I know it might be too early to complain as I have been using steemit.com for something like just 10 days, but once I really get into something new and interesting I'm going all out, so I've been spending quite a lot of time on steemit for these 10 days...
I have tried a lot of things already, learned a lot of things about steemit as just like every newbie I started exploring without getting too much into how the whole thing worked, so I made a quite few mistakes at the start. This has helped me learn from experience and make me learn more about how steemit works and as a result I have tried to also share what I've learned with other fellow steemians here, so that they don't repeat my mistakes and know more what they are getting into from the start.
For these 10 days I have made quite a few posts, before just recently learning that I should not do more than 4 per day otherwise I'll be getting a penalty in the rewards for the extra posts. Making more than 4 good posts per day however is easy when you spend quite a lot of time focusing on something like steemit for example and while you have a vast number of interests and hobbies and a lot of knowledge about different topics that you can share.
Then you figure out the recommendation for 4 posts per day and after that you figure out that for some apparent reason that does not seem to be working properly in your case or that you are missing something that is not properly explained. As a result you have just one post in the last 24 hours and are now waiting for hours just to post your already written new article, just because the system says that if you post it now you will get penalized for a reason unknown to you. More details on this specific issue I'm having are available in the comments under this publication
Since I've started using steemit I also made one of the newbie mistakes of voting too much and wasting my Voting Power and then having to wait and save on votes in order to finally regenerate it completely. Great, more things to watch for in order to not waste your voting power and weighting on articles that you want to vote for, but know your voting power is low and you want it to regenerate faster and you still want to help a good article get more votes and get noticed.
There have been a few times when I flagged #introduceyourself posts from users that tried to cheat by giving false photos and description in order to just make a few quick bucks if they manage to cheat the system. It is important to help keep these people away as otherwise they will come lying and cheating in hordes just because they learned that somebody made a lot of money with fake information and from nothing. We need real people telling their real stories, sad or not, interesting or funny, adventurous or whatever they actually lived through that made them better ot stronger person.
Inviting some friends and people I know to check out steemit and give it a try has been a task on my daily to do list as there are quite a few of them that can actually contribute good and interesting unique content, share their knowledge and experience as well and help building a better community for everyone that decides to stay here on the long run and not just give it a try and gets discouraged and leaves as there are always people like that as well.
Apart from sharing my experience on steemit in the form of articles I've also tried helping other users by answering their questions and pointing them to a solution to their problems or a place where they can learn more about something they want to know. Of course I also commented on posts on the topic that they covered as well, trying to give to opinion or correct something that was not as described for example. I even ran a kind of quick social experiment with a steemit post willing to see what comments it will get.
I have found some bugs and issues, apparently ones that are even limiting my account usability (not seeing some of my earlier posts on steemit), but having them reported got me confused. I could not find the right place to contact support or report issues, there is apparently no such place actually and the next best decision would of course be just to make a post describing the problems. So I made the following post: Steemit.com Bugs After The Last Update [Report] describing the problems and issues I've discovered as well as making some suggestions. Apparently that post did not get noticed, no surprise here, so there is exactly 0 result from making it... I still have the same issues and not even another user has confirmed or denied they are experiencing similar problems. Yet today, a day later, I started seeing that more people saw similar issues with older posts not being shown and have started posting about it, so hopefully somebody will notice this and fix it.
Reporting bugs and issues that do not get any attention at all... this is one of the most discouraging things I've experienced on steemit so far! It is discouraging as the next time I find some problem I'll ask myself if I should even bother reporting it if nobody will ever notice it or care and I'll probably decide in favor not to bother. If there are some more problems like not being able to access quite a few of my earlier posts (they are still there if you open the right Url apparently) it will just encourage me to stop using steemit at all.
Actually I might have already decided to give myself some time off steemit.com until it reaches a more mature level, however I have also invested some money to increase my Steem Power, apart from a lot of time and effort. The idea was that my vote will be worth more as I want to help shape the community better and I think I've been giving my part for making this a better place already. Here comes another discouraging moment, after investing money to buy some Steem Power and getting my account valued at $2,189.31 USD my votes still don't have much influence, let alone the votes of somebody that just registered and started using steemit.com with what less than $7 worth of value of his account.
It is really discouraging when your efforts to help make things better for everyone get unnoticed and then you see some stupid bulshit post that got lucky and landed some "whale" votes and it launches in the stratosphere. It is really discouraging when you see someone with a lot of voting power posting a "Changelog" of something and that immediately going to the trending posts. It is discouraging for somebody that already understands how things work on steemit for the most part and still continues to figure out some more of it, has invested a lot of time and effort already, so go figure out how a new user would feel.
Enough complaining already, I still have not given up on steemit.com even though I'm already a bit discourage from being part of the community for not that long yet, but I'm not yet ready to give up. Maybe what I really need is some time off steemit...