Ah ok, yep, I see now, thanks for clarifying.
I'd say 6 months is probably the shortest time and 1 year is probably the max time with this. Meet in the middle at 9 haha.
I guess then the next pinch point would be how you'd notify someone with regard to their witness vote assuming the user is still active. Having a notification/comment like what Hivebuzz does with its comment notifications could be useful but if it's done with each witness vote and someone votes 30 witnesses in quick succession, could get annoying/spammy.
Perhaps just a one off notification every 9 months to say "review your witness votes" or words to that effect.
It could be decayed from last vote made. So for example, if you vote or unvote anyone, then the decay time to could be reset for all your votes. This makes the tacit assumption that when you vote for any witness, you've given some thought to your existing witness votes.
Yeah I like that idea and think it would work a lot better. There'll always have to be some assumptions made but with this approach, if someone is moving a witness vote around, they must have grasped at least a basic concept of governance and witness voting on Hive.
Is this idea/proposal something that will be brought up after the upcoming Hard Fork? Be good to brainstorm this and get some additional ideas.