I vote for a bunch of witnesses and in contrary to how others might vote for witnesses, I have voted for various reasons, and often due to my personal assumption and experience with said user. My votes have basically been based on gut feeling and instinct. I have tried to see the true intentions, motives and their visions before I've decided to vote or not. (Which have resulted in different types of conversations multiple times in the past.)
I am not tech-savvy enough to be a witness and I have no experience and just slim knowledge about the whole concept and everything that Steem witnesses are doing. In short, I know the basic stuff but not more than that. At least not much more. That being said, as a small user, I have actually never cared much about witnesses or my witness votes in general. My votes have been pretty much useless, so it has been easy to ignore it.
Now when I've reached Dolphin status, having 5K Steem Power, I feel that I should probably care more about it... I obviously understand that I still won't be able to make any major changes, but my vote is worth about 14x more than it was prior to my recent power up, so I've come to care more about this.
I was about to remove all my witness votes just to add witnesses one by one again, but figured that it would be easier to write a post about it instead. My first idea was to remove everyone and wait until someone gave me a good reason to vote for them...
But truth is, that I've never talked to several of the witnesses I vote for, or am supposed to vote for(?), so why would it be different this time? - It's probably not likely that anyone will contact me directly and ask me to vote for them. I am not that important, and if that have changed because of my 5K SP instead of ~400, I feel ashamed.
However, I am currently voting for: (Likely to change)
What I would want to know is if these votes are appropriate and valid? Are these witnesses "worthy" my vote? Do you know other witnesses that would've been a better option?
If so, state why.
Who are you voting for and why do you vote for those witnesses instead of others? What makes them good witnesses according to you? What do you base your votes on?