I’ve been running my Witness server for a while but it is not doing much for the community yet because in order for it to be put to good use, apparently you need Votes to have people vote for you as a Witness. 

Also you don’t simply need a number of votes. You need a certain number of VESTS your voters should have combined. Each vote has a very much different weight depending on the VESTS they have. 

At the time of writing this:

• To get to the top 20 you need over 46 Million VESTS
• To get in the top 50 as it you need over 16 Million VESTS.
• To get to the top 100 you need over 1 Million VESTS
• When you just start I think you are given 1,000 VESTS (0.001 Million Vests)

It means that you would need to have 1000 people with new accounts to vote for you to get in top 100, which still does not do nearly as much as getting in the top 20.

At first, I thought that even without votes, once in a while my Witness server will be called to action. Not really! Without a single vote, as I was told, it is not even theoretically possible. With at least some votes it becomes at least theoretically possible but still practically impossible for your entire life (or maybe as possible as winning a multi million jack pot).

I did not feel good about begging people for votes or advertising myself much or buying votes or power. As I stated from the very beginning I thought very uneasy about it and did not feel good about it.

As I explored more and more the dynamics of how Steemit works I realized that it is just the name of the game here. If you sit modestly waiting for someone to notice you, it will most likely never happen. Even if people notice you, even if they like you, they are not in a rush to vote for you until you ask them to. At least this is what I happen to see. Maybe have not seen enough yet.

As I started to ask people who’ve been around here for a very long time they suggested I should at least give myself my own vote. I thought about it but did not feel easy with it. It felt a bit too cheesy for me. But as I spoke with others more and more, they told me that everybody does it and I should not be shy, and even (all?) the whales do that.

Besides, it probably would not make any material difference anyway because I would need over 1000 more votes that weight just as much as mine to get even in the top 100. So no harm done anyway.

Fine, I stepped over my feelings and decided to vote for myself.

THAT WAS EMBARRASSING!

At least quite a few people I had conversations with had a good laugh (at my expense of course).

This is what they saw:

Apparently, I followed instructions too literally. I followed the instructions exactly as it was written on the  web site that unfortunately seemed to be broken. (Maybe Steem was out of steam or something lol)

Steemit web site had a lot of issues around that time, lots of errors, people complaining of time outs, posts not posted and disappearing and so on. But I did not know about it at that time. I don’t know if it has been fixed yet or not because I am not going to un-vote myself again and vote for myself again.

This is what I did:

Went to 

https://steemit.com/~witnesses

as I supposed to do, scrolled down, entered bix and clicked VOTE. Everything as expected so far.

Then when I pointed to the arrow, it said “VOTE”! Not “UNVOTE” or “Vote Down” or anything like that. Ok, I thought clicking on the VOTE button next to the input field did only the SEARCH, like LOOK UP the account to validate that it exists and now I actually need to do the action – to VOTE for that account.

It was just a bug or an oversight in the Steemit user interface!

Every time I thought I “voted” apparently I voted and immediately unvoted and the people I was chatting with had a good laugh at this idiot with a computer science degree who cannot click one button VOTE right!

Of course I questioned myself first. Then I suspected that the site is broken. Which was actually true, but fortunately it was not the functionality that was broken but rather a problem with the user interface or as simple as wording on the label. How would i know if it was the very first time in my life, right?

If you are still with me reading it up to this point

I’d like to thank you for your time and ask you – did you use up all of your voting power (30 votes) already? If not yet, do you feel like trusting me that I will be a good member of the community and my servers can do a lot of good for the community?  Why not vote for me now.  If I do not uphold your trust or if you change your mind, you can always take down your vote.  Hey, I’ve done it 3 times myself. LOL. Or, maybe you want to test the functionality too? LOL. 

Well, seriously, look at my profile and if you think you can support my Witness application, please vote for me. Now you know how :-)

Thank you.

@bix