So, I like to use my witness vote very carefully and consciously. I take that *duty* seriously. I am a political person, in the classic definition of the term 'politics', not the current muddled usage, which changes meaning depending on what is favorable each day.

My view about the topic is witnesses should make their thinking visible on what their purpose is on the chain. Why should I vote a witness?

Yes, I understand, it is like writing about yourself and can get fairly boring for some and can get just bunch of flowery words. But I think people can understand what is real and what is not.

Just my personal thoughts... 

It's time to review our witness mission and vision to Hive. Perhaps, they prepare a new introduction post for Hive Blockchain.

I believe that we will need a hard fork, eventually. We still have lots of witnesses who are on the old network (Chain ID issue) that showing up in ours. We have thousands if not ten thousands of accounts voting for witnesses who stopped being a witness long, long time ago. 

### **Decaying Witness Votes**

It is a controversial topic for most, that is for sure. Is it necessary? Yes. I believe so. There are many witnesses who just went away, there are witnesses who announced they are retiring, there are witnesses who publicly supported the old chain. There are people who know this and revoked their votes, there are people who know this but didn't or forgot to revoke their votes and then there are inactive accounts. The latter being the most prominent, as far as I know.


As you said @pharesim, voting for someone who is already in the top 20 might not make so much difference in comparison to voting for someone lets say placed in somewhere 100-120. Due to the inactive account votes, old chain witnesses and votes they are placed far, far lower. Even though they are actively supporting the network with the latest version. If, in the first place, there was a hard fork decaying these votes. Those people wouldn't even be in spots 100-120, to be honest. 

>if someone is high "enough" up in the list in your opinion, they don't need your vote. Use it to support those who are underappreciated, not those who are famous and in a top position already.

Never thought of that before. I guess I'm going to unvote those few on top for the underdogs I love.

It's hard to know, or even imagine what a witness may choose to do in a controversial situation from my perspective.  Is there a short path to gaining insight on how the witnesses have handled things lately?  What they've supported or possibly "overlooked?"  These are the things I want to be educated on before voting for witnesses here on hive.

I was going to wait for a week more or so before switching some witness votes from Top 20 to lower ranks. I might do it sooner after all, it seems no one is trying to overturn the consensus on Hive after the split.

Agree, and the right thing to do in terms of our votes. The strategic-save-the-chain voting is over. I've moved a few of mine around. Would be good for some of the witnesses to update their Witness links as well. Many of them are out of date and still talk about Steem or are a even couple of years old (I realize there's a lot going on and not priority at the moment, but it should be kept up to date). Good advice - thanks!

Good points and good for thought! 

Thanks for all your excellent effort!

Cheers.

Good post here pharesim.

I'd love to see some votes shifted around.

(I am a witness, please vote for me)

I hope many people will read your post and vote wisely :)

This is well written! 

After the recent debacle on steem, I guess everyone realized the power of their votes. But the responsibility continues as community participation will have a profound effect on how hive moves ahead. I hope everyone reads and understands this post.

BTW @pharesim (with my other account @norbu) was one of the first witnesses I voted for way back in 2016, and have continued to do so till now!

True, because there are those people who didn't care about the value of their votes. Just by voting anyone seems fine to them. In my case I voted it myself but I changed it when I saw a worthy proxy who loves the platform. 

Yeah, I'am already doing this.

Thanks for reminding us.

> First off, there's no more reason to use all 30 votes. You don't lose out on anything, 

That is absolutely not true. 

Let's say that we have 1 account with 100k vests and 20 accounts with 10k vests each. In theory the bigger account should be able to determine only one third of the witness positions but if the smaller accounts only vote for a few of them it becomes very easy for the large stakeholder to control the top 20.

That is the reason why the freedom account was determining the top spots before and why Justin Sun was able to retake control with only 10%+ of the coin supply (the amount held by Binance).

Suggesting that there is nothing to lose by not using all of the witness votes is short sighted at best (in light of the recent events).

Agreed this is basically how I see it also and especially on the proposals Anyx is good, I do like the Peakd one because I use their service but think I may have to review that again especially if we can get some good competition going for said "services" 

It's a good idea to review witness votes from time to time and I did so yesterday.

>Second, if someone is high "enough" up in the list in your opinion, they don't need your vote. Use it to support those who are underappreciated, not those who are famous and in a top position already.

Even though as a backup witness, saying so is in one way against my own interests, I  disagree with this.  As we just saw on Steem, the network's security is higher when top 20 consensus witnesses (that are worthy of being there) have a high amount of stake voting for them.

Already done! Good call. 

Readjusting my witness votes is one of the first things I did after the fork.

I want to start doing more due diligence in choosing whom I vote for. I kind of do already, but I'd like to be more thourough.

Regarding the "overpriced" proposals, the way I see it, I would like for those working on important projects to be paid enough to make it their full time job (depending on what the project is). If something needs a full time dev, then I think it makes sense that the proposal would be equal to a full time dev's salary.

Thanks for reminding, do we have a page where we can vote directly after logging in once using the active key ? I did review some of my votes, but I had to use the hivesigner each time. 

Thank you for posting this.

Good to see this and I'm in complete agreement with your sentiments. I'll strongly consider making you a proxy or at the very least voting for you again. I dropped all but 2 witness votes weeks ago and before that had no more than 13.. I'm really not a fan of many of the consensus witnesses.. If any..  Are you aware of this cease and desist order against the use of hive ? I must ask because whether or not the case has merit, which it likely does,the fact remains that it's extremely incompetent to hastily push a project through without consulting professionals or a legal advisor.  Especially after the confusion of steam/steem/steemit in the past.. Adding yet another easily avoidable failing does nothing to rekindle any faith in the governance that landed us in the outer belt of blockchain.. As of now steemit is ranked 17k on Alexa and I can only imagine the hive sites such as peakd are abysmal.

Also please understand I've been rightfully bitching n moaning about the lack of mobile first design approach on this antiquated platform and any support would be contingent on a witness also realising the futility of creating anything without easy to navigate mobile dapps. Thanks for not being like the other morons. 

There's too many people voting for 'dead' witnesses that pushes good people down the list.