Sort:  

Glad you feel that way :) And no actually, originally most witnesses were voted in more so based on whether or not they had the knowledge for mining (a lot of them are the same people witnessing for bitshares) and they got massive whale votes and endorsement from the freedom account which is Ned's etc. Now I'm not accusing them or saying it was wrong. It was new and it's still in beta. What matters now is how we progress. They now have a ton of votes, but again that's also largely due to the steemit.com/~witnesses page only showing the top 100 to vote for, so for the longest time, people only voted for the top 100 (which made them stay top 100) My main project is WCA or Witness Communications Assembly where we are trying to improve transparency and communications between witnesses and end users because you are right they should have been voted in by being engaged with their audience and having a good relationship with them. It's also about making it possible for new witnesses to work their way into the top because it should be more based on the people's endorsement than how much money you have invested

I look forward to following your WCA project.