No problem, acid! Appreciate the upvote nevertheless :)
I was quite shocked after my research in the voting patterns and the realization that only 50% of accounts over 100 Steempower and 5% in total are voting for witnesses.
So that's why I thought it's good to put a spotlight on witnesses in general and, of course, also on myself as witness.
If someone decides against voting for me, that's totally fine, as long as the person knows about it :)
Oh and if you want to do the queries yourself via STEEMSQL (I filtered out the >= 100 Steempower accounts afterwards):
SELECT name, CONVERT(FLOAT, LEFT(vesting_shares, LEN(vesting_shares)-6)) as vests FROM accounts WHERE proxy = '' AND witnesses_voted_for = 0; # Voting
SELECT name, CONVERT(FLOAT, LEFT(vesting_shares, LEN(vesting_shares)-6)) as vests FROM accounts # Not voting
Yeah I realize that not many vote for witnesses but still a lot more do than on other DPOS blockchains. I was just disappointed thinking this post was for once not going to be about you. No offense, I just think people should start doing more for others than always having themselves in mind, especially users who have already been rewarded/have earned a lot of stake and would want it to grow in value than to make sure they maximize all possible income sources.
I'm honestly not sure what you mean with for once not about you. You do realize that 90% of my posts are about Steem, right?
And most of the work I've been doing full-time as a developer has been for the greater good for Steem. I'm actually brainstorming about another project that I want to work on - again .. for Steem.
I can totally understand that this post might have been a bit too direct for your taste - and I'm sorry about that. But if I'd be trying to maximize my income, I wouldn't work on open-source projects for the community, but build myself a gambling application or another project which has it's focus on ROI.
Steem Apps has server-costs, database-costs and a lot of time-costs and generates a ROI which is laughable.
And for your interest, I earn a lot, because I work a lot. 7 days a week, only on Steem. Is it crazy? Probably. But it's damn worth it.
Also since I went there, I'd much rather see you in the top 20 and hope you continue to create tools for Steem like you have lately than some others that are hogging up those spots now with what little they've shown for it.
So we all agree on the fact that, 'Bid Bots shouldn't be here'? or should use bots only for promotion purposes? But again with promotion purpose you get most of the reward pool. And again if you use the bots or not, you can't deny the fact that most of the share from the reward pool is taken by those who have huge SP, and yeah some are scratching one another's back.
But I appreciate @therealwolf for his contributions to Steem blockchain.
He is definitely on the list of my witness vote.
Your posts are about steem - yes, at the same time you grab rewards from the reward pool. Many times by buying your own bot votes to trend, this is obviously a win win for you since your bid bot takes a cut out of all purchases.
It doesn't really matter what my taste is, I'm just giving my opinion. You can ignore it and think I'm talking out of my ass or maybe understand where I'm coming from.
Let's say you get top 20 witness, smartsteem continues to reap in the rewards it does and on top of that you're also posting. There's no guarantee for Steem that next time it pumps a little you won't pull a jerrybanfield and power everything down and continue to leech off of it.
I'm not saying it's wrong to try and get rewards from most sources on Steem, I just don't want to happen what happened after beginning of 2018 again. Where the majority who "tried, talked and cheated" their way to a lot of Steem will just go dark right after next pump cause "they got what they wanted out of it" and as you say maybe move over to another blockchain to start something that gives them more ROI with the investment you may or may not have gotten from Steem for relatively little work - such as bid bot income.
Again, I'm just generalizing and it's not directly directed at you. I don't know you, you could turn out to be the best Steemian ever and stay with the platform for another two decades. I just don't think the rewardpool should be concentrated to a few users too much, especially if they have not put skin in the game other than their time.
Other than that I think you're one of the "bid bot" owners who has done a lot more for Steem than many of the other ones have, that's why I'm still voting you as witness. We should just be careful in general who we trust with the rewardpool in the long run.