It was a very enlightening discussion and with the tools, steemit links of witness reports and what they do and how the vestments of the voters affect the ranking of witnesses.
It is sad to know that most people don't even vote for witness and as high as 80% don't vote for witness.
It is a combination of not knowing who and what the specific witnesses do or even as basic as what a witness do at all.
Then there is the feeling of intimidation that one feels as you look at most of the witnesses reputation rating of usual at the high 60's and you look at your starting out reputation of lower than 45 and think they are gods.
Witnesses that has communities do a little better as they have community leaders pushing new people to vote for them. This is very important especially if you are not in the list of the top 50.
I admit when I first joined the platform I only knew about @steemgigs which is the the witness of @surpassinggoogle.
The rest of my votes I just clicked on the names in the top 50 without even knowing what they do.
Took me a couple of months before I even started reading and interacting with other witnesses.
I know fully utilize my witness votes and support people who have similiar causes as mine.
It is really important to educate and remind people the need to vote for witnesses.
Honestly it is not a good feeling to know but the vote of all the Minnows matters not. It is a waste of time to look into all the witnesses and what they do because only a few people control who is a top witness. The rest of us is like sand on a beach where everyone is looking for gold we matter not!If you have less than 500 k sp you dont matter here.
There is clearly a common theme here where users feel that they have difficulty accessing information about the witnesses in a way they find useful. How about something like this:
In addition to an enhanced list on the witness voting page that gives the technical data for each witness, we have a small avatar thumbnail that links to their profile, plus the link to their original witness application post AND a link to their latest witness update post(including a field that shows the date that the last update was published). This gives a well rounded overview of them for those who want to learn more and will not require any work from the witnesses since they should already be putting out updates anyway. The witnesses who are active and who are engaging the community will thus get recognition for that and voters will be able to hear from them, instead of guessing.
That is an awesome Idea and some that Steem Inc should implement when someone goes to the witness voting page.
Most people are lazy including me and the only reason why I researched on the witnesses was to help out a friend who was researching what the top 20 witnesses did.
It would be great to have their latest witness update and the tech data would be very helpful.
I was looking at https://steemian.info/witnesses and checking the number of votes of some of the witnesses and surprised on how low some are even if the communities they have are so large/ Although we all know that vestments are the kingmakers though.
This must become a joint project of the witnesses.