This is not about who they are or why we have witnesses.
This article doesn't function as a toolkit or help to become a witness. This is simply to put things in perspective from someone with no or very limited knowledge about this entire subject.
- Could I become a witness? - Could you? - And why should I vote for you?
@pfunk have written A Full Steemit User's Guide to Steem Witnesses. If we cut the basics from this guide and move straight towards witnesses, we'll have this:
Witnesses
Witnesses are generally voted for because they are trusted members of the community, positively contribute to Steem and Steemit in many ways, are qualified and experienced in administration of servers, and are experienced in cryptocurrency networks and software. Witnesses are expected to keep a block-producing Steem node running 24/7/365.25. They are also expected to provide an ongoing price feed of the value of STEEM tokens in U.S. dollars, set the mininum Steem Power deposit to create an account, set the APR% for the Steem Dollar interest rate, and in the future might set additional network variables. Witnesses are also strongly encouraged to run a seed-node to provide the blockchain to syncing clients.Witnesses are rewarded for these qualities, services, and of course running their node by getting powered up by 1 STEEM for each block they produce. By being paid in Steem Power, witnesses are further incentivized to be committed long-term and also to contribute to Steemit curation.
Let's dive deeper into this:
Witnesses are generally voted for because they are trusted members of the community, positively contribute to Steem and Steemit in many ways, are qualified and experienced in administration of servers, and are experienced in cryptocurrency networks and software.
I don't know about you but I definitely don't think that all witnesses fills this criteria. Some of them are probably more experienced in cryptocurrencies and less experienced in terms of servers. Or the other way around.
This is also the reason for this article. Everyone can learn.
However, would it be possible for a blatant rookie to become a witness?
- My best guess is: Yes it is!
Most people are voting for people they tend to like or appreciate in one way or another. They might not agree with everything the witness say or do but the overall experience is great, so they vote.
Users are often voting for things they believe in and if it looks like a certain witness is working towards that, they'll get a vote. Pretty simple so far.
With that being said..
This is the people I vote for:
I have room for 22 more witnesses so if you're a witness and want my vote, feel free to tell me why I should vote for you. - I might throw a vote your way!
So, why do I vote for just 8 witnesses instead of 30?
I am different. I do things differently.
I prefer to see what the witnesses are doing. That said, it's pretty hard for me to see what some witnesses are doing if they don't contribute to the community in terms of articles and/or curation and comments.
I know there's a bunch of witnesses working "behind the scenes" so to speak, but it's literally impossible for someone like me to understand exactly what they do, so I tend to not vote for them.
The things I have to rely on the most, is the witness posts that can be found here:
Next to each witness you'll see this; 
- That will lead you to the witness posts.
That being said, many of them are rarely or never updated so I can't tell if they've stopped doing what they claimed to do, or if they have changed their mindset. To rely on something someone said in an old post is not something I want to do.
If you're a witness and if you're looking for my vote.
Feel free to describe what you're doing!
Going back to the guide.
Witnesses are generally voted for because they are trusted members of the community, positively contribute to Steem and Steemit in many ways, are qualified and experienced in administration of servers, and are experienced in cryptocurrency networks and software.
This is basically what I mentioned above. Contributions.
One contribute to Steemit with good quality content... But there's much more to it than that. But it's often hard to understand or realize how much a user contribute without taking the content into consideration.
To see how a witness vote, who they follow and support is a good option too, but what they write and how they write it is literally the best way for someone like me to fully understand them. - So that's the main reason for me to not vote on witnesses who don't create content themselves.
I know that might be a bad decision, but hey, at least I'm honest about it and I'm giving everyone a fair chance of getting my vote too. And not only that, I assume that tons of other minnows out there are having similar thoughts like me on this.
Steemit, a social media platform and witnesses who doesn't socialize... That sounds pretty weird at first sight.
However, Steemit needs the people "behind the scenes" too, so one cannot judge them due to their lack of content. This article can be seen as a request from me to get even more information from our current witnesses. I would love to contribute even further to Steemit by filling up all the 30 witness spots... - But who am I supposed to vote for?
Each individual is a possible witness.
Someone like @papa-pepper or @stellabelle for instance, would probably be good witnesses. They have tons of credibility, followers and they are trustworthy. Both of them are contributing to Steemit with great articles and massive motivation for minnows. They have good people skills and would therefore be able to rake in dozens of witness votes. I'm sure of that.
These two examples might not have the necessary skills or experience to fully operate a server and all the rest of things required to become a witness. - But they can learn, if they wanted to. Just like you or me.
I do understand that there's a lot of competition amongst the witnesses.
My best guess is that most witnesses are trying to climb the ranks to become a top witness. That's when they will be rewarded the most and have the most impact. It would definitely be an amazing achievement to reach the top and that's also why I'm putting this out there...
To encourage people to vote for witnesses but also to encourage the witnesses to describe and explain why they deserve our votes. I see this as a win/win situation for all of us.