Why Voting for Witnesses
All users of Steem should user their voting power to support up to 30 witnesses, or they can delegate their voting power to anyone else in the community.
Witnesses run servers that maintains the blockchain that runs Steemit.com, Busy.org, DTube and many more services that expand every day. They are normal human beings and people, just like everyone else here on Steem, and they spend both money and time to support a community and service they believe in.
Many witnesses also run public access nodes and other heavy services that requires even greater resources.
That is why you should vote for witnesses you think does a good job in running a witness server node
Voting and Steem Explained
Voting on Steem may be a little confusing at first, but it's actually quite simple if you know the terms we talk about.
First of all, every user gain STEEM and can lock this token as STEEM POWER. Voting on Witnesses is cast in something called votes and is usually presented as MV.
Each STEEM represents a value in VOTES, and shift a little by time. Today 492 STEEM is 1 MV, and can be seen on https://steemdb.com/.
Example
A user has 492 SP, giving them 1 MV voting power. This power is NOT diluted by voting and doesn't disappear or affect your earnings or account value, but is only a represented value of your share on the network.
Each vote the user gives on witnesses on the list will raise their trust by 1 MV.
Votes are instant and affects the witness trust as soon as the vote is cast. Removing a vote does the same time.
All users have 30 votes and you could say that this user then has the power of 30 MV (30 votes x 1 MV). This is why it's important to use all 30 votes to effectively use your right as a user on the network in voting.
How to Vote
Voting is very simple and is done right here on Steemit.com on https://steemit.com/~witnesses. There are 3 ways of using your voting power on this section.
1. Voting directly on any of the top 100 witnesses.
The witness page contains all the 100 most voted witnesses. This list also includes all that have disabled their nodes or aren't running as witness anymore. You can easily see if they are active or disabled. If a witness is disabled it could be because they are doing maintenance, or if the period is long, because they have stopped their witness.
By clicking on the up-arrow on each of the names in the list you can cast a vote.
Here is the current last witnesses of the list where we can see that some aren't running their nodes anymore, but still have many votes and is still on the list.
2. Voting for someone outside the top 100 witnesses.
Something that has always made it difficult for new witnesses to enter is because they aren't as easy to vote for as those on the list. Recent changes made the list show 100 witnesses instead of 50, but you may still wish to vote for a new witness that aren't on the list yet.
Steemian.info witness list has every single witness that is present on the network, including their current status. This is a great resource to start with exploring who to support outside the top 100 list.
Today you need at least ~3100 MV to enter the list of visible witnesses. As mentioned before, 1 MV = 492 STEEM, this means a user needs votes from the community of about 1 525 200 SP, just to enter the list of visible witnesses.
3. Proxy voting
If you think it's to difficult to decide, don't think your time is enough to find good witnesses, or just thing a friend of yours is better in finding out who is good and not, you can let someone else use your voting power.
As before, it's important to point out that doing this does NOT affect your earnings. You only delegate your vote weight on the network, not your wallet value
At the bottom of the page you can type in any name you think could do a better job at voting.
Clarification on Voting/Proxy and Delegating
The Steem network allows users to "Delegate" Steem to others. Casting votes or setting a proxy vote is not the same as delegating your Steem.
Using your vote on Steem does not affect your Steem Power in any way and you retain the same weight when you vote on Posts.
Voting on posts are NOT the same thing as voting for a witness on the witness page.
Support Active Witnesses
A few great resources for doing your research
Vote for me as a Witness
Do you Enjoy what I contribute to the community? Do consider voting for my Witness on Steemit or BitShares. On BitShares I would like to promote @fav as an excellent proxy.
By voting for me as a witness, you will support an active witness on various platforms. I'm a supporter of networks like Steem, BitShares, Gridcoin, Peerplays and Whaleshares.
My witness proposals: BitShares, Steemit, Whaleshares
Vote for sc-steemit on Steemit
sc-steemit on SteemitVote for sc-ol on BitShares
sc-ol on BitShares