The Difference of Votes and "Witness Votes"

Today we are going to talk about voting, a thing that you all know you can do to make a certain post you like go up in the list of good posts and even trend. Voting on posts and comments gives rewards, something many of you have learned in the short time you've been here.

Witness Votes are as important, if not even more, on Steemit

What you may have missed or overlooked is that Steemit are maintained by ordinary users, something called Witnesses. These witnesses are the backbone of the system, making the whole thing tick. They are the people that every 3 second make sure that all your votes, comments and articles are recorded to the ledger of Steem.

When a Witness talks about "Voting for Witness" they don't talk about giving your vote to the post, like you always do. They talk about voting on their name as a Witness. This is done on the Witness Voting Page located at https://steemit.com/~witnesses

When voting on anyone you don't drain your funds in any way, nor do you drain your voting power that you have on Steem. You have exactly 30 votes for witnesses that can be given out to anyone at any time and revoked at any time as well if you think they no longer are doing a good job. Your vote is equal to the power you have on Steemit, each vote is 100% and can't be tweaked like votes on Steemit Posts.

Who to vote for??

In general what you can do to make sure you're voting for a good witness are to use the steemd witness details page, where you can see all the default settings they have. Determining if a Witness is good for your views can be difficult, but here are five criteria that I use for determining that.

• Is the name crossed over/greyed out?

If they are greyed out this means they are no longer running a witness node and they should not be voted for.

• Are they running the latest version of Steem Node?

You should see that they are running the latest version and if they are behind they should not be voted for.

• Are they using different parameters than other users?

You can look for APR, Price Feed Bias, Block Size and Setup Fees. If they are using different values than most others you should go look in their feed or on the #witness-category to see if they post something about it. It could be a good reason they are.

• Are they missing blocks?

The Steemd page shows the total of missed blocks, a number that can be very high due to something in the very start. You can use the SteemDB page to see if the witness have missed any recent blocks by going to steemdb.com/@<witness-name>/missed.

• Are they posting anything in the #witness-category?

And last, but not least, you should see if they are posting anything in the #witness-category. Here a witness can post about updates and their view of things. What they have done and their future plans.

You should always make sure to read the page they have linked to for their witness, something that you also can see on the witness details page by clicking on the little blue clip in the URL section.

Remember to Un-vote!

You should ALWAYS go trough your list of votes at least every month, to make sure they are doing a good job. If they are doing a good job is entirely up to you as a user. You may have different perspectives or criteria, and you are the judge!

Manual Voting

You can vote manually by heading over to the page we mentioned before, https://steemit.com/~witnesses, and either vote directly by clicking on the arrow OR by typing their name in the first text box with the "Vote" button on. You can type in any name in the voting box, as long as they have applied for witness.

Remember to use all your 30 votes

Voting Using a Proxy

If you feel that you are very unsure, lack of time or just think that someone else can do a good job of voting you can give them permission to vote for you.

This essentially works with that the power you have in voting is delegated to another user, giving them more power to vote for witnesses. This does NOT give them any more power on Steem when it comes to voting for posts and comments, only when they vote with their 30 witness votes.

To see what a user has voted for you can go to steemdb.com/@<user-name>/witness and click on "Votes Cast".

Go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses as well and type any users name in the input box with the "Proxy" button.

Use Your Power, It's All Yours!

 Support me as witness on Steemit.com and BitShares

You can also use me a Proxy VoterSteemit: sc-steemit
BitShares: sc-ol
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