Witnesses Are Extremely Important.
Anyone can become a witness but far from everyone should do it, because truth is, that there are good and bad witnesses. Just like there are good and bad leaders. I see witnesses as one type of leaders, as they are of utmost importance for the functionality and growth of Steem.
Other types of leaders are users who're in other sorts of leader positions. Either by their involvement in different type of communities or other things that affects people around them. I won't talk about other leaders than witnesses in this article, and my main focus here will be on one specific witness. I will talk about 
Before we continue, I should tell you that I wrote a similar piece one year ago about another witness, and I am in no way affiliated with FTG. This is not in any way sponsored and this should not be seen as anything besides my personal experience and my own opinions.
I currently vote for 23 different witnesses at the time I'm writing this, and
I personally want people to be open and public about things they do, and it's by far the easiest way for me to decide whether I will vote or not. It is also just as easy to remove a witness vote as adding one, so it's not the end of the world if I'm voting for "the wrong witness".
As a voter, there are mainly three things I can do to find out who to vote for.
I can go to steemd and check the list of witnesses, so I know who the witnesses are. The list only shows the top 100 witnesses but you can also find witness applications/announcements there for the top 100 witnesses, and even though the majority of them are not up-to-date, it might give you the necessary details you need to decide whether to vote for them or not.
My second option is to read witnesses contributions (posts) and/or to follow them. I personally prefer this, as I want people to be open and public about their agenda and goals. It's obviously not mandatory in any way and I wouldn't remove a witness vote for the sake of them not being active authors, but it makes it easier for me to get a "feeling" about the person and ultimately, it makes it easier for me to decide if I should vote for them or not.
The third option, which basically goes hand-in-hand with the second option, is to follow 
That being said, I find it easier to decide who to vote for, as long as I know what they do and what they're trying to achieve. Some people might disagree with me on this, as they might think that I should do my own research and such, but my bet is that the majority of users on Steem are "non-experts" and here for other reasons than to become some sort of "blockchain-guru", so I still think it's up to the witnesses to tell (show) me why they want my vote.
Enough About That...
I wouldn't go so far to call myself a "fan", but ever since I saw the Stewards Of Gondor-initiative (SOG) by
Even though we're not alike, it became clear that we have things in common. I have always loved the pay-it-forward-attitude for instance, and I have always tried to support those around me in various ways. What really amazed me, was the almost ridiculous generosity. He simply delegated most of his own stake to others, so these other users (the stewards) could spread the wealth across the platform and reward thousands of Steemians from all over the world.
He delegated his stake without asking for anything in return, meanwhile other Steemians delegated their stake to bidbots and votesellers for a daily/weekly/monthly fee. He was one of the first large stakeholders I saw, that were doing something for the greater good, without thinking of themselves at first hand, and without trying to squeeze as high ROI as possible.
I'm not entirely sure for how long the SOG existed (perhaps someone will enlighten me), but I was given the opportunity to serve as an SOG, and throughout that entire time (I think it was 10 weeks in total), I spread my votes across the platform, rewarded more users than I'd ever done prior to that and I felt stronger and more motivated than I had did for a very long time.
I started out with an incredible delegation of 5000 Steem Power, which was about 3 times more than my entire account and after just a few weeks (two or three if I remember correctly), I got an additional delegation of 1000 Steem Power. He topped his own 5K delegation and made it 6k in total.
In a pure pay-it-forward-approach and with an itchy-feeling of giving, I successfully reached 1000 outgoing upvotes per week, (except for 2 or 3 where I missed my goal with just a handful of votes).
- It was the best experience I've ever had. Period.
However,
I loved his intentions long before I had the opportunity to become an SOG. I was thankful for his behaviour and actions long before I started to receive support and I was waiting for him to become a Steem witness for a long period of time before he finally announced that he would become a witness.
So, even though I am biased today, I was just like any other random user out there, who saw this awesome Steemians generosity and I felt a connection. It was that connection, the things I felt we had in common, that lead me to my decision. I would vote for his witness if and whenever he decided to become one.
Everyone is obviously entitled to their own opinions, but I can't understand how
