I agree that the problems you are mentioning are worth addressing. The problem is, no one wants to develop anything here, because the rewards are nil. Why not just take your chances developing an app on the open market, since the only source of financial remuneration here is votes. So, while you say we need this development, that was part of what was supposed to come from the vibrant social community, and be fueled by author rewards. Without the money, no development, and writes like myself have ZERO incentive to leave work here that exists in perpetuity to be read for free, if there is no payoff. It is about the money. The people who would build the infrastructure here were attracted by it and now they are back doing what they do, creating awesome content, in the hope of attracting enough attention to earn a living at it, somewhere else, where the rules change, but not every damn day, where they don't get blamed for everything that's wrong, or accused of greed, when the voting is open and democratic.
Steemit, Inc. allegedly has developers that are paid out of their own coffers that were filled with Steem and Steem Dollars. The value of the liquid currency from just the few main accounts is easily over $1 million. So it's really not a matter of paying developers.
I think that they are distracting themselves with too many concerns about rewards and money being the only motivator for a user base. That's what my comment about micromanaging votes and rewards was all about. Many of the solutions for attracting and retaining users so far have been based on how much people are getting paid or a perception of payouts. That's not the problem here. People aren't adopting Steemit as a social media platform because it isn't a good enough social media platform. It needs work. The more time that's spent on trying to figure out a new curation guild or new ways to placate people who quit their jobs thinking that they'd be millionaires, the less time there is for developing actual solutions to the interface that will attract all of those people who are not concerned about "getting paid to blog."
I understand that development isn't always easy, but what we have seen as far as features and the UI go - specifically from Steemit, Inc. - isn't exactly building confidence. There have been so many recommendations from users about the same requested features and still these features don't exist and we don't have any timeline for their development or implementation. If it's being worked on, then they should throw us a bone and let us know what is being developed and some sort of timeline for its implementation. If we know what's going on and what's actually being developed, then other independent developers can focus on other projects to further the entire process along the roadmap.
If everything is to be decentralized (even though it is not), then communication is important. People need to know that they're not wasting their time and they need to know what changes can be reasonably expected to both the backend and the UI. Other developers have had no problem designing entire apps and dynamic websites for the blockchain. If Steemit, Inc. is short-handed, then they ought to be paying these developers to help them. They should have experienced people working on the UI as well as coders working on the backend.
This is their baby. They need to nurture it. They have the means to do so. They can use the currency that they created. Wouldn't that be something? Actually finding a great use for the currency while also developing the website that depends on it? They can kill two birds with one stone.