Hello Folks!

The other day, I got a comment from @blockbrothers asking me if I would vote for them as Steemit witnesses. For me, voting in our community is a serious business. Though I wanted to separate my personal life from my on line life especially in Steemit, I guess, old habits are hard to kill and in casting my votes, I am still doing it the same way as I do in the physical world.

I am not going to spend all day trying to find the proper words to define a witness. So here is steemit's definition:

The Steem blockchain requires a set of people to create blocks and uses a consensus mechanism called delegated proof of stake, or DPOS. The community elects 'witnesses' to act as the network's block producers and governance body. There are 20 full-time witnesses, producing a block every 63-second round. A 21st position is shared by the backup witnesses, who are scheduled proportionally to the amount of stake-weighted community approval they have. Witnesses are compensated with Steem Power for each block they create.

I just want to add that each member is entitled to vote for 30 witnesses and they can revoke their votes anytime.

But before randomly voting for the first names you see on this link:

https://steemit.com/~witnesses.

I just want to share with you guys how I arrived into my decision to vote for my witnesses:

Qualifications

Like any candidate in the real world, its noteworthy to visit the pages or blogs of your witnesses to get to know first hand their backgrounds- education, work experience, etc. @blockbrothers looked something like this:

If you guys would read closely, they did not just mention their educational backgrounds or their previous work experiences but their interests as well.

Check their works or advocates

Not all witnesses concentrate on developing steemit based apps. Some of them might specialize in security while others curate and support people who are starting up in the system. Whatever their specializations are, they will be stating them in their respective posts and, its up to you to decide if you wanted to support them or not.

Personal Experience

I do not really want to vote for any witness for the sake of voting. I wanted to support anyone to whom I have personal encounters with. They might already be upvoting or commenting my posts or, I know someone who is connected with them and I was able to build a good rapport with that person.

For me, @brittandjosie had been a great supporter for quite awhile already and, as I have been reading her blog posts, I would always read that she is working with the @blockbrothers. That gave me confidence to support these guys because, if this wonderful person is connected with them, the likelihood that we have the same priorities and advocates is likely.

Same is true with @c-squared who had been my supporter for quite awhile now.

Check if their witness accounts are active or not

Before panicking why your votes did not go through, its reasonable to check their accounts to make sure that everything is working out perfectly.

Set a proxy

Although I do not fully agree with people who does set proxies- someone would vote using your accounts for you- I think that its only fair to inform anyone especially newbies like me of this option- in case they feel overwhelmed with the choices they need to make.

At the end of the day, whoever you guys decide to vote is a matter of personal choice really. Perhaps, you are voting for this and that witness because they are your friends or, you are working with them or share the same advocates and priorities.

Maybe, like me when I was starting up, I just clicked the first name even without logically justifying the reason behind it. Or, as I had been stating before, I voted for the sake of voting someone.

Well, I think that I am wiser now and, I just want to share these facts to new people out there who are like me starting up in this community.

Finally, I just want to stress this out: every action has a logical reason behind it. That's another reason men are different from the rest of the world.

PS

If there are other people out there who had been engaging with me and are also witnesses, feel free to let me know about it in the comments section.

@brittandjosie @c-squared @blockbrothers