RE: The Top Five Most Relevant Witnesses On Steemit? Good Question
Ack...I came here looking for guidance and find you in a similar position as myself. I only have a couple I have voted for. The few others I had voted for are either doing things I don't find beneficial to the long term viability of the platform (although I get the impression they are doing it innocently) to some are outright scammers, so I took those votes back.
I really know little about the witnesses. I had one send me a memo in my wallet asking for my vote, I went to their latest post and asked what they were doing for the platform for me to vote for them and they never replied. No vote for you (doing the soup nazi from Seinfeld there).
I haven't heard of most of the choices in the top 50, and those higher than that not sure how one even sees who they are.
While this can't be good for the platform, I am glad I am not alone in not knowing who would be a good choice for most of my picks.
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.