One of the issues that the witnesses need to look at, (and likely will not), is how witnesses are chosen. People can talk til they are blue in the face about vote for your witnesses. The fact remains that in the top twenty witnesses, the vast majority of them are chosen by two or three accounts. So when witnesses point out that it takes 17 witnesses to pass a HF, and that in the past they have indeed rejected a HF, it is all meaningless. Fix the witness system, allow accounts to only vote on 5 witnesses. This would show what witnesses are really concerned for the progress of steem and steemit. The users, would decide the direction. After all it is, (steemit), described on the steem.io intro page as an experiment. Let the people decide not 3 or 4 large accounts. What would the top twenty witnesses look like if the top 3 large witness vote accounts were limited to their first five choices? If everyone was limited to 5 choices?