As mentioned in the response to both aggro and acidyo, once information is shared to third parties, there is no longer any expectation of privacy. This is true the world over. This is especially true regarding what we feel is poor character based on a decision to withdraw support from others based solely on their proximity to Cork, rather than the merit of their achievements.
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My opinion is based on my experience managing my non-steemit community and from constantly getting kicked out of small groups where administrators lose their heads over the most absurd little things.
You're the one who shared this information. You, not third parties. You went out of scope of the agreement you suggested yourself. This does take credibility away from you.
Regardless of having shared the conversation, you had already lost a lot of credibility from a community administration point of view, which requires not siding with anyone or anything but the community itself.
Since you contradicted this in one group, it shows you might do it again somewhere else, and as a witness, it could mean steemit. Risks can overcome benefit. This is political reasoning on it's own.
Last but not least, you could have reached out to each person on the list individually instead of posting. This also has weight in witness voting.
Giving people potentially unwanted exposure, choosing a politically incorrect shortcut to deal with the situation, and of course naming names. All of these are potential deal breakers depending on their personal preference. You might lose further votes because of this.
Being a witness is a really big deal.
We are a third party. The conversation was between Gmuxx and Aggroed. Again, once a conversation leaves the confines of two people and is shared to a third party, expectation of privacy in those communications disappears.
What have we contradicted?
As for the users on this list, we have reached out to a number of them, both individually and as a group. Some never replied. Others were less than reticent. However, I would argue that exposing an attempt to pressure voters by exerting undue influence for political reasons is something that is worthy of community awareness. Given the communication shared by Aggroed and Gmuxx, one can easily draw a logical inference between the two.
As for the unwanted exposure and naming names, voting/unvoting witness is visible on the blockchain and publicly available through a number of different sources. Granted, this information is collated in a particular format here, but all of this information is publicly available.
We agree that being a witness is a really big deal, which is why when we discovered that there was the possibility of coercive influence on people's witness votes, we decided to go forward with this. Prior to this, as stated, we made people who could be impacted by Aggro's decision aware of it, in the event they were not already aware. We made no public statement at the time this happened.
Giving it further thought, your post is very fair, because it's about publically disclosing the political reasoning (or lack thereof) from huge witness votes, which is relevant to steemit users in general.
Even if I could guess their motives, it is nothing but guessing afterall.