I think the most important work will be to improve the reputation system. A good reputation should be more than just being good at earning Steem, but on the other hand would it also be complicating things more if you seperated the two completely and had a rep-button beside the upvote button for example. But if you put more emphasis on upvotes on comments, following the theory that an upvoted comment was a sign of friendly and civilised behaviour. Could be interesting to take an afternoon thinking about this, but right now I am awfully busy with figuring out how to continue my comic... Maybe later.
And a good post by the way!
I agree with you. A really effective reputation system would be sooooo valuable. It's a complex issue because you only get out what you put in which is time-consuming. Also because it's not perfect, you need to be aware of the possibility of missjudgement so that no-one is unfairly discriminated against and that there is enormous value in accounts of every level of reputation. We need to celebrate people's talents, knowledge, reliability etc that have been demonstrated within Steemit but we must see clearly that accounts with lower reputation may represent a person in whom you could place trust and that they are simply on a journey to demonstrate that. I hope Steemit as a community retains the ability to assume innocence and trust first.