Three Month Witness Unvote vs Annual
@joseph and I were discussing the other day the proposal put forward to unvote all witnesses every three months, I don't think this is a good idea as it will promote centralisation of witnesses. The reason I say that is because it is very hard to get lots of non-whale witness votes because rounding up hundreds of votes, that are enough to make a difference will be a huge cognitive and time load on the witnesses and will deviate the witness' focus back to campaigning instead of helping to grow the Steem platform.
Furthermore, whale votes will then dominate the arena and make the top witness club collusive in the absence of a larger percentage of non-whale witness votes. I do really hope that this motion does not get passed.
If something like this is really necessary, then I propose an annual event, much like an AGM with new trustees being voted in or existing ones revoted. Steemit.com should also announce the event well so it isn't some secretive "cloak and dagger" affair that the general community isn't aware of, treat it with the hype of the recent US elections, who knows, maybe Trump will run for Steem witness in a year's time. :)
Automatic Unvote of Inactive Witnesses
I have noticed there are quite a number of inactive witnesses on https://steemd.com/witnesses, luckily I heard that they don't affect the witnesses above and that you actually pretend subtract the dead witnesses out to get your true rank. So if you have a dead witness infront of you, it means your witness is performing as if you were in their slot.
There is one other issue though, besides the list looking untidy showing inactive witnesses with a strikethrough, it also hinders the visibility of other witnesses who could have moved up a slot if the inactive witness weren't there. Especially considering the steemit GUI only shows the Top 50, and so any dead witnesses in the Top 50 will hinder the visibility of witnesses just outside the Top 50 and perhaps will get less votes from not being immediately visible on the front-end.
Not to mention the moral value of being stuck behind several inactive witnesses as opposed to being in the higher spot.
I propose a 14-day inactive witness auto-unvote, this should give enough time for someone to come back from holiday or return from a hospital procedure, to be extra safe 21 days can be implemented from date of inactivity. What do you think of this idea?
Below is an example of inactive witnesses, bitcube for example has been inactive for very long now, weeks I would say.
