Hi there @davemccoy, haven't seen your name pop up in a while; nice to know you're still here.
This entire affair seems to have become so much bigger than it really needs to be, and my worry these days — speaking as a very small "fish," even after more than three years here — is that all this strife will cause Steem to self-destruct far more readily than mismanagement by a Justin Sun or a Steem "Old Guard."
I didn't land here because it was "new and exciting," I came here with almost 20 years of participating and contributing to "user generated content for rewards" sites, and even in my very first intro post, I observed that it was highly likely that Steemit (as we called it back then...) would FAIL due to greed and petty power battles. And now, here we are.
I don't like being told "how to vote," either...
I do put a fair amount of stock in track records, however. They tend to tell us — when we do the research and the proverbial "math" — something about the people we are dealing with. For example, I didn't choose to NOT vote for Donald Trump because of his claimed objectives, I chose to NOT vote for him as a result of assessing his character through 30 years of public records of his dealings, from reading his book "The Art of the Deal" to examining the circumstances of his business dealings, but failed and successful.
Whereas I like some of our "original" top-20 witnesses, and not others... my "problem" is that Justin Sun comes to Steem with a LONG trail of dubious and sketchy dealings behind him that — at least for me — add up to the Steem social content platforms which I really enjoy and like pretty much being erased and replaced by an ocean of gambling dapps. My "Selfish" interests here are about not wanting to see YET ANOTHER content site being replaced by complete garbage AND having to relocate my content ONCE AGAIN and pretty much start from scratch... ONCE AGAIN.
In a sense, it's just a variation on the old *"WalMart vs small town main street." Maybe it makes me an obsolete relic that I prefer Main Street over WalMart... and so be it. My point being, I fear — all other nonsense aside — that Justin sees this as just another blockchain property to be raided and flipped for profit... and even if I don't agree with the "top witnesses," I'm going to stand against that scenario, in my own small way.
And no, I am NOT telling you "how to vote," Dave!
Hey @denmarkguy, yes its been awhile since we spoke! So thanks for the visit and for your thoughts for sure :)
I appreciate your viewpoint and believe you are taking a reasonable and thoughtful vote. I don't mind that people vote for the current Steem Witnesses, in fact I would say I'm definitely in the minority amongst my friends. Most people see it how you see it (ie we like how the steem ecosystem is, so we don't want JS to come in and change it). I do get that point and would never try to change someone from thinking that way.
I personally see it differently because I didn't like how Steem was run and felt that it wasn't worth it anymore (for me) and I felt it was going to die over time. That's why I quit posting stuff and "caring". I saw too many people that I felt were awesome leave out of disgust, and realized in my mind that things would never change (because of the man behind the curtain that controlled things had no interest in the little guys). I had hope initially that JS might inject money, people, and better governance than what we had.
Of course I have no idea how anything will turn out. With the bad blood now from the way in which everything was handled, anything is possible. And I mean anything.
So I respect how you are voting, and however it turns out I hope that our community will stay together after its all finished. I do hope the best for everyone here, and especially for the cool people that are passionate about what the Steem blockchain represents.
Thanks again for the explanation of how you voted, without "telling me" how to vote. I only wish everyone took that approach, I think the negativity would be a lot less elevated.
Best wishes to you however it turns out @denmarkguy! :)