Changing My Interactions with the Steem Blockchain

Based on the events of the past weeks, I've decided that part of being a responsible user of this blockchain is understanding more about the governance and inner workings of it. For this reason, I've decided to make changes in two categories: interface and witnesses.

Interface
By default, I typically use steemit, but I don't think I can continue to do so in good conscience. I had already started using tribe-based front ends such as neoxian.city or splintertalk.io, depending on the topic of my post. But other than posting on these topics, I've been using steemit. For now I've settled on steempeak, but am open to other suggestions.

Witnesses

Up until the past few weeks, I haven't really paid much attention to witnesses. I voted for the ones with which I had some form of positive interaction, but didn't worry too much about position, or who was in the top 20. The hostile takeover has showed me that I need to be more educated on who these witnesses are, what they are doing, and what they support. For the time being, I've joined the grass roots movement and voted for the top 20 non-version-22.5 witnesses. I don't necessarily agree with everything they do and say, but I think it's important to keep as many real witnesses in the top 20 as possible.

But that only accounts for 20 of my 30 votes. With the other 10, I've chosen to deviate from the current order and vote for witnesses I actually support. Below are a couple of the witnesses I feel are lower than they should be in the rankings. I have not interacted with any of these folks, but these are my observations from the outside.

Hive account@lukestokes.mhth - This guy seems level-headed and well spoken, as well as having a solid tech foundation. Some of the other witnesses seem easily riled and a bit hot-headed, but Luke seems to approach things from a logical, well reasoned standpoint.

Hive account@arcange - This person is responsible for the tool that pretty much everyone had been using to track witness rankings, and they aren't even near the top. This seems backwards to me. Someone responsible for such a useful tool that has been so instrumental in the effort to reclaim the top witnesses spots deserves some recognition.

Hive account@timcliff - Tim was the only witness in the top 20 who did not agree to fork out the Tron stake, and as a result he fell off hard. He knew this was coming, but he stuck to his guns anyway. That takes guts. That's what we need in the top 20. Any kind of decision-making body absolutely needs dissenting opinions. Without that, you run the risk of the organization succumbing to groupthink.

So anyway, that's what I'm doing differently as a result of recent events. I'd be interested to hear how others are responding.