When I joined Steemit last month, I already knew a little bit about Witnesses thanks to reading around when commuting to work. However, what I wasn't sure of is how to decide who to vote for, I didn't know any of them. The only Witness I knew of was the one from whom I read a lot of helpful articles: @jerrybanfield. But I had 30 votes that I can cast, so having one name would not be enough. Then I stumbled on another article by Jerry mentioning about vote proxy. A vote proxy is basically another Steemit user to which you give the permission to vote for you (it's not exactly like that but that's the idea), it's a little bit like a curation trail but for Witness vote. So by setting @jerrybanfield as my witness vote proxy, whoever Jerry votes for, I will be automatically voting for them too.
Today after 32 days of blogging and reading on Steemit, joining various Discord channels, I'm starting to see more and more names appearing and have an understanding of what they bring to the community. So I've decided to remove Jerry as my vote proxy (sorry mate, nothing personal, lol) and start making my own choice. Here are my selected witnesses (in the order in which they appear on https://steemit.com/~witnesses:
- @gtg (aka @gandalf) because I'm setting up my own Witness server and the steem-in-a-box tool I'm using is using his blockchain file
- @curie because I love the work this group is doing, curating high-quality content and rewarding them
- @ausbitbank for helping the Australian community and #teamaustralia
- @someguy123 for the amazing work on steem-in-a-box which made my life so much easier on setting up a Witness server using Docker.
- @aggroed and @pharesim for supporting PAL and the Minnow Support project
- @clayop for the huge support for the Korean community
- @furion for his work on SteemData which I'm using for their MongoDB version of the Steem blockchain
- @jerrybanfield for all the useful articles and videos that helped a minnow like me understand more about the system
- @utopian-io for their support for the Open Source community
- @drakos for his work on the Steem Chat #Help channel
- @teamsteem for supporting me on my intro post boosting my reputation level to 41. Guillaume is also one of my favorite authors when it comes to articles explaining how Steemit works and how to write a good introduction post.
- @patrice for his work with @steemcleaners
- @privex for their server hosting service at https://www.privex.io/ which is often recommended for running a Witness
I voted the for the following witnesses just to fill up the 30 slots, I picked them because I recognize their name, although I can't remember what their contribution is:
That's make it 20 for this time. I will study more the other witnesses (including those in the 50-100 rank) and will vote for the last 10 which will include myself (hopefully) ;-)
