Good post! One more thing to mention is that some witnesses have been not only dead and inactive, but actually harmful to the Hive blockchain as they are no longer running but they are enabled and get put into the rotation.

When their turn comes the blockchain waits for a certain time and then they miss the block and their block is passed on to the next scheduled witness. This creates a delay on Hive block processing and is not a good thing.

So you should really remove your vote from those types of witnesses and you will be helping Hive blockchain run more smoothly. By the way, Hive Hard Fork 28 will not fix this problem it is likely to make the problem worse as those who will not upgrade in time will start missing blocks, only you as a voter can fix this.

Here is an example of the witnesses that are missing blocks for years now:

Cryptobrewmaster has been missing all blocks for 380 days now and it is still fairly high ranked at 91st position

Hiq.witness has missed all block for the last 252 days (mouse over the block number and it will tell you when last block was validated)

And there are more, here are 3 more that have been missing blocks for years for example:

You can find which witnesses are missing blocks and are still scheduled to process blocks here: https://hive.arcange.eu/witnesses/

I am also ready for Hard Fork 28:

My last block has been processed 24 minutes ago with software that is ready for Hard Fork 28:

P.S. Voted for your witness, hopefully you will get your first block soon.