Too bad that so many of those more invested in the platform are "greedy, eager to grab author rewards".
Unfortunately that's true, but they are harming themselves the most. HF21 is a step forward as it's much less effective now to be such a greedy bastard.
Why would a new content creator bother at all with joining here
Because with all that flaws and issues we are facing, it's still something vs nothing, compared to Facebook etc.
By the way, it would feel much nicer if the delegation was not dropping at exactly the rate of you getting SP.
I can also agree here. That's ridiculous and I was pointing that out to Steemit.
Plus - lack of gamification. Gamification is IMHO the key. Too bad that I'm far away with my skills from frontend related subjects. I'm still hoping that others can deal with that.
upvotes from a bot I didn't ask for
Smart bots that are fighting for curation rewards might chose to upvote content that "looks" promising in terms of getting more votes.
I'm not sure whether dragging author rewards down for low value posts will help much, but we'll see.
But more importantly, that's quite a false dichotomy with "something vs nothing". Some people are fine with just the exposure and flow of likes on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Ego fodder has its value too, after all. On Youtube, deviantArt, Bitchute or Twitch you can actually make money quite directly. Add Patreon and its clones to the mix and suddenly getting 0.10$ worth in an exotic cryptocurrency does not sound as appealing as you seem to think, especially given that only the first week matters. Steem is far from being a God's gift at monetisation, sadly.
Seems like I agree with most of what you are writing, maybe except that I still think that we have a chance to make a difference here :-)
Well, go ahead then and good luck to you, not like I have much power to decide here anyway. I'll just drop by every now and then as usual.