Today I'd like to talk about something that's been bothering me for a while. It's about the new witnesses. But before I get to that, I want to introduce @jerrybanfield. This post is not meant to demean Jerry in any way, but to clear up the witness misconceptions resulting from his blog. In fact, he's had my witness vote for a while now, so this is not about flaming him or anything like that.
Who is @jerrybanfield
Jerry is a successful blogger, with a huge follower base. He has his own website, 2.2 million likes on Facebook, 105K followers on Twitter, 200K subscribers on Youtube and of course almost 14,000 followers on Steemit. Those are impressive figures and reflect Jerry's great accomplishments. Jerry likes to write and talk about everything: helpful stuff for minnows, personal stories, finance, analyses, etc. He passionately talks a lot, buzzes my head sometimes, but nonetheless he brings many values to the platform, which appeals to a lot of people and reaches a wide audience.
Snake Oil?
However, I do not agree with Jerry's views when it comes to his witness advertising, I'm afraid his posts about this are too simplistic for a complex process. He makes it sound too easy, with the constant promise of riches, always underlining the daily rewards of the Top 20 witnesses.
(Yes Jerry it's ~ $260, not $295)
The mentality of "it's easy, I can do it, so can you" is far from reality. Although Jerry is inspirational and motivational in his blog, the witness business may not be meant for everyone. Being a witness is not easy, I wrote about that, so did other witnesses:
- Running a Witness: Is it as Easy as it Sounds? by @drakos
- Guide to Being a Good Witness by @timcliff
- So you want to be a witness? (Clearing up some misconceptions) by @privex
and so on...
Jerry combined @lexiconical's research about the Top 20 witnesses and their skills, which I appreciate by the way. If you read them, you'll know that those guys are at the top for a good reason: hard work, technical skills, and time to get to the top!
Surely you can follow @someguy123's guide to setting up a Witness Server (STEEM-in-a-box HF19), but if you can't understand the content of the Dockerfile, or can't set up a node manually from scratch like @timcliff underlined, if the shit hits the fan, what then? You can end up missing blocks and losing your rank very quickly. In fact, that's what happened to my friend @netuoso, who is a very skilled developer by the way, when he went out for a day in the woods. It's like the apocalypse happening in the blink of an eye. Furthermore, another top witness, @jesta, had all of this servers go down a couple weeks ago because of his provider system-wide restarts. If this can happen to the best, imagine the consequences for a newbie witness!
Stop the Seduction
Please Jerry, stop inspiring people to start a witness like you did. You have a huge follower base that can support you; you have a big stake with your steem power. The average users do not have that. They'll be embarking on a difficult path not necessarily meant for them. In fact, I've personally helped many newbie witnesses set up, only to see them quit after a month. Wasted my time, wasted their time and money.
Here's an example of a fresh witness, obviously lacking the skills to be a witness (with a questionable blog to begin with...)
@kimterje83/yes-i-made-a-witnes-server-on-privex-50usd-instance
Join us on https://discord.gg/GpHEEhV
Available & Reliable. I am your Witness. I want to represent You.
🗳 If you like what I do, consider voting for me 🗳
If you never voted before, I wrote a detailed guide about Voting for Witnesses.
Go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses. My name is listed in the Top 50. Click the upvote symbol.
Alternatively,
with cli_wallet : vote_for_witness "YOURACCOUNT" "drakos" true true
with steem-python: steempy approvewitness drakos --account YOURACCOUNT