RE: A fundamental change to my witness voting behavior

Thank you for your willingness to speak openly about Witness Voting at the highest level.

As a new witness (teamed with @paulag and using @steemcommunity as the name), I can see it being harder to change a profitable approach, than it is to start off with your values in place and nothing to lose financially.

We have opted for a few 'policies' which are almost guaranteed to block us many larger votes (no bid-bot owners, no bid-bot delegates), but as we are just beginning, we can only move upwards - and we will do this without ever feeling we bought it, traded it, etc.

Your decision to drop Jerry fits in with our approach, but of course, bribing other witnesses, and trying to sell free materials crossed him off my list long before I ever thought about becoming a Witness.

On reading @lukestokes' excellent reply, I concede that many newer witnesses lack the proof of experience and knowledge, and we are no different here. As a seasoned witness, I would not take lightly the decision to cast votes down to lower tiers until they has been on the block for a little while, and perhaps actively responded sharply to an outage - we have not had to do this thus far.

In our favor I feel though is the community aspect of which Luke also alludes to. We currently both run engagement competitions, and I would suggest that as far as text in comments on the blockchain over the past month and of the year to date, my numbers a fairly solid. @krnel recently used my competition to distribute some of SP out to accounts he could trust to share amongst the community.

I'm well aware of the number of top/mid range witnesses that have probably read this post, the lack of comments from them speaks volumes and probably indicates that initially and sadly, there will be not a great line forming behind you - Once again, thank you for standing up for your values, and for what you see as the best interests of the platform.

Asher

Edit: Sorry, just to add that I would really like to see any commencement of talks regarding votes casts by 'dead accounts'. Clearly this is more detrimental to the older witnesses, almost in a sliding scale from the oldest down i assume, but it is just seemingly unfair, and not right to have votes cast permanently from a user who is unable to change that vote ever again. How / where can this be raised? Thank you.