Hi friends,

The next Steem Hard Fork is just a couple of days away and all Witnesses must be over-busy in updating their nodes and checking the code. So, here I'm coming up with this question about Steem Witnesses. You can fearlessly answer it without bothering that any Witness will be watching you 😉.

70% of the top-20 Witnesses have already updated their Witness nodes to Version 0.20.2 and some others must be on their way to it and it will soon attain a super majority. So the success of Velocity Hard Fork seems a mere formality now.

But here I'm asking in general what do you see before voting up a Witness?

I've been here for over a year now on this blockchain but I'd confess that I still haven't looked into this topic with any seriousness. I know, my opinion as well as my vote-worth is still very insignificant to make any difference but still, I ought to know about these Witnesses' contribution to this blockchain.

Do you keep a track of all Witnesses' activities to equip you for a better decision-making in this regard?

I know this is not an easy question. With about 15,000 Witnesses how many of them would anyone evaluate? I haven't yet read the Witness Threads / Proposals of top 20 Witnesses. How can I imagine anything about other 15,000 candidates? And then to keep track of their regular Witness reports!

So then how should we go about it?

I've seen people easily vote a person as their Witness with whom they develop some friendly relationship or affinity and likability through interactions. Some people decide on the basis of whom his / her close friend is voting for and follow the same pattern (like giving a proxy vote).

In my country, politics is mostly caste based and election strategies are drafted on the caste equations of the electoral. People blindly vote for the candidate from their own caste. Similar thing also goes on here too though it may be in minority. But people will vote for a Witness from their own country (if there ain't many Witnesses from their country), people with similar ideologies easily support each other e.g. vegans will readily give their votes to Witnesses who are vegan; ladies will likely vote to female Witnesses, people from same language and cultural background will also vote one of their own as their Witness; etc.

Many Steemians decide on the basis of some dapp or tool they love and will vote for the Witness behind that tool or the one who have personally helped them with some problem they encountered over this platform.

But how many of us vote purely on the basis of their contribution for the growth of Steem ecosystem?

Frankly, I don't have time to evaluate all the Witnesses. The once I've voted were probably because of the image they created before me through their activities which I chanced upon while browsing other blogs.

Now, I'm not interested to check all candidature for Witnesses but I'd like to use the principle of elimination. I can decide against voting some Witnesses and vote up anyone from the remaining.

It would have been good if there was some sort of Wiki page, where all major allegations against Witnesses along with their responses to the allegations were compiled on one page. Also their contributions and related controversies can be compiled there itself. So we can know the popular opinion and publicly available info about any Witness on a single page. Today we only get to see Witness threads & reports that are actually written by Witness themselves. That is like a party manifesto. But if there was some Wiki page or Witness Bulletin, it would serve the role of mainstream media 😊.

Anyway, currently I'm thinking to formulate my list of elimination. So I'm mulling over the criteria for whom to eliminate. I understand that no Witness is infallible and we all make mistakes at times. But to start with, early next month:

I'm planning to "unvote" and "not to vote" following Witnesses:

• Witnesses who do not update their nodes to latest version even a week after the HF.

• Witnesses who are involved in running any bidbot or paid bots. (I fail to find any of these services running ethically. I've seen many people complaining about an unfair transaction with a bot without a proper and convincing explanation provided to them by the bot operator).

• Witnesses who have developed some free tool for the community to use but don't maintain it regularly. If a tool is broken, it should be fixed immediately irrespective of it being a free service. If you can't maintain your tools, you better take them down.

• Witnesses who support a niche (or special interest) community. (I believe a Witness should not be biased towards any community and should work equally for all here). If a Witness is supporting a niche community, it should be considered as his / her personal inclination and should not be boasted in their Witness proposal as community contribution.

• Witnesses who are involved in multiple blockchains like a Block Producer for EOS. (This tells me that they don't have full faith in any of these blockchains and are not committed to one. I'd prefer a Witness who is totally devoted to Steem blockchain; esp. when I've a choice of 15000 Witnesses).

• Witnesses who support the acts of above Witnesses.

• Witnesses who do not put much effort in communicating about their work and stance in spite of their well-intended efforts.

• Can you help me develop and modify this list?

• What are the critical things you see or expect from your Witness and how do you verify it?

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Vote your Witness here:
https://steemit.com/~witnesses

Check Witness node status data here:
https://steemd.com/witnesses