Agree that Medium approach to blurring "responses" and posts improves quality (and credit to Tumblr for doing something similar with reblogs.). You have to "wear" your replies on your profile, which discourages certain types drive-by junk.

I have a post planned (for here) about a tale of two platforms: YouNow and LinkedIn. They each have certain things directionally in common with steemit, some good, some bad.

A problem with LinkedIn that steemit seems vulnerable to- the "thank you for the interesting article" nothingburger comment problem. These sorts of comments are not spam. But they are almost as dangerous as spam, and plague communities where there's no drag on mechanisms where participation is highly incentivized.