It would be interesting to know what people would think about having more centrally controlled communities.

I will like to have a say here. Community is an integral part of steemit. Users are identified and verified via communities and they help fish out farming accounts. If it will be difficult for the steemit team to create communities and manage them through some trusted users, I suggest that the existing communities or the ones yet to be established be given a rule to set percentage to a particular account that will only be managed by designated users who will be appointed by the steemit team such that when the founders of the community power down, that account will remain for the contributors of those communities. So long as the founders of communities are the ones managing the community account, it is not possible to control the power down of the communities neither can you hold them to ransom for any cash out.

Then those communities should be treated alike who followed all rules by the steemit team. Building a Community is not n easy task.