You make a lot of good points, though I am not a fan of the flag war. In any case...
I've given this a lot of thought in the past week, and I wholeheartedly agree that vote buying bots are hardly a solution to the current state of affairs on the platform. But love them or hate them, their existence is a natural evolution of the platform AS IT IS. Curation communities are a good idea, and they've been around since steemit has, but they are a START. Not the whole solution.
The way I see it, part of the problem is the flood of content. There's just too much of everything on the blockchain, making it that much harder to gain (and give) exposure to new original and high quality content. I need to spend a lot of time sifting through shitposts to find an author worth following. Not to mention the crappiness of the search and tagging features currently in place. Let's all face it - steemit.com is one of the least user-friendly content platforms.
What we need are more interfaces with the steem blockchain that address different audiences who don't want to sift through news about bitcoin and motivational posts. Utopian is one example and bescouted (a photography specific interface) is another. I am eagerly expecting more of these as I believe they will change things significantly.
I can't code, but if anyone out there decides to create a utopian-like platform for stories, books and poetry - I would totally want to moderate it, move there and eventually stop using steemit.com.
One way to perhaps find interesting things/people to follow is to look at who is leaving comments to your work, and your comments. I know a lot of new users like myself initially feel intimidated about leaving comments, but we get over it. That is one method I use to find people to look at anyway, and maybe avoid some of the shit posters.
Oh totally. Comments are life. Also, checking who the authors you like are following. But neither is the solution to the sheer quantity and variety of content.
Communities is coming soon (like I mentioned in my post) and it will solve nearly everything you have mentioned here. Each subject can have its own community with its own moderators ala Reddit. Content would be easily discoverable, and trolls and miscreants can be muted from the communities. Post in communities you like, and all of the pain points that exist today will vanish.
Yes please. Where do I sign? :)
This is a bit off-topic, but it's nice to see you decided not to leave Steemit completely :)
Peer pressure. Yeah, I am a week woman at times. :)
Still not publishing any new content, but am lurking around seeing where I can help out with whatever I can. And curating when I have some time.
<3
Good to hear!
Glad to see you back @techslut, I have read some of your older post and they were just wonderful, I'm still in lurking mode...week 3+ here in Steemit, honestly I think we all need to welcome diversity, especially if sustaining income will not be the main attractions at least to steemit......I would elaborate, but need to save some time and thoughts later to reply and support such good postings like these.
Up-Voted because you're a true Steemian for hanging around and openly sharing no matter if others disagree or not.
<3
Thank you for reading! <3
You're welcome...and it's my pleasure my dear.
I've done with my lengthy reply below.....do let me know if you agree with those crazy thoughts of mine.
you can just scroll down below or click link to load (assuming you have a fast connection): https://steemit.com/curation/@liberosist/a-review-of-vote-buying#@dj123/re-liberosist-a-review-of-vote-buying-20171119t055606630z
✌Peace, Lots of 💏Love & Plenty Cheers 👏!
Replied, upvoted, followed. <3
Thank you for the feedback @techslut. I appreciated you reading this, I'm new here and I really identify with these good posters, wanted to show my support by not holding back on my replies.
Yeah, maybe I should just stop writing such long ones in replies (wrong forum I presume....but it was intended as support and feedback for @liberosist than anything else....and I'm not sure how else todo it to show support besides buying Steem to vote, which I plan todo shortly)