FknMayhem Witness Householding August 2018
Baron de Coubertin, the founder of the International Olympic Committee said: “The essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.”
Being born and having grown up in one of the few countries on this planet where voting is mandatory, I carefully consider my witness votes here on Steem and occasionally have a cleaning round. Being a minority stake holder, I am under no illusion that anybody cares (too much) about my vote, yet it is important that we participate in electing our governance, even if only because it requires to take some time and consider our vote, do some due diligence even.
Another reason of course is to be able to say that one didn’t support a specific witness when things go awry, or can learn from it rather than the easy cop out “That’s why I don’t vote”. By geographic origin I’m biased about the importance of elections and actively participating, participating to hopefully the healthiest possible governance - even if the process may be flawed.
After several months it was time for another round of Steem household chores and in recent weeks I have actively bean tweaking/updating my witness votes. Looking now at the list of witnesses I support and trying to think back some months, I think almost half of my votes have shifted, that also influenced by some excellent witnesses who left the platform or deactivated their node.
Additionally, for the first time I have tried to stick to the principle of not supporting more than 5 witnesses in the top 20, thus helping smaller witnesses. Lastly, if a witness is in the governance (or top 50) and I know they’re interested in graphene tribalism they campaigned for EOS block producer or are active in the EOS scene, I mercilessly ditched my support. I truly believe that the Steemosphere will require very dedicated witnesses, witnesses who have no interest spreading themselves thinly.
How Do I Vote?
I currently vote on 23 witnesses and most can be put in a specific group of “contributor types” to Steem: dev, community builder/organizer, warrior for clean, and “miscellany”. Let’s have a look at the 23 witnesses I support and in which category they belong for me when I decided to support them.
Some witnesses may technically belong in multiple categories but the following list explains why they received my vote.
Keeping Steem Clean
@anyx, @arcange, @patrice, @pjau, @themarkymark
With he exception of @patrice, four people have newly received my witness vote - one being a re-entry - and that because of their relentless focus on cleaning up the Steem blockchain. Cleaning up from spam, plagiarism, faucet accounts, and phishing.
But Mayhem, @themarkymark is a bot operator!
I know and between us, while most who follow me know how I feel about bots, removing my witness vote from “Malcom Reynolds” was one of the stupidest things I ever did. Not because he knows his Firefly .gifs no but because he is a relentless fighter of spam, plagiarism, and content spinner abusers. @themarkymark maintains one of the largest blacklists on Steem, all abusers who tried to not only fool their audience but also maximize their profits.
With a manually curated blacklist, built and maintained for more than half a year already, containing more than 5,300 abusers at the time of writing, themarkymark definitely has shown that he cares about Steem. Despite being a bidbot operator. He also maintains multiple nodes.
All four others are all very active in the @steemcleaners community. Very active, main operators, (co-)founders, pillars of said community.
If you care about the rewardpool and keeping steem clean, all five deserve your witness vote.
Devs
@asbear, @dragosroua, @gtg, @justyy, @mahdiyari, @netuoso, @reggaemuffin, @someguy123, @steempress
I have a weak spot for devs, always have had and I think that in the evolution of the Steemosphere devs play one of the most important roles. Not only are devs important to the development and maintenance of the Steem blockchain, but as Steem evolves always more towards the SMT platform, devs play a critical role in the future of the Steemosphere because without devs there will be no apps attracting new users and growing our “own Internet”.
Not everyone may know every name on that list but most of those names are very active and can help Steem expand its reach.
@asbear is the developer of Steempayco a mobile Steem payment solution which adopting potential worldwide.
@justyy may not be known by everyone but aside from being an active contributor to the Asian Steemscene he also maintains several Steem tools at his Hello ACM site.
@mahdiyari is probably one of the most under-supported witnesses as developer of the hugely popular SteemAuto
@steempress is a new witness, maintained by @howo and @fredrikaa who started the @steempress-io project. SteemPress allows WordPress bloggers to automatically submit their content to Steem blockchain, already supporting thousands of posts every week. Both howo and fredrikaa are going to start working full-time on SteemPress this month. The SteemPress project is without a doubt one of the potentially most disruptive apps/projects on the Steem blockchain.
Community Builders/Projects
@ausbitbank, @drakos, @neoxian, @noblewitness, @ocd-witness
Why did I throw @ausbitbank and @drakos in here? Also @neoxian?
All three contribute massively to retention of Steemians because of their (active/automated) curation or support to Steemians. Many would miss their occasional upvotes and services, as much as @pharesim’s updates will be missed in the Steemosphere.
Like him or not but while his delivery may sometimes not be the best - neither is mine - @sircork is an absolutely dedicated and massive community builder. He is why @noblewitness receives my support. YouAreHope is all that needs be said about that.
Supporting @ocd-witness is an obvious no-brainer. Aside from the support @ocd gives the community, OCD has also led to many Steemians receiving occasional further upvotes from both @acidyo and @anomadsoul. If you care about retention and health of the community, an awesome project like @ocd deserves your witness vote and you would be unwelcoming to new Steemians if you didn’t support @ocd-witness.
Miscellany
@krnel, @nextgencrypto, @personz, @pfunk
Mayhem, @personz isn’t a witness anymore since long!
I know but I have gotten to know @personz over many hours of chatting and I know some day he will return as a witness. I think the Steem blockchain will be better for it and thus the day he updates and re-activates his witness node... I don’t want to miss the party nor make him wait for my vote. No pressure, @personz, life first... witness next.
Like it not - feel free to agree to disagree, the Steem blockchain is a better place thanks to @nextgencrypto and his continued involvement. I don’t ask you approve of his style but the fight he fights for the Steem community is one of the good things happening on Steem.
@krnel is an absolute subjective witness vote but the man likes his privacy. So do I. Additionally, he also actively supports minnows and community projects. What’s not to like. Like his informationwar focus or don’t, I like it. Steem needs more writers and contributors like him.
@pfunk is one of the first witnesses on Steem (started as a miner) and an active supporter of especially the music community on Steem.
There’s more.
There are more witnesses I would like to support, especially in the Top 20 but to be entirely honest I prefer having the option to have witness votes available at any time. Not being listed here doesn’t mean you will never receive my vote or that I think badly of your work. Maybe I jsut haven’t discovered enough about you yet, maybe you didn’t yet show up on my radar.
Things I regret most as a voter: removing my witness vote from @pharesim, but that was done out of respect for his life choice, not having gotten to know the good @wackou did for the Steem community before he disabled his witness, and removing my witness vote from @teamsteem whom I think has other priorities in life in recent months. At least as much is visible from his Discord activities. No matter what, I wish all three the best and hope they find what they are looking for.
Real life above all! 🤘
Your Turn
If you haven’t yet voted, go vote. If you’re an active witness voter, always make sure that you don’t vote on any dead witnesses or support any witnesses who have gone off the rails as happened recently.
This $hit matters, the governance decides the future of the Steem blockchain. Your future.
While I hope this post gives some insight in both myself and what I think is important to our community, make your own choice and make it an educated one. Voting any of those 23 witnesses mentioned here is not a negative to the Steem blockchain and its future. It’s definitely better than not vote at all.
Even supporting only one witness can make a difference. Your vote does matter.
Apologies for all tags, dear witnesses, but I hope you also appreciate them.
PS: If anybody thinks having any witness recommendations, recos which fit the scope of my selections made and listed in this post... drop them in the comments. Especially if they aren’t in top 20 already.
Yes, I know @utopian-io is missing in the list, thanks for the reminder. ;)