Has the emergence of communities made your experience with STEEM/HIVE better?

yes. it is a powerful tool of sorting the stuff.
which I am after very much. using proper tags never worked (nor on steem, neither anywhere else). one solid minus yet: being posted to one group, you post is eliminated from any others. further implementation needed v much, to post at once to 2, 3, 5 groups. (idk if thats a Damoculus sword or not, tho...)

and craving to go back to basics: Make content. Engage. Enjoy.

meh... yes and no. there is the basic fraction, the prominent one: rewards, which is integral variable in the equation. i am an author and content creator, and each time I see something simple and formal and cooked-in-2 minutes gets curated for X or XX (just for the random play of chance, or some other things, lets not name the names here), while some of my posts (sometimes with hours / days / weeks of efforts involved) go unnoticed and appreciated -- I literally just give up.

a simple example noticed recently -- the Antique & Vintage community. no one curates / upvotes the publications there, and therefore no one needs it. same thing with a lot of other communities. but people prefer to post to GEMS, or OCD, or Neoxian (for obvious reasons). I vote for the communities with both my hands... but probably there will be a long way to go, for things/schemes to develop and mature.

sorry for my language -- not a native speaker.