RE: The Top Five Most Relevant Witnesses On Steemit? Good Question
I'm sorry I wasn't more informative there. I thought about just naming the witnesses I do have some contact with and be done with it, but I couldn't. Mainly, because where I'm at and where you are at is where a lot of users are at. It may very well be the majority position.
I don't know how familiar you are with the steemian.info site, but among the information there is the list of currently active and nonactive witnesses 1-400. There are more, but the farther you go the more inert they get. You can get all kinds of information regarding actual block witnessing, but if you want at least some idea of what the particular witness does or thinks is important, there are links (fourth column in from their names with an icon that looks like a link) to the respective witness declarations or blogs.
That's about as comprehensive and one stop as it gets, I'm afraid, and obviously, I haven't been through them all. I've mainly been piecing things together through posts and comments I come across and then revamping as I go as much of the linked stuff is older and may not actually reflect what they think now.
Wow, thanks for the link. I didn't know this site existed (the list of complimentary sites I become aware of just continues to grow). I do think some of this is rigged as the votes for witness is weighted the same as the votes we cast here. This basically ensures if a few of the top witnesses begin voting one another (like the voting circles you see here) they would be almost impossible to replace.
While I do lean towards the idea that aristocracy is good, its failure point time and again is when it is unearned and you have corrupt/greedy people take over the leadership positions.
There does appear to be some vote for vote going on among the witnesses, which shouldn't be happening, but a lot of them aren't relatively large in SP, which means there are non-witness Orcas and Whales who are pushing their weight around. So, I agree, due to the weighted system, to get into the top 20, anyway, you need to find favor with the higher SP. Which means you're doing something more than witnessing blocks or posting on Steemit. You need to be doing something to bring money in. That may be a tad harsh or cynical, but I can't see how it wouldn't be true.