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RE: I Am Sorry for My Last Post!
I'm glad to see this post because I was immediately regretting supporting your witness account when I saw your post about this account creation service.
Owning your mistakes is huge. Being a decent, trustworthy human being to avoid them in the first place is even better. No one's perfect. I appreciate how you've owned this and for the work you're doing to promote Steemit. I hope you find the balance you seem to need in your life so these kinds of things done blow up in your face in the future. Steem on, Jerry. Just be a little more chill about it. :)
You going to Steemfest2?
Really great feedback @Lukestokes! We all make mistakes as long as acknowledge them, we take some knowledge with us to hopefully not repeat them. A little encouragement from people in your community goes a long way in helping not repeat them!
Thanks @brandyb. Sometimes I come off a bit too harsh with tough love that's a bit too tough, so I appreciate your feedback.
Some of the things I really enjoy most here is the accountability and encouragement in the community! You pulled off both in your comment and I was impressed!
I've learned a lot here over the past year+. It's amazing how good a community can be when reputation matters and incentives are aligned to be good actors.
I compare it to playing texas hold'em with play money or real money. When it's play money, no one is serious, everyone bluffs with stupid moves, and the game isn't even fun. With some skin in the game, it can be a blast.
"I compare it to playing texas hold'em with play money or real money. When it's play money, no one is serious, everyone bluffs with stupid moves, and the game isn't even fun. With some skin in the game, it can be a blast."
A perfect analogy for some of the big differences between Steemit and Reddit.
You're surprisingly active in this thread. :)
Indeed! As I found out last night, very few people were aware that I was the author of the witness posts almost word-for-word. I had to pop on the MSP radio to clear that up for everyone.
I feel like Kato Kaelin.
Thank you Luke this was just the comment I needed to turn off the computer and go to bed! I will see you at Steemfest2!
Hi Jerry, I am fairly new to Steemit and know who you are already. You are the first Steemit Celeb I know. It is great to see the honesty and owning up to a situation. It shows you have very little ego to flaunt and are focused on being a better person and learning. I already love you. Good night.
Excellent. Sleep well (you better not get a notification on your phone about this comment!). I look forward to meeting you there.
I too am brand new to Steemit and value information from you among others and am glad to see how you make things right. I have not seen the video in question but see how it must have affected others.
@lukestokes, I'd like to remind you of this https://steemit.com/witness/@jerrybanfield/jerrybanfield-witness-update-1 and in particular what you commented on it....
lukestokes · 2 months ago
I'm very glad to see you owning the mistakes you've made in the past. Greed and impatience are some nasty things. Some might ask, is this an apology for getting caught or an actual change in character? The latter are quite rare. I'm hopeful. Time will tell.
Feels like deja-vu?
Thank you @drakos. I'm well aware of it, and thinking about that exact comment was the main reason I was so disappointed and discouraged to see his account creation scheme. I'll say "scheme" instead of "scam" because I do think (in his own mind) he was working to help others while making a nice profit for himself. That's what many successful people do.
His quick response to this seems to indicate to me he is genuinely trying to change. Crying about this issue, going to AA meetings, feeling tormented about time away from his family... well, Jerry doesn't come across as the most stable fellow to me, but that's why I'm looking forward to meeting him in person to better understand where he's coming from. I recognize we're all the product of our inputs up to this point and some of us have an easier time than others. I'm willing to offer the benefit of the doubt because I think encouragement and tough love together is how we can move towards a better world we all want to live in.
In this case, I think he made a stupid mistake and he owned it. He recognized it as a bad pattern, and he's working to improve. If I thought he was outright trying to harm people here or this community, I certainly wouldn't give him my support. We can either get down on people who do that or encourage them along their path towards improvement.
I sure know which I'd prefer if the situation were reversed, and I was the one screwing up.
If he was a regular blogger I wouldn't care what schemes he uses to earn a buck. But being a witness is a different league, which comes with a responsibility toward the platform. Things like that should never happen in the first place. I can forgive it once, twice, but three times? It becomes difficult. Everyone has personal real life challenges and difficulties, but that's not an excuse to mess up over and over hoping that things will be alright. I bust my ass 12 hours a day helping newbies, trying to gain followers and voters. I spend time interacting with people, I don't have whales upvoting me with thousands of dollars a month. So when I see someone trying to swindle people repeatedly, that grinds my gears badly.
"But being a witness is a different league, which comes with a responsibility toward the platform."
An excellent point. The community's votes ultimately draw that line.
It looks like an opportunistic moment grown from genuinely trying to help, as far as it's explained. He clearly tried to do something good while monetising it which took away from the first intention a little. He's extremely stupid, being in the position of a top 30 witness and knowingly offered it or genuinely didn't research/forgot information he clearly already knew. I guess that's for everyone to decide but I'd like to think anyone with half a brain would have done the latter and just didn't think.
I would add, some of the anger seemed to be greater due to a misunderstanding of his offer - some people thought he wanted the full $50, when a portion was to be preloaded as Steem Power, and I merely pointed that out. Where the SP comes from, delegated or actually in there, is another question in my mind!
If there is a service, much like anything else it takes time, unless it can be automated, and it'll take people to do that. I don't find it largely unreasonable to expect some sort of payment for that service especially if you potentially have a higher demand in time. However, when someone else is offering it virtually for free, it of course devalues your proposition and makes you look a bit silly.
Don't kill me, I know I'm a little new here to say this, but perhaps generally you witnesses could do well to consider your actions regarding selling of products and services similar to this or upvote bots if we want to create a trusting community and bring new users to the platform. We need figureheads who are seen to truly care about those who use it and maybe not be seen to try and make money from them...just a thought.
If you followed his blog since he started on Steemit, you'd see that every move he made was money oriented. He constantly preached that witnesses 'make a lot money', and now we have a lot of newbie witnesses, who don't know what they're doing, trying to make it BIG like jerry, because of his false dream selling. I specifically wrote a post to address that: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@drakos/the-witness-business-promises-of-riches
"He constantly preached that witnesses 'make a lot money'"
Objectively true, although it's no path to easy earnings.
"lot of newbie witnesses, who don't know what they're doing, "
They have basically no hope of making it to the top 20, then, right? How much harm is done?
"trying to make it BIG like jerry, because of his false dream selling."
At least he does point out after-the-fact it's not a get rich quick scheme, unlike craig grant.
And yet, how much money is he spending on advertising to promote Steemit? I don't think his motives are completely bad or completely selfish. I agree with your concerns as far as his actions and the expectations of a witness. I'm willing to give him a third chance because I value the real efforts he's putting out there to promote the platform.
And yet on those very same promotional posts, he was crying vote for me as witness. I too recall the comments he made about witnesses and making a lot of money. It was at this point he lost me. It became self evident his "community" activities were self-orientated. There are many other hardworking people on this platform who really put a great deal of effort into services to improve our Steemit experience, yet do it for free, or what they earn in from upvote support.
I think that's a fair assessment. I personally don't believe in pure altruism because I think everyone is motivated both intrinsically and extrinsically by various reward responses within their own brains. For me, I want to create a world I (and my family) want to live in. Even if I did something that appeared altruistic, it would be towards that end which relates to my own existence.
IMO, one of the biggest challenges facing Steemit right now (beyond the UX/UI issues, lack of communication about downtimes, signup verification delays, etc) is the lack of marketing to non-crypto enthusiasts. Jerry, with all his flaws, is doing something practical about that with his advertising campaigns. I'm willing to try him out as a witness for a time because of that effort which costs real money. He's committed 80% of his witness rewards (if he makes the top 20) to be put back into advertising. If lack of effective marketing is a real problem here, having one of the top 20 witnesses actively working on that seems like something that would benefit us all.
Yep @drakos I dunno why I'm even writing this to be honest as I don't know the history, but I guess I believe in giving people a chance. Forgive me if that's naïve.
Everyone makes mistakes and it does sound like he's made his fair share. However, putting yourself in the spotlight you'll always get criticised for this and for that, perhaps it's all justified too I'm definitely not trying to defend his actions just being Devil's advocate. Sometimes it's really easy to get the wrong impression of people's intent by their words or their actions. Or you get it right and they're just sneaky bastards!
What I would say is that sometimes a person with his energy and clear commitment can really help create and sustain interest and momentum from the outside - I discovered Steemit through one of his posts, alongside a couple other things. And I did find some stuff he said to be exaggerated, untrue or speculative (when seeming sure) but it still drew me in! I'm not condoning that approach to marketing, but it does work. The flamboyant crazy salesman, while pissing some people off and treading on toes can make the conversion numbers, the content, community and platform should hopefully do the talking after that.
If Jerry is what you think he is then he will hopefully learn to be better or he'll fail sometime soon...
"I discovered Steemit through one of his posts,"
Me too...simply from YT reach, I wasn't a subscriber.
Honestly, he probably even got me with a clickbait-y title...darn it, it worked on me.
It's not a swindle if the vendor gives the buyer what the buyer paid for. I am only talking about this $50/account deal.
"I'll say "scheme" instead of "scam" because..."
Even more importantly, it's not a scam if it delivers what is promised. It can be a bad price but that doesn't make it a scam. I'm always careful to call Genesis Mining an "almost scam".
"Jerry doesn't come across as the most stable fellow to me, but that's why I'm looking forward to meeting him in person to better understand where he's coming from."
I would be interested to hear your thoughts afterward. I know my perception changed.
"I sure know which I'd prefer if the situation were reversed, and I was the one screwing up."
A good point that I used to think was trite.
You would think different if you worked with him on other platforms before steemit and see the same thing over and over. so much so he got himself expelled.
Jerry has serious history with this sort of stuff. serious. and was given time to change and did not. Now I watch intelligent steemains make the same mistakes and fall for the same tricks. You watch, the steemit community will rise together and remove what is not in the best interest of steemit, its history repeating.
By the way, i have worked on other platforms jerry worked on :-) so been there done that and I wont be spending my steem on a tshirt
Thank you for communicating that experience, @paulag. To me, he seems open about his previous failures. Do you think he's hiding them in some way? I like to believe the best about people, and that they are capable of positive change. Personally, I don't think I've been tricked yet other than I did decide to support his witness campaign with my vote (for now) because of what I see to be claims about marketing campaigns he's investing in. Do you think those are fraudulent claims he's making about his marketing campaigns?
This I completely agree with. As part of that, I also think the Steemit community has no need to go on witch hunts or police behavior they don't prefer if there are no victims involved. Are there victims of Jerry's here on Steemit? Is there anyone he hasn't refunded who has requested refunds? These facts are things I'm interested in when making decisions about his actions and whether or not his character is improving as a member of this community. I'm less concerned with whether or not I like him as a personality.
In this specific example, he claims to have shut down the service before anyone used it. Of all the comments here, I don't see any victims who feel taken advantage of in this case. Maybe that's because of our policing efforts and without them there would be many victims. That's quite possible. Ideally, Jerry can do a better job in the future of policing himself like the rest of the adults here. :)
"Maybe that's because of our policing efforts and without them there would be many victims."
I would agree with this statement.
And i would also agree, that if he was good for steemit, it doesnt matter if i, or you like him as a person.
I have called Jerry out as a lair when he proclaims he gave up 10K a month making online courses for steemit.
You might be interested in reading this further comment @lukestokes I left for Jerry with no reply for him. https://steemit.com/story/@jerrybanfield/i-am-sorry-for-my-last-post#@paulag/re-jerrybanfield-re-stellabelle-re-jerrybanfield-i-am-sorry-for-my-last-post-20171010t231442861z
On saying all of that @lukestokes, you are the type of person that shows hope and gives opportunity. You are one of the good guys. It is evident from the compassion you have shown in your post. You have so much more experience on steemit than I have, but I have 6 odd years in the same circle as jerry!
I'm with you on this Luke, you summed up my thoughts on the matter better than I could. Owning up to our mistakes is not easy and Jerry did so here so he has every benefit of the doubt from me. I would add that he never attacks anybody or tries to tear down or destroy, he only tries to create. Some creations are duds, and some are great. That's just how it goes.
I would remove him as a witness @lukestokes, he does not care about the steemit or being a witness. Look at the comment of @ats-david, that did a little research and showed the truth. He bribed most of the top whales to vote him. He is on autovote for a lot of people because his post pay curation. I wonder if the earning per post drop to 20-30$ hew would continue or not.
If he doesn't care about Steemit, it's confusing to me that he'd spend his own money promoting it via advertising campaigns. Compared to what many other witnesses are doing (or not doing, for that matter), it's valuable effort.
You raise some important points, and I don't know who votes up all his points (it's certainly not me). If his payouts went down would he stick around because of a genuine love for this platform? I don't know. I hope so. I'm willing to give him another chance to find out because, again, I think his marketing efforts are useful for the platform.
Hey @lukestokes, thank you for taking the time for answering. That he is paying for the ads is remarkable, but it is not a must and it his free will and choice. Nobody else forced him to do it and we are not supposed to pay for it. If I do something volunteraly, I don't ask after it for a pay. It is common sense.
Maybe I get it wrong: a witness role is to take care of the nodes and keep it runing, also decided and keep the peg of 1USD to the SBD, not outsource it to someone else who is already a witness and who could take care of another server. Once in a while a witness update is good. I see here only a money chaser, not a valuable technical addition.
If I wanted to apologies I would decline payouts from the start of it, not to rape again the reward pool for another 100 bucks, as this 100 bucks are coming automatically from the autovotes. That would be fair, the resulted funds go back into the reward pool. Before Steemit, he was with Dash, but the guys there ignored him and he left and moved here.
I followed him before, but as he attacked some other members like tamim, who is one of the top5 investors in steemit, I posted some questions which got ignored. I think I have a very low SP, some other guys with higher SP he answered, of course it is more lucrative.
Great point on the declining payout. He really should have done that.
" he attacked some other members like tamim,"
That was not an attack. It's disingenuous of you to frame it as such.
Ironic that you'd defend behavior pretty easily arguably worse (per the community) than Jerry's.
We had some discussion some time ago and I always respected your well formed response. Also I admire your loyalty. You try to respond to more people than Jerry, not only for the big influencers and high power steemians. Hat off to that.
Tamim was an example. I will rephrase it, that he pointed out tamim, but tamim stopped 9 days before that post. And also tamim is one of the top10 investors in steemit with over 500k USD worth of deposit, compared to others like dan who took out 2mil USD.
Like said last time, I see Jerry as a valuable marketing machine for steemit. The witness thing is another story and also trying to cash out in every opportunity like the registration service is deplorable. David had a point in here with the post.
Jerry is a big influencer and a high power account on steemit, so a lot of people follow him. Every action has influence on steemit. If he wants to be the guide for steemians he needs to think good if that 100$ are worth the risk of the reputation. It would have been genuine, to decline the payout and admit that he wanted to milk the error. That would offered him so much power. Also the post with the 4 months could have waited a couple of days. It just shows that he did not meet his quota for a given day.
i kno rite, if jerry was doing that theyd explode
Cooler heads will eventually prevail.
Thanks for sharing your perspective. I agree, this post could have been a decline payout post which would have helped in this situation. I also think some responsibility falls on those who are auto voting up all his content. If they think he's providing real value, then that's fine. If they are just wanting to get curation rewards, and they don't care about the long-term impact of rewarding someone who many in the community feel is just here for a money grab, than that's not so fine.
I spent a long time arguing witnesses need to be primarily technology people and even refrained from becoming a witness myself for many, many months (even though I have been programming since 1996 and running my own SaaS) because I prefer coding over DevOps/server maintenance. I later softened my view a bit and now think there is room for those who are helping the community in other ways while also maintaining reliable witness and seed nodes. So far, Jerry's witness isn't missing blocks, so that's a good sign. Whether or not he's outsourcing the service he provides or doing it himself directly is less of a concern to me.
I'm not familiar with Jerry attacking anyone, so I missed that. I see he gets attacked quite a lot himself, and I'd also say a good portion of it is justified based on his poor decisions.
And of course, no one is forcing anyone to do anything here. That goes without saying. But if someone is providing something of value (advertising for steemit) then that's the type of thing I'm happy rewarding, even if I don't agree with them on every other point. If someone else was doing effective marketing for Steemit with a better track record and history, I'd be encouraged to support them even more.
Again, thanks for your perspective. I'm taking in input from all around. If Jerry continues with this track record of making poor decisions, then his marketing contributions obviously won't make up for that, and he'll lose my witness vote as well as that of others. I'm willing to give him time to change because I'm not convinced he has malicious intent. I'd go so far as to say this Steemit environment of reputation and rewards is actually helping him change for the better, and that will take time.
"I'm not familiar with Jerry attacking anyone, so I missed that."
That's probably because it didn't happen.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@jerrybanfield/meet-steem-s-1-author
"Here is what I learned in two sentences: the top author is currently earning $10,000 to $20,000 a month from discrete upvotes directly on comments that are then upvoted at the very last minute! To be more specific, @mindhunter earns about $20,000 a month mostly with comments such as "Me too" which get upvoted for $60 several times every day! See the picture below!"
It only gets more diplomatic from there. That's about the bit closest to an "attack".
Around here, Jerry is subject to a bit of a double standard. Point something out about Jerry, he's malicious. Jerry points something out about mindhunter/tamim...Jerry's malicious.
haters gon hate.
Note: garbage song is garbage.
Thank you again for a well writen reply.
Like said, for me witness needs to be technical and on the spot ready. The guy who is handling his witness is top notch.
His intent is not malicious as I see it, it is only focused on self gain. Like said if he would have been really sorry, he would have declined the payout.
And also would have not brought the latest post with the 4 months in here. Did he not make enough on the other 2?
Thanks again Luke, I will close the topic now even if I might seem rude, as I see it as a time waste. I would rather comment on your posts than in here ;)
He is investing money dude. This is a business to him, his approach is money first comunnity later if he really cares about the community at all, I know how to read People's greed and you know how I know that? Because I was just like him. His apologies aren't sincere in my opinion, just look at his videos, face and bodylanguage, a Changed Person or at least one with good intentions would have balanced things because in the end for many people is about the money, he should give back more to the community that has given him all. I don't tend nor like judging people because we ain't perfect; Nobody's Perfect but this guy is taking his mistakes lightly, how can you trust a person that wrote this two months ago and haven't made adjustments?
"Mistakes
Releasing a video course promoting becoming a Steem witness. Instead of simply putting a video up to explain the benefits of becoming a witness for free, I was consumed by greed and made a $180 video course which I tricked people into buying with a mining title. Several buyers were very upset and demanded refunds. Outrage poured into the comments on YouTube and into the witness chat channels from witnesses frustrated I was charging for information available for free. Since making this course, I have switched to completely free tutorials all of which are now on Steem showing everything I have learned about being a witness. This felt like not enough which prompted me to reconsider my entire business model which I am now switching to devote entirely to giving to Steem first and focus on all sharing to Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter with the goal of bringing reaching as many people as possible with the good news about Steem.
Aggressively going after votes from top upvoters as soon as I launched my witness using wallet tips. In my impatience to grab as votes quickly and start earning blocks, I spent over 1000 Steem sending tips to my top upvoters asking for witness votes. I then further defended this in my post about witness voting and in the chat. What I failed to consider was the amount of votes I would lose from pissing other witnesses and whales off with an approach that was called buying votes in the chat. Since the initial upvotes came in from those that were not put off my method of communication, getting any additional votes has proven extremely difficult as witness after witness has ignored my request to vote for me or responded with a strong no because of the mistakes I made here. I have learned that instead of focusing on getting votes, I need to focus on what I am giving to our community as a witness and trust that I will receive the votes I need. I am giving up directly asking for votes in any method outside of posts and comments.
I own everything I have done, good and bad, here in my first month as a witness. I appreciate the patience the majority of us have shown in not letting my moments of greed and impatience ruin the rest of what I have given that seems to be a positive contribution below!"
He has to earn our respect again or at least my respect again to even consider him as witness. Best Regards!
"how can you trust a person that wrote this two months ago and haven't made adjustments?"
I don't get it, am I missing something here?:
"I have switched to completely free tutorials all of which are now on Steem showing everything I have learned about being a witness. "
"I have learned that instead of focusing on getting votes, I need to focus on what I am giving to our community as a witness and trust that I will receive the votes I need. I am giving up directly asking for votes in any method outside of posts and comments.""
Did he not "make adjustments"?
PS - Howdy poker buddy.
You may be right. He may be through and through a greedy, unrepentant person who can not and will not change. I'm willing to give him some time to find out. His contributions via marketing spends are valuable to the community, regardless of if he personally sees it as a business investment or a service he provides in exchange for his witness pay.
The reason I'm willing to withhold judgement is we are all in it "for the money" on some level. We all act in our own rational self-interests. As I mentioned in another comment, altruism isn't really a thing because even if I do something which is seen as altruistic, it would be to support my desire to create a world I want to live in. On some level or another, it comes back to what I want. This is how our species functions (for the most part). Some do it well in ways that support their communities and some do not. Some learn the hard way and change and some do not.
Clearly Jerry's on thin ice here. I'd like to see some in the community change their autovotes to reward him less so we could all find out for sure if he's here just for the financial rewards or to also be part of a community that's bigger than himself.
"The reason I'm willing to withhold judgement is we are all in it "for the money" on some level."
Isn't it tiresome fighting against the virtue-signalling of those who won't admit this?
"This is how our species functions"
QFT.
"Clearly Jerry's on thin ice here."
Can't argue with you there.
Money is a big motivator of Course, noone can't deny that! But at least be honest about it. I would have respected jerry way too more if he had said "you know what, this my business I charge whathever the hell I want to charge, there are other cheaper options so it's your call" Here we are talking about a guy who is playing nice guy but has the $ Symbol written all over his face. He can at least be honest on who he is and what he really wants!
Not disagree with you, but society can't take much radical honesty!
Don't try it on your girl.
u better not mean me
he is not spending his own money advertising steemit. he is spending steemians money advertising himself. Don't you think he is collecting email addresses, growing the seo on his own site, doing what google and facebook love....spending...
And look at what he is saying about steemit. Do we really want people thinking steemit is a get rich quick platform. Oh look at all the money, the money, the money.....its always about the money, and oh yea give me your email, take my course and I will tell you to ask for follow for follow and have loads of bad habbits. Oh @lukestokes its clever marketing my jerry that is all. designed to make your head spin.
@smartbot tip @lukestokes 1000
Wow, thanks! I've never heard of this and look forward to checking it out.
Tipped @lukestokes
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