I absolutely blame @Ned and Steemit. I also blame witnesses though. @Ned could have done a LOT more to encourage decentralized open source development. I don't think that he should necessarily step down for that though. Steemit is acting like a standard corporation that's working on an open source project. That's not what they are. They're leading a decentralized platform. They need to do more to decentralize the development.
Witnesses, likewise, did not do enough to encourage open source development. You can fork Steem and the Steemit front-end, Condenser, but that's not enough. If someone wants to get into open source development here, for the most part they're on their own. It's a lot easier to join teams doing other projects on Steem. That's a problem. The witnesses could have made up for Steemit's lack of leadership for open source development and created forums and lists of features todo and brought in new developers. They didn't. They can't even keep us updated.
Ned and Steemit are absolutely part of the reason that Steem is down. If they had done more to make it easier for people to get into development, then a lot more development would have gotten done. Instead they've just sort of been doing their own thing and announcing major changed, and doing major changes all on their own, releasing code that's far too big to review quickly, giving witnesses the options of either approving it without full review, or denying it simply because they can't review it fast enough. That is not how you run an open source project. They are clearly horrible leaders. The witnesses did not stand up though, so they are all culpable. That's not to say some of them haven't done great work though.
DTube was created because someone was tired of all the people talking about it and just got it done. That is awesome...but open source cannot rely on people just jumping in and getting things done. They have to provide them with at least a little help, maybe direction.
This place is decentralized. That doesn't mean no one's to blame. Everyone is. Tons of people didn't know what to do. They could have just jumped in and started doing things...and some did...but that's not how you run an open source project. You don't just put the code out there and expect people to go through it and update it and fix all your mistakes and add a bunch of cool ass features.
As far as community...people absolutely stepped forward. Tons of efforts are out there. Sadly most of them are using Discord. There's still a lot that needs to be done with that though. A lot of people are a lot more experiences with online communities than they are with organizing online development. To do a curation effort you just gotta get a place to share links. You can even do it in a chat room, which is why Discord has been used by so many.
People can bitch all they want and they will. It is absolutely their right. And their voices influences others. Bitching is doing something. Revolutions are started with some people simply bitching. People who think it's only up to Steemit don't understand open source, but that doesn't mean they should shutup. They can get involved in the community and help things out, and many will, but they can also bitch all they want.
It's gonna take more than just Steemit to moon, yes. But your bitching about people bitching doesn't help either. You could have chosen to make this more of a positive post, but you didn't. You're doing just like them, blaming people. We're all to blame. Steem has failed all together. Your bitching won't change anything either, except make some people feel like shit. More of us need to get involved, yes, and get others involved, but that won't happen by shaming them for having an opinion without doing more.
Thanks for the big reply, tonight I'll get to answer all the comments and address some points you mention. These kind of arguments are good, they encourage discussions and I appreciate you taking the time to leave a long comment.
And I appreciate you being open to differing opinions. This is the social network of Steem after all, so we need to be social, and occasionally argue and bitch. :P
Here here! Well put - little bitches together. ;P
Totally agree.