Ok, I may have talked about this earlier elsewhere too, but I've decided to put my concerns into a complete post, apologies if this turns into a semi rant - because I haven't prepared at all, I'm writing as I think, without any structure.
While the Steemit ecosystem - the economic model and the incentivization seem sustainable (apart from the glaring self-vote problem, which I'm not gonna go into since many others have already addressed it) , the community itself is its enemy, IMHO.
Why do I feel that?
Well, the community has a "bad" rep to outsiders as an "insiders whale circlejerk" - which is partially true from my own experience - and even if you think that's not true, it's upto us to rectify that image!
Such an image of steemit is present in somewhat prominent communities - bitcointalk forums, reddit and some facebook groups. These are the go to sources for most crypto investors - they won't read blogs on steemit to make a decision on whether to invest in steem.
Bad signs - The overly self-congratulatory aspect of some top posts, and the many sycophants in the comments.
Horrible signs - Posts expressing valid criticisms of steemit getting flagged to depths turning them effectively invisible, and if by accident, some prospective investor finds them, that's a major red flag. These things go against the core tenets of social media and content creation on the blockchain - censorship resistance.
Take a look at the scores for each coin on CoinGecko
The overall score is based on these metrics : Liquidity, Developer, Community
Here's what bitcoin's separate scores look like :
Ethereum & Litecoin :
Alright these are the top coins, it wouldn't be fair to compare steem with them, but wait !
Steem has a great developer score , which is deserving and totally understandable, liquidity score will most definitely rise with popularity - which is only a matter of time , but a community score of 9.2 ?? That's fucking miserable, any way you look at it.
inb4 some newbs who couldn't make money here spammed the ratings!!
No, that alone cannot explain away the terrible rep we suffer on these forums. But let's just say these people are butthurt steemit noobs too - what does that fix? does it help when potential authors feel unwelcome here, do we just judge and call them "butthurt" because we are too caught up in our own little circlejerk , instead of curating better - with lesser circlejerk votes and more community-building voting?
Don't get me wrong - there are some great authors and contributors here, but it's clearly not proving to be enough amidst the whales (and dolphin members) who view the platform as a pump and dump opportunity. As of now, I view the state of steemit as a tussle between these two type of members - people actually invested in steemit for the long term, and people using steem like some other shitcoin to milk until it fades away ; these are the type of people who are itching for a pump to sell as steem hits $2.5 - $3.
I honestly have no "solution" come to mind right now , other than platitudes like "We must believe in the platform and keep creating great content! the market will notice soon!"
Any ideas or discussions in the comments is more than appreciated
Cheers!