Well for news about the platform, the important follows are @ned, @sneak, @steemitblog, @steemdevs. If you want to follow the other creator who is no longer part of the project then @dan and @dantheman are accounts to follow too.
Witness voting is tied in to how much SP you have, so ultimately, our votes as minnows don't mean a whole lot. Here is how the voting looks for the top 50 witnesses. This chart is from steemreports.com:
Those Big Dark Blue Lines are the voting power of @freedom who pretty much can single handedly make or take Top 20 status to or from a witness. the @freedom vote is proxied to @pumpkin, so Pumkin is doing the witness voting for freedom. Pumpkin is an active witness vote changer, so if a Top 20 really went dormant, he or she would lose that @freedom vote in a hurry.
The light blue at the end encompasses ALLLLL the rest of us. So when we combine a lot of minnows, we can be as powerful as Freedom, so I am not trying to say our votes don't count. But when it comes to removing a top 20 witness, there are a few people who have to see it and take action on it and that witness will be demoted in a hurry.
Hope that helps!
Ah.
This might be the most incredible response to a question ever.
This is extremely helpful, I had no idea any one person had so much power... but it's also probably a good thing too... I'm glad quick action can be taken if required. I've learnt so much about this platform and yet I still make huge leaps and bounds in my Steem-knowledge every day.
They might take our @pumpkin, but they will never take our @freedom!