Tips and Guidelines 💡: Voting for Witnesses

in #witness-category7 years ago (edited)
Voting for witnesses is an important part of the Steem platform. Many of you may have heard the word "witness" being thrown around, but still aren't sure what it means and what to do with it. Fear not, Drakos the Jolly Pirate has docked his ship today, and will be taking shore leave to guide you on this witness business.

FAQ, FAQ, FAQ!

Before I get to the witness talk, I will teach you the first rule in Drakos' book of knowledge: read the FAQ! It's not as long as the Ferengi 285 Rules of Acquisition, and it won't take you months to learn it. The FAQ is easy to find, click the "hamburger" navigation menu icon ☰ in the top right corner:

And voilà, magic. Can you see the word FAQ? Good.

Everything you need to know about Steem is plainly explained there, but unfortunately not many minnows take the time to read it, at least once. So please, always refer to it when you're in doubt, before asking questions. If you can't find it in the FAQ, then you can go to the help channel on Steemit.Chat for further assistance.

What Is A Witness?

The FAQ has a section that deals with the subject: What are Steem witnesses? Witnesses are elected by the community to "witness" the production of blocks on the Steem network. In other words, they run and maintain nodes (servers) that generate the blocks containing your posts, transactions, upvotes, comments, etc., which are added to the blockchain. Without witness nodes, there is no Steem blockchain.

Who To Vote For?

There are a few hundred witnesses at the moment, and each has a different level of involvement on the Steem platform. They range from developers, programmers, techies, engineers, to regular people, from all over the world. Each contributes to the community in his/her own ways. Witnesses usually post in the #witness-category (https://steemit.com/created/witness-category). They introduce themselves by describing their projects and how they envision their contribution to Steem. Also, they write about their server/witness updates. The contributions are diverse. They can be technical, community-driven, artistic, etc. So whatever sings to your heart, vote for it.

Voting For Witnesses 🗳️

In order to support the deeds of your chosen witnesses, vote for them. But deeds aren't the only important factor. In fact, witnesses are expected to run a stable and reliable server to avoid missing blocks and keep the network healthy.

Here are few clarifications about witness voting:

  • The vote is not permanent. You can shuffle your votes by unvoting witnesses if you find them lacking, or if you need to vote for new ones that you would like to encourage.
  • Voting for witnesses is different from upvoting posts. It does not cost you anything and does not reduce your voting power.
  • You can vote for up to 30 witnesses.

How To Vote For A Witness?

Before you vote, two things:

Click the navigation menu icon ☰ in the top right corner and select "Vote for Witnesses". This will take you to this page https://steemit.com/~witnesses. The witnesses are ranked according to the total Steem Power of their voters. Only the top 50 are shown on that page. You can vote for them by clicking the chevron up circle. When voted for, the chevron will turn blue, like this:

If your witness is not in the top 50, scroll to the bottom of the page. You will see the VOTE box. Enter your witness name (without the @) and press VOTE once.

Once voted, their name will appear under the VOTE box, with a blue chevron next to it. This means they're voted for. Many users click that blue chevron, but this will UNVOTE them. So don't press it, unless you're shuffling votes as I explained earlier.


NOTE: Sometimes people cast their vote and consecutively unvote! So, after you finish voting, refresh the page (press F5) and make sure your votes are locked in.

Proxy Voting

Some users prefer not to trouble themselves with witness voting. In that case, you can choose a proxy that will vote for witnesses for you. By doing so, you will RESET your current witness selection and remove all your previous votes.

Conclusion

Voting for witnesses is as important as writing posts. Supporting your witnesses helps motivate them to continue providing their knowledge and contribution to the Steem community. There are many users who haven't voted for witnesses yet, check @lukestokes' How Many Steemians Are NOT Voting for a Witness? I Found the Answer!

Together we make Steem better


Proud member and delegator of the @minnowsupport project.
Join us on https://discord.gg/GpHEEhV

MSPPAL


Follow
🗳 Check out my Steem witness application and vote for me. 🗳
Thank you.

Vote

Alternatively, you can issue this command in cli_wallet (after unlocking it)

vote_for_witness "YOURACCOUNT" "drakos" true true

Sort:  

I voted for you @drakos
Thanks for being super supportive and a real person on Steemit.com

Booooooooooring.
Yet another post about witnesses?
Do we need that?

Yes, we do.
Please take a look at @lukestokes report on How many of us are not voting for witnesses.

SPOILER ALERT
Way too many.

It's not only about politics. It's about reliability and security of the network.

How to choose your candidates?
Wisely.
Future of your platform and your stake here depends on that.
There are reliable witnesses that are doing their job for months.
There are also newcomers that are very promising.
Look at their posts, talk with them on steemit.chat.
It's not the ultimate advice, use your own "6th sense".
(No, don't vote for dead people).

Sorry to bore you Oh Mighty Gandalf 🙇 This was mainly a guide on how to vote for witnesses, because many people still don't know how and why they should vote. For me and you it's a trivial task, but for newbies it's not. I'm often asked about it, so to avoid repeating myself, I will refer them to this post. Thanks for mentioning @lukestokes's post, I was writing late and missed it, I will add it for the sake of completion.

I was just kidding of course, it is very important to repeat it over and over again.

Oh Mighty Gandalf!
You're so serious all the time, it's hard to determine when you're joking 🤣

@drakos very informative post about voting on witnesses. Thank you, sir!!
It is so important for users to vote. I was very surprised to learn only 7.5% of steemit users are currently voting on witnesses.

Guy's we need your votes. Your votes count.. now please follow @drakos instructions and get out there and place your votes!!!

@drakos you know you have my vote buddy!

Ahhh, just the information I needed :) and yes, I haven't gotten around to reading the FAQ properly. I shall make a point of that :):) Thanks to @siragrays for resteeming

Glad it was helpful to you.

Ty for this nice sum-up and voted. :)

I am Groot! :D

Can't be posted about to much!

Great post @drakos. We can't post to much about this. Not until we reach at least one vote from 50% of the active users I think we can be somewhat satisfied.

Voting is an important part of Steemit and doing so on good and active witnesses is not less important.

Keep up the good work!

Whenever you would like to know more personal information about witnesses, a certain steemian has done a few interviews with them :) Take a wild guess who..Don't worry @drakos, we will get to yours soon enough

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Great post! resteemed and upvoted!!! Cheers!

Thanks a lot. Throw me a vote while you're at it 😉

i still don't understand how they or I benefit from me voting for them

a Newbee thanks I got alot to learn.

Thanks for clearing this up for me @drakos. You have my vote!

just found this after i posted my own personal experience with some witnesses!!!! and now... you have my vote too! :)

I will upvote this - but since it's past its payout - i'll leave a tip! simple to show additional appreciation! I've just now edited my post to include a link back to this incredibly clear and helpful guide!!!! I hope that it helps to lift the fog for more minnows. hahahaha there is A LOT of info here - I think it's overwhelming for people to know where to start, who to trust, where to look! But, if they keep learning one new thing each day - it will eventually all fall into place :)

Thanks again! and if i see you around - i'll be sure to say "hi" and "thanks" personally! :)

Hi @drakos! You have received 0.1 SBD tip + 0.01 SBD @tipU from @dreemsteem :)

I have voted for you, a long time ago, but I had been wondering about the proxy vote. I had the impression that giving the proxy vote to a witness helps that witness, supporting him or her in some extra way.

Thanks to your above explanation, I see that I did well in taking my proxy vote back (many months ago)...but to be honest, I do not think the entire concept was well thought out.

If it had been possible for us to say, this and this is who I want to vote, I want to keep another five for my use, bu I am not likely to use the rest so, I'm giving 5 proxies to this witness and another five to that one...and so on. Surely that would unlock the value of those votes, without removing the witnesses I want?

Don't know if I made sense - sometimes ignorance makes us think we know what we are talking about, so if that is the case - my apologies.

You can either pick your witnesses and vote manually (up to 30 witnesses), or set a proxy. You can give your proxy to anyone, it doesn't have to be another witness.

Okay, you obviously did not understand my comment, since all you did is repeat knowledge I already did show I have.

It's okay, was just an idea...I thought we are encouraged to look for ways to improve steem/steemit

I know this post is from last year, but I appreciated the clear and straightforward way you explained witnesses and voting, @drakos.

The banana approves.

HAHAHA 🍌

Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by drakos from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, and someguy123. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.

If you like what we're doing please upvote this comment so we can continue to build the community account that's supporting all members.