In my humble opinion, vests represent the interest of the platform (in a subjective way) lets call it management views.

But also number of voters for the witness building communities should be an indicator of support that big share holders might want to use to gauge community support and witness social endeavors to chose who to back with their vests.

Total votes from proven members of communities should at least be an indicator

I mean, this is a businnes afterall and the capital backing the his block-chain needs to control what the bests interest of the platform are, but user adoption, engagement and retention are key for the long term platform growth, so if the people creating communities are not taken into account by the shareholders, they will just stop doing it and move somewhere it is recognized and valued.

The marketing scheme that the shareholders support today is the honest car salesman and that might work short term and give some visibility, but we want valued customers that come back, not one shot money seekers that come and go...

Up to the shareholders to use the social gauges to measure a social network, or to blindly support technical development while leaving the fuel of the platform (human engagement) behind.

I believe in a social network, and concentrate my efforts in that direction, time will tell if i was wrong and should have instead get a costume.

BTW to those referring to the white paper, i love that when someone refers to the white paper the answer usually is "It is outdated", but some times it is written in stone... ;)