They make it worse not better. No new ppl can ever get started now at all, no ones truly helping them. Maybe some of the witnesses are great but I know ones that when I first joined steemit were in a private chat room just bullying newbies and laughing at their posts and threatening them to reduce their rep to 1 ( they did this a few times too). They hAd no interest in helping newbies and only terrorising them and making fun of them whilst upvoting each other. Those ppl still never get downvotes now.