RE: DO ANY OF THESE WITNESSES DO ANYTHING?
Current data from SteemOcean on these witnesses. Steem Ocean attempts to display altruism and greed for specific accounts (it's just a rough guide).
(Disclaimer: My own rank in Steem Ocean is not hugely high - the algorithm used is just one way of understanding activity and is not representative of the big picture.)
Jesta
Almost totally inactive on the Blockchain recently (in terms of voting)
Roelandp
Position #95 in the vote rank table overall - pretty good performance (since the list includes 86583 active accounts)
Gtg
Position #508 in the vote rank table - also pretty good.
Good karma
Position #13 - A great score, he regularly hits top spots in the list.. However, that appears to be due to auto-upvoting a large number of accounts - which is a good thing from the perspective of the algorithm used.
Tim Cliff
Position #385 - Pretty good too - though overall activity level is quite low (which he explained in the comments here already)
Curie
Position #50 - Any top 100 position is a good indicator.
Ausbitbank
Position #43 - Consistently in the top 100.
Blocktrades
Position #184 - A small number of high value votes made has resulted in a decent result.
thecryptodrive
Position #2519 - Mostly only low value votes to Steemsports it seems.
smooth.witness - unable to check due to a bug in steem ocean I just found.
Aggroed
Position #62051 - Fairly average result.
Luke Stokes
Position #207 - His personal account is active, his witness one is not. A pretty good score.
Clayop
Position #258 - Not bad at all.
Someguy123
Position #69596 - Very little activity at all.
Pharesim
Position #3: Consistently near the top of the voter rank table. Impressive!
Anyx
Position #3424 - Fairly low activity, but a fair rank result.
Netuoso
Position #74006 - Minimal voting activity and self voting levels that pushed him down the rank.
Followbtcnews
Position #2445 - Very low activity levels on the blockchain.
Furion
Position #27291 - Almost no activity at all.
Pfunk
Position #263 - Only a small amount of activity, but a fairly high vote payout as a result of voting activity - hence the high rank.
When I had delegations from @fulltimegeek and @stellabelle, I was routinely in the top 150 on steemocean. Now, as a minnow in the top twenty who has very little SP or time to manually curate, I'm still in the top thousand. Voting isn't the be all end all, but I think it's an interesting metric to consider alongside stake size.
Oh, thanks for your feedback. :)
I aim to keep a balance in the algorithm used to calculate the rank so that all the measured aspects count for something without being overpowered by the others.
What does voting on posts have to do with being a witness?
Steem Ocean's vote rank is not specifically intended to be an indicator for witnesses, it s a general indicator for users and as stated, it is not able to provide more than a small number of puzzle pieces. For me, the main relevance in terms of witnesses is that it can be used when assessing the level and form of community engagement that we see from the witnesses. While there is no absolute requirement for witnesses to interact with the community on the blockchain, it must surely be considered preferable by most of us for witnesses to be using the platform that they are supporting and additionally to be communicating with and directly supporting others who use the platform (just as most active users do on a daily basis).
The more that witnesses use the platform, the more they are likely to understand the needs of the userbase and thus the more the witness voters can trust that the witnesses have the ability to understand the needs of the users - which is relevant when it comes to choosing or rejecting hard forks, for example. The assumption that the 'voices of authority know best' is flawed when those voices do not actively listen to the ever changing needs of the people that they are meant to represent. One of the main complaints when it comes to 'representational democracy' is that the representatives are distanced from 'common people' and don't understand what they want and need - which is often because they are just not living in the same kinds of ways. Since witnessing is quite similar to representational democracy in some senses, I see this as relevant and so too do - from my experience - the majority of commenters on the subject that I have listened to.
...and/or achieving a high payout, due to those votes? I confess I share your perplexity @jesta, above all seeing that "auto-upvoting a large number of accounts" allows Good karma, for example, to reach one of the best ranks in this indicator.
Please see my answer to Jesta here. Steem Ocean is intended to demonstrate behavior patterns and not specifically to simply measure payout. You can learn more about the idea here.
A whale who does not vote is actually contributing to the reward pool. I don't understand why they care about the voting activity of the witness
Well shit I'm Vote Rank #: 54287, but it's higher than TWO of these guys anyway, and that tickles me innards lol :D
But let's talk real turkey...
In my case, % of Self-Votes: 1.58%