This here is the first Q&A post, of hopefully many, for the Witness Survey Series by 
@abh12345, 
@ammoniteA: I believe in giving people the power to influence and work towards their success. If that means being able to use promotion-services (which bid-bots are part of) to have their content seen in a healthy & responsible manner, then I'm in favour of promotion.
I developed Smartsteem.com, with the goal of giving Steemians this power, while at the same time also taking responsibility for stopping abusers of the system. On the other hand, Smartsteem.com is also an important way for stakeholders to earn with their investment in Steem.
If Steem changes and promotion becomes unnecessary because content discovery is good enough and investors have others ways of earning similar amounts of revenue with their invested STEEM, then the current business model of Smartsteem will be redundant and the focus will be shifted onto other things.
Until then, my mission with Smartsteem is to provide good Steemians & projects with the power to influence their success via promotion and to incentivize Investors to invest in Steem and hold their stake as Steempower.
@ericwilsonA: Good question. First of, what exactly do you mean with users? Do you mean bloggers & vloggers? Or maybe developers & entrepreneurs? Me personally, I'm focusing on the second group - developers, entrepreneur, investors & stakeholders.
Which means, my decisions might differ from others who are putting the priority on attracting as many bloggers & vloggers to Steem, which is, of course, important as well.
Now, regarding the second question - what that group would like to see on Steem: this differs again for each different type - developers don't want to spend much time learning how everything works, so guides etc. are important. Investors want to understand why they should invest in Steem and what their revenue is. And of course, there are even different types between investors.
So as you can see, this question is very complex, but I'm working on projects that have the goal to attract developers, entrepreneurs, investors & stakeholders to Steem.
@harvhatA: I believe in a reasonable Witness-vote decay.
@harvhatA: 30 witness votes is a good number. Some argue that a lower amount would result in voters having to vote for really good witnesses, which makes sense. But I don't see a reason to change it right now. However, I'm open to having my mind changed.
@johnspaldingA: It is severely undervalued because dApps are not being highlighted enough. People still believe that Steemit equals Steem - which is absolutely wrong.
Another concern I have is the fact that most of the development is being done by Steemit Inc. and after nearly 3 years, we still haven't created a concept how to incentivize community developers to work on blockchain code.
@johnspaldingA: For Steem to become a global hub for dApps and communities.
@abh12345A: 579.41 USD (3 Servers + 2 small servers for failover & co.)
@abh12345A: I'm automatically delegating all of my Steempower on 
@abh12345A: I'm working on many different projects, but they have one thing in common: they are all for/on Steem.
@steemtank)More info here: https://therealwolf.me/projects
And more projects in the pipeline (really good ones) - but am only going to talk about them once they are release-ready.
@abh12345A: Everyone who has a little bit of Sherlock Holmes in them, is able to find them quite easily. :)
@klassicA: You mean besides taking the blame for everything? ;) Just kidding. I'm grateful to have become a witness, but it is a tough job, especially as a backup-witness. Rewards are usually just as high to cover costs (or even lower right now) and it's very difficult to go up the ranks.
However, since I'm so invested in Steem, it's obvious for me that I want to be even more responsible for Steem's success by being a witness.
And I'd say that the basic task of a witness is to provide witness nodes & infrastructure, the rest is individual. I personally want to be the voice of positivity on Steem and bring much value to Steem with dApps & projects.
@steemingmarkA: You set up a server with steemd, you enable your witness and hopefully produce your first block without errors.
@harvhatA: I think "free" accounts in the meaning of having no SP, but RCs are very important to attract people using Steem for payments. Regarding STEEM price for accounts without using RCs, I currently have it set to 3 STEEM.
@rubaethsyedA: Check out these two posts:
https://steemit.com/steem/@therealwolf/steemship-to-mars-step-1-witness-voting
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@therealwolf/fantastic-witnesses-and-how-to-find-them
@patrickulrichA: Reviewing and testing the code.
@grimgrizA: Not exactly sure what you mean, but usually the Witness (me) is providing as much value as possible, so that voters can't do anything else than vote for me.
@patrickulrichA: Only if the supply is much lower in addition to the price being lower than 1 USD.
@patrickulrichA: While there was some downtime and voting power was drained, the situation wasn't as bad as people painted it. Right now, we have a well-functioning Resource Credit system. With that said, more tests have to be done prior to the next hard-fork, but I'm sure everyone learned out of the experience. Now is the time to look forward.
@harvhatA: Could be higher - could be lower. In my opinion, there are more important topics (like vote decay) that can be addressed. For now, I think the number is totally fair and should stay like this.
It was a pleasure answering these questions. To everyone who participated, even those who asked the difficult ones - thank you!
Wolf
Do you believe that my work is valuable for Steem? Then please vote for me as witness.
