The Steemit blockchain does seem to have stabilized again, and the patches to the fork code seem to have returned voting and commenting power to smaller accounts. It's time for a critical look at the fork. As has been noted by countless others, there are a few lessons that must be learned from this debacle.

Better communication up front

We need those red banners up at the top of the screen for at least a week before the fork is scheduled, and they need a link to an official post clearly explaining the fork changes and potential service disruptions long before it is to take place. If we are invested in the system by our Steem power, we need to be treated at least a little bit like stockholders, and not like Facebook users.

Better sandbox testing

Witnesses need to earn their keep by rigorously testing new code. Test load, bad data, conflicting blockchain versions, plankton user experience, etc. as much as possible before wide release. I know you won't catch everything, but surely some of this last disaster was known to be a potential occurrence, and if it wasn't, someone really dropped the ball.

More forks, less changes per fork

The more that is changed at once, the more there is to go wrong. Minor tuneups more frequently would be far less disruptive than massive changes all at once. I completely understand that switching to mana and resource credits instead of the old blockchain bandwidth model was an unavoidably large change, but I would have preferred to see the new code implemented so I wasn't suddenly looking at a complete inability to interact with the blockchain as a modestly active dolphin.

Choose your witnesses wisely

Who is posting about the changes and exploring potential problems? Witnesses need to earn their support by showing how active they are in responsibly administering the blockchain.

Conclusion

If the red flag were at the top of the screen for at least a week before a fork, it would be a reminder to check witness feeds for posts on the topic. Most of us aren't in the Steem coder circle all the time, and don't have our fingers on the pulse of the dev discussions. However, those of us who want to be in the loop when new stuff is coming up need to be alerted when major items are proposed for implementation and a fork is near completion for witness approval. If changes were small and clearly explained to the lay user, it would improve the user experience even if there are service outages. And witness votes should not be a popularity contest, although I fear that is the consequence of any democratic system no matter what.

I haven't threatened to sell my stake, and I resumed normal activity once the RC deficit bug was remedied. I still think Steemit has potential. But please, treat us like valued customers and investors instead of peons. A good system with terrible PR is soon to be a dead system.