the platform/community/stakeholders to identify the best possible people for witness and to vote them to the top. The current system is not perfect, but it does a decent job at that. I don't believe that the proposal you are suggesting does a better job at that, and in my view it makes it worse. If you have technical proposals that you believe would actually make this better, I will evaluate them under this context. I am not locked into the idea that things are perfect and cannot be improved.
I really agree with what you say about powering down being an important source of income for some witnesses, and to prevent that, is like taking away a politician's community derived expenses. It would effectively mean the witness is then more susceptible to (hidden) bribes and corruption from more wealthy people.
Yes, great point!
Hey, to be perfectly honest, I don't believe that any of you, especially those in the top 19, are ever going to agree to anything that threatents the incumbency.
It's got so calcified it's sick-making. I absolutely disagree with your last paragraph. What is a witness doing so closely to Steemit that they are answering Condenser issues on their behalf?
Not even SLIGHTLY a conflict of interest.
The campaign against your cosy camerilla will continue, until I get bored of throwing cats at you, and believe me, it will probably not take very long to get boring.
In case anyone is reading this, this ^ is why I am doing this shit-stirring. This smug bastard who thinks thtere is no conflict between working as a volunteer answerer of issues, speaking on behalf of the company
WHILE BEING A WITNESS.
If I can't manage to make you see sense, I'm going to at least show everyone what a bunch of hypocrites you are. Speaking community concern out one side while sucking up the juice from the other side.
What's interesting is that I actually don't see what I am doing as an issue. Maybe I am giving you more ammo in your crusade here, but I legitimately don't see a conflict of interest with what I am doing.
As a witness, I am heavily involved in the happenings of Steemit.com, since it is currently the main platform that uses the Steem blockchain. I am also to a lesser extent involved with Busy.org and a few of the other platforms as well.. In my view these things actually make me a better witness, so it is interesting that we have such differing views.
As far as GitHub, it is a public repository so anyone is allowed to comment on issues. I don't know which specific interaction that we had which you are taking issue with, but I do frequently help out with issues and filter out ones that people in the community open which are against the posted rules of the repository in the GitHub repo.
I also submit pull requests to make changes to the website, and help out with supporting users who are having technical issues with the website as well.. I'm curious if you see those things that I am doing as good or bad from the perspective of being a good witness.
How you got into a place where you are serving two masters, I don't know. But I am beyond caring. You are the last straw for me. Your duplicity and obliviousness are absolutely breathtaking. The rules put everyone in a position where either they go suck some whale's @#$% to get the issue elevated, or they just sit there and bear with it and build up that load of anger like I've got sick of dealing with. I'm not normally this mouthy, but duplicity, two faced, oblivious, complacent, self satisfied people make me want to smash my screen with a crowbar.
I don't see it as serving two masters. To a large extent, the goals of the STEEM/SP stakeholders, and Steemit, Inc. are in line with each other. If Steemit can take off and become a platform that has billions of users, and the price of STEEM moons - that is good for everyone. If Busy.org or some other platform gets us there, that's fine too. In most of the scenarios that I am aiming for, all of the stakeholders benefit.
There have been times when I have been "at odds" with Steemit. One example is HF 17. I did not pick up the hardfork, because I did not agree with Steemit's position on it. I worked with them (and several of the other witnesses) to negotiate a solution, and we got HF 18 - a compromise.
A lot of your views are based on assumptions of malicious intent and mutually exclusive win/lose scenarios. There are definitely selfish people here and users/groups that will exploit the system to their own ends, but I do think that more often than not most people that are here want the platform to succeed.
I'm not sure where/how you got your view of me, but I really don't think I'm that bad of a guy. I feel like you have created your own view of what you think I am like, that isn't really in line with who I am. I'm happy to talk to you more and explain my views on things. Hopefully if you get to know me, you will realize that I'm not as bad as you made me out to be.
I do get where you are coming from with your frustrations though. I've only been here a year, and I have gone through periods where I ranted about tons of issues that I saw with the way things were. Things are by no means perfect, and there is lots of room to improve.
Despite our obvious disagreements, I do get the impression that you are saying all this stuff out of a genuine interest to make this place better. While I don't really agree with your approach or views, I think that is enough for us to get along.
Very interesting indeed. Of these whales and witnesses, do they vote outside of their peers? Do they vote for other good content creators as well?
I believe they can vote how they please. But if their voting is limited to their peers...and nowhere else...that's questionable.
Well, the issue is not about that, it's about who they are voting for to also be witnesses. If you made 45 steem every day for checking up once a day to set a price, and a few days configuring stuff. I mean, the software is pretty clunky so it can be some pretty serious work sometimes. But there's no way I'd ever have made it into the position to need to hire 3 VPS servers or maybe 5, to also provide a RPC.
So it seems a bit pointless, when as you can clearly see, they are thick as thieves... Also, if you don't suck up to smooth and abit enough, you will never get there. Or Dan, come to that. And blocktrades too. Now I don't want to use his service anymore. Like he's not already making enough...
First of all, I would like to thank you for having the time to elaborate this list and not overly mention people with "@".
Being a witness, specially a top 19 witness, gives you Steem (money), but most importantly it gives you power to decide on Steem changes. To be a witness you need to be voted upon, so its in essence a Political System. Like any other political system you need to negotiate and make alliances for others support, this results in what you call a "circle jerk", as many witness vote for others expecting a vote back.
In your post, you call "good whales" to those that decide not to vote, I disagree. If big whales do not vote, then they contribute to making the "circle jerk" stronger as witnesses just vote for each other and decide who gets to be on the top 19.
DPOS is not a perfect system, but it is the best system I have seen on all Blockchains, on POW (Bitcoin) or POS (Peercoin), the only thing that counts is your resources to either buy miners or to buy the coin that allows you stake. On Bitshares and Steem you need others support, this results on most witnesses collaborating in projects that contribute to the growth of Steem, they do this to get votes and people vote for them because of their work, we all win.
There is also another fact I did not mention: most witnesses know each other, because we talk about technical stuff needed to run a node, we often help each other when one runs into a problem, so normally you would vote for that witness that helped you out.
What I am trying to say is that YES, there is a "circle jerk", but the reasons for that result are 1.- normal to any political system and 2.- logical because of witness work or previous association with each other.
The only real way to stop this call "circle jerk" is to get everyone to vote, but witnesses will vote for other witnesses and this is normal.
ps: you have brought forward a very interesting subject so I expanded on my answer on a different post: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@chitty/is-there-a-witness-circle-jerk
You pretty much explained how it's a n-Person Prisoner's dilemma in paragraph 2, so, what do you think that means? Go read about it.
You tell me blah blah not a perfect system. Yes, but can you even point at one thing that needs to be addressed?
Also, you are strawmanning the circle jerk. A circle jerk is also an NPD. Go look it up. You are grasping at straws here. You, like most of the top 19 and former top 19, don't realise how such a construct has warped your minds.
Also, it is precisely the fact that you are by necessity friends, that makes it even worse.
I'm not saying DPoS is not a good system. I'm just saying either everyone self votes, or not, and the voting choices of witnesses should either be completely eliminated, or simply by posting update_witness you vote on yourself, and your non-witness voting list is no longer counted, until the witness becomes inactive.
And I make no apologies for posting all those @ symbols. I would only concede to the change to turn them into hotlinks to your steemd profile page. If you paid me to.
If you say, like many of you corrupted people, that it's my stake my vote, then it's my bandwidth limit my words.
I will not be so belligerant in the future about the use of these, since I suppose you have better notification tools than the rest of us.
This was 2 hours of manual labor, by the way. Thanks for asking, in case it wasn't obvious. Next time I post such things it is going to be detailed dossiers of the behaviour of everyone with positions of responsibility and high stake, and privilege, all pulled out of the blockchain, like anyone can do, if they bother.
I actually enjoyed reading your post and appreciated your work, this is why I have followed you, upvoted you and personally thanked you for it on my comment. You did not mention me with @ and only used it on the top 19 witnesses, I actually found this post randomly. So I am not sure why your response seems like you felt attacked somehow?, if that is the case then I do apologize.
I also read your other post on the -Person Prisoner's dilemma, it is interesting as it is social behavior, one that is expressed on many aspects of society and thus very hard to change.
And this is precisely my point, you believe that by eliminating the ability to self-vote, the top 19 witness list will change? I am telling you it will not. You are saying it is not moral and I am saying it inherent to human society and it is futile to rant about it. I also find very dangerous to believe that one morality is above others.
Take notice that this is coming from a #45 witness that has never been even close to the top 19 witness, and the reasons that I have never reached a high position are precisely those that you expose on your post. However, I don’t see a conspiracy behind it and I have seen many new witnesses with a lot of talent go up to the top 19.
If anything will change, it would by whales voting for whomever they see fit, changing self-votes will hardly move the positions on the witness list.
The only way to change it is to change the rules of the game.
It seemed like you were attacking me. I didn't really think much about how I put them there, I am just so used to changing -it.com to -d.com to see the activity log at steemd. So it was in part to facilitate that.
As for what you are telling me about changing the rules of the game not affecting the outcome, the only way to be sure of that is to model the behaviour based on a statistical random model with a large group of artificial players. If on average the rule change causes a difference in the churn, and it really should, then this will prove the point. Specifically, upward mobility. In my opinion, witnesses should not be incumbent, maybe serve for 6 months and then move on to something else.
Let's face it, if you haven't done anything with the big boost in income, then you should be taken off the schedule. I don't think it would hurt someguy123, jesta, or many others who have gone on to produce money making websites. Though some depend on that income to fund the site, even then, their prominence and celebrity leads to ongoing support through big upvotes from bigger accounts.
That cannot happen with a prisoners dilemma motivating this self and circle voting. Even after they move to a substantial new income source, they turn around and use it to continue to consolidate their position.
Being a witness is not a popularity contest. Many of these people are doing work, such as development, that is absolutely critical to the Steem infrastructure, hence the votes they receive and deserve from large stakeholders who understand their importance here. That's not true with all of them, but I think it's misleading to trivialize their work.
See my reply to @timcliff regarding my proposed model and justifications for altering the rules for witnesses and voting.
Yes, it is a popularity contest. All elections are. The voting for assigning rewards is a popularity contest.
Doing philanthropic work for the community is also part of the popularity contest. I just think that while you are powering down, you should not get paid for being a witness, and that when you are a witness, you cannot influence the witness election directly, with an ever growing stake.