Hi,

This is entirely inaccurate. The first day xpilar decided to try to become a consensus witness I supported his witness, long before any of this recent drama began. Make sure you get your facts right before stating them as such...

Still, we both voted for him early, which clearly shows that we did not have any hidden issues with him. But things happen.

This is also entirely inaccurate... Sort of how @happycapital went to your channel and simply asked you why he was being downvoted and you kicked him out of the discord and deleted his messages? And also how anyone that goes to your channel isn't allowed to post anything? Doesn't sound very free and open to me...

Happycapital was reached via DM. He got an answer to his question and gave us a clear view of his perspective that anyone should get a clean criminal record once they say sorry. There is nothing else to add. Feeling that you deserve more attention does not necessarily mean that you deserve it. Everyone is treated equally and with respect, even when hard decisions are served, and having a large stack does not get you free tickets. As for our Discord server, great discussions happen there, but you would not know it.

First of all, I never voted for a "scammer". I delegated my proxy to xpilar and team to help them grow their ecosystem, which as far as I can tell has been doing more on STEEM than most/many other ecosystems run by or supported by witnesses.

A politician who is doing great things should not be above the law. Xpilar simply wasted a great chance of working harmoniously with other witnesses because a well-known serial scammer said sorry, among other common interests that were clearly apparent. People should understand the difference between being merciful when it is deserved and being naive. Being excessively indulgent is not courageous, but harmful, and definitely not a good sign of leadership and rational decision-making. Being a top 20 witness is also about knowing that when an important decision is needed to be taken, people are not basing their decision on tales from an imaginary wonderland of forgiveness.

Surely you did not vote for a scammer, only for a serial scammer who said sorry after scamming a lot of people. Witness votes are political statements, as well as setting a proxy, and saying sorry is not worth a dime to those who got scammed.

Second of all, the guy you call a scammer admitted to what he did years ago, apologized for it, and has attempted to move on, yet you and a couple others refuse to get past it, why is that? Are people never allowed redemption in your eyes? Like I said previously, I would much rather have someone as a witness that disagrees with others in there than to have several sock puppet accounts in there which are a security risk to the entire network due to a lack of decentralization.

Apologized for it! If only life was that easy. You could not make the scars magically disappear. Being a witness is not a right, and redemption is only for people who deserve it. Continuously accusing other witnesses of being liars and insecure is not really a good sign. He can move on to other areas where, hopefully, he will not scam more people. We are realists, not idealists.

3rd of all, by your own logic voting for a sock puppet witness account means you openly endorse sock puppet witnesses and centralizing the chain... telling the public that is ok behavior and is the norm. Again, that is your own logic...

Being a sock poppet is a behavior?

Sock puppets or genuine users, all witnesses are maintained by stack power, which is the true source of power and governance on Steem. While the chain itself does not have any rules that prohibit one person from running more than one witness, it is, of course, preferable to have a diverse set of talented people. Yet, if an investor is willing to acquire enough STEEM from the market to have better influence over governance decisions, he is more than welcome to do it.

Typically, large investors make the best decisions to protect their investment though this is not always the case since some are just dedicated to extracting value instead of creating it.

If you are having an issue with a large stakeholder that you deem is controlling the consensus stage, we encourage you to be more vocal about it and directly orient the complaint on this matter to that person. We hope that this will bring you more answers and clarity.

This is a reasonable statement and you are certainly entitled to change your mind just as everyone is, but you are downvoting users that don't vote the way YOU want them to, which is the problem here @upvu. Including throwing a few more downvotes my way yesterday after I shined a light on what you are doing for @upvu and the community to see...

As we mentioned before, we do not want votes from said users for reasons that we already mentioned above, repeating the same statement again is not going to give it executive power. Thank you for understanding the mechanics of the chain. The whitepaper is a good start to learning more about reward regulation dynamics. We also appreciate shining the light on an activity that is recorded on a public ledger and accessible to anyone via a tool that we are providing.

Exactly! Consider this in your situation as well. The guy you are so angry it apologized for whatever he did years ago, and tried to make ammends, yet here you are continuing to crucify him. And also, you continuing to downvote right after I posted my comment isn't helping conflict resolution in any way...

Angy! Far from that, more like cold zeteticism. Getting overly emotional is pointless and would only lead to bad decisions and poor judgments. We supported x users, then removed our support when y happened while taking z measures to ensure the dissemination of the truth. As simple as that.

It is always easy to go the apology road when you get caught red-handed. Usually, when a responsible get caught doing something illegal, he resigns once and for all. His position is not given back to him on the golden plate because he said the magic word, sorry.

However, taking the first step here towards conflict resolution, these are my main issues that perhaps we can work together to some degree on to help improve STEEM....

We are doing our fair share to help Steem and the community at so many levels.

I have no problem with steem-support not being a Top 20 Witness IF other witnesses are held to the same standard, IE you don't go around downvoting people that don't use their witness votes the way you want them. I can remove my proxy and vote for each witness separately on my own accord.

As mentioned before, you should avoid putting a well know serial scammer in the same brackets as Symbionts.

You are free to use your witness votes as you see fit. A lot of users, us included, have lost a lot of assets because they decided to stand for what is right in the Hive drama. We would surely suggest standing by what you believe is right, regardless of the consequences.

I want 20 real and diverse Witnesses within the Top 20, right now there are several Top 20 sock puppet Witnesses that are representing a real security risk to us all. No one should have any part in controlling more than one witness within the Top 20. Like I mentioned earlier, we need 20 independent witnesses that don't necessarily all agree with each other (or even like each other) in order to offer the highest degree of security for us all.

Yes to diversity, no to forced diversity. We are against making compromises just to fulfill an imaginary quota by allowing people with no merit and skills to take places in sensitive positions. The fact that you want to push a scammer at the top just to achieve disagreement is baffling. Disagreement is not always a good thing, and should not be the end goal, people should sometimes be united and speak one word, e.g exposing a serial scammer who publically bragged about his act.

If we can work on rectifying these things I will gladly also work in that regard towards conflict resolution. What do you say...

We hope that things would change for the better in the future.

Thank you,