I apologise - many times that I used the word 'you', it was because I was/am aware that many others who are attacking authors will be reading, so I was writing for a wider audience.

No worries. I hear everything you're saying and we actually have similar interests/backgrounds. I'm a published (and by that I mean outside steem lol) poet and studied creative writing at university. I also write Sci-Fi and fantasy, but I don't put much fiction up on steem anymore as the audience is not here for it. As you said, it is more important for a writer that people are actually reading what you're writing and even when the bots aren't of the 'bid' variety on here, often a lot of the votes are auto votes. Having said that I'm grateful for the auto votes that fall on my account. I mainly write travel articles or opinion pieces on here as I'm catering to the audience to the best of my ability. I still can't bring myself to join the slew of people who post nothing but articles about steem. It just seems insane to me. I write one article per month about a steem orientated subject max lol. I still put - what I think is - some very decent poetry up sometimes, but most of it gets saved for submitting to online journals that pay or literary anthologies that gain exposure and build a writers CV.

The number of nasty people on Steemit is far greater than most know, I do not know why I fight back but nobody, to this date, has flagged me to death, but it does not make me more tolerant of them.

I've seen this too and it is truly depressing. I've seen someone I knows account destroyed for saying the wrong thing.

Anyway, sry if I got defensive in my response before. I completely understand you were talking more generally rather than specifically at me ;-)

Take care Arthur. I'll visit your blog sometime soon and check out that good Sci-Fi you're writing :)