The first time i came on steemit, i saw WITNESS on some peoples bio i thought they were 'jehovah witnesses' and used that in their account to attract people who had practiced same beliefs with them. I got to ask what it meant but i couldn't understand those terms everyone was using like nodes,server and blocks all what i understood was my vote mattered to them, so i started using some votes randomly on some witness i didn't even know why i was voting for them, but ama tell you that this is the very first detailed explanation i have seen in here. Although another new user would find it still a bit complicated but i think i understand to a large extent what witnesses do, they do not just run a server i could say simply that they are liason officers and shareholders on steemit right? Btw as to getting votes i learnt some witnesses trade votes amongst themselves seems you do not practice that @teamsteem do you?