I don't think that my being part of steemit really matters in the overall grand picture, but I'm like many others who produce some content, have bought Steem to power up, and take time to help smaller members grow.
But if many of the ideas being tossed around were in effect when I joined there is absolutely no chance I would have bothered to stick around and for sure wouldn't have purchased any steem.
It's really easy when you can rack up a $94 payout in 10 hours to talk about 0.10, 0.25, or 1.0 SBD as a nominal amount, but for a new member making anything at all is hard. We are talking about being excited to get a 0.10 SBD payout...not looking at it as something that can be tossed to the side and ignored.
Potentially owing money because someone flagged me would have been a massive red flag to me and stopped me from joining. No way someone that isn't already here can understand the flagging system enough to get that the odds of owing money if you aren't a spammer is small so this would just be a roadblock.
Like many I hate the spammers and flag them on my posts, but we need to think about the honest newbies and the effect on them first and foremost. If not we can forget about the explosive future growth we all hope to see, we won't have any future growth at all as newbies will sign up and then leave just as fast.
Believe it or not, but I do understand what it is like to be a new user. When I first joined, I made 0.00 on all my posts - just like pretty much everyone else that is new. It took me 3-4 months of pretty consistent effort to start making any significant rewards. For me at least, it was never a 0.05 payout (or even a bunch of them) that kept me going though. It was always the idea that if I kept at it, I could eventually make a lot someday. I do get what you are saying though, and a lot of people are saying the same thing. So it probably will be best to not make the change.
I believe that you remember as nobody was here that long to forget...or at least I hope they didn't. But being a new member has gotten harder and harder over time as so many of the whales and dolphins are now using much of their voting power for bidbots which are an automatic looser for newbies. The reward pool is decimated with trash making the trending page sucking up massive amounts of the pool each day.
If we want to worry about spam how about not focusing on the pennies and looking at the thousands being earned by the professional spammers.
Good point. Agreed.