I am a power user of SteemWhales.com and I was wondering for a few months why the guy behind it is so quiet. I thought you were involved full time in other Steem related projects, because it is clear you understand both the game mechanics and the technical side very well.

The tone of the article surprised me a bit. I won't comment on the proposals, because half of the are common sense and the rest of them are debatable. I don't want to debate them in this comment, maybe I'll write another one, on a specific proposal.

But the tone is a bit out of sync. I saw this tone hundreds of times, in my community projects.

And with that I think it's time to reveal that I'm on the Internet since 1999 (before Google, if you can imagine that) and I built several successful communities, on various niches, from the ground up to the likes of tens of thousands of users. At the moment of selling, one of them had more than 100k active users, on the automotive niche. I learned a lot from those processes.

The tone in your post seems to come from a person who is at least confused about how a community grows and works. Because this has little to do with technology. Or, to put it in perspective, technology is just the context in which the community can play the game. It does influence it a bit, but the fundamental value doesn't come from it. I know communities which are thriving for hundreds of years, since technology wasn't around (I'm talking about guilds or even religious communities - you may disagree with their values and principles, but they are communities which are working for hundreds of years).

Combining this fact with my own experience, I can safely state that a successful community comes from a sense of contribution and shared values, regardless of the problems. If a significant majority of the people are on this side - and by this side I mean real contribution, like you did with SteemWhales.com - eventually the community will succeed. If the significant majority of the people are whining or pointing fingers, the spiraling down is just a mater of weeks / months.

That's why the tone seemed surprising. You did great. Correction: you are still doing great. What you create has real value, it's a great tool. Keep working at it - whatever "it" you may choose to contribute now - because that's the path.

As hard as it may be, try to stop judging "the leaders" (quotes are intentional, because they're not really leaders, just context creators, fully aware of the fact that without people using it, even a genius platform is completely useless). You don't know their line of reasoning. It's true that their actions may feel out of sync with your expectations or with "how you see it right", but that's normal.

The value of Steemit comes from people interacting and contributing. And, form my experience, as flawed as it is (many of the problem you pointed are true, as I already said) Steemit is the only worthwhile blockchain-based, rewards-powered social platform that already exists.

It's far more easy to improve on something that is already existing.