Thanks for sharing your excellent opinions. I have been on steemit for a bit more than a month now, and I've noticed plenty of flaws between the theory and the reality. I'm not sure what the devs/owners are doing about it, but I concur that if something isn't done, this experiment will go belly up, whales and all.

There doesn't seem to be any real system to sort the wheat from the chaff so that the articles worthy of attention all rise up and the rest sink down into anonymity. Using new, trending and hot doesn't really help unknown and new users, and there is no effective way to use the tag system. The minnowsunite tag doesn't guarantee support, either.

The fact that the more you accumulate, the more you can increase your influence is a direct imitation of the real world, which means this is NOT an "alt" platform at all. That there are multiple accounts and bots that work to collect wealth from the daily pool means that those without the skills, wealth, will to defy ethics, etc. are much less likely to climb the ladder. Indeed, I've seen politics in the form of cliques that take advantage of up-voting and flagging for reasons from the spurious and immature to the desire to spread the wealth more evenly (admirable, but impractical unless the daily pool is large enough that everyone worthy can get enough before the deadline).

Aside from the abusers, the cliques and the trolls, there are those who are just trying to make a quick buck, and this is reflected in the quality of their offerings. Links, single images, quotes, plagiarized materials, spam and other forms of drivel abound. This is not to say that they are universally bad - links by the author to their work are certainly fine but, if I post a link to someone else's work, I do not expect to be rewarded - I'm just sharing something I think has value to others. Some people seem to think this is FB and so they just pass on whatever they find as if that deserves something.

On the other side are the artists, authors, academicians, vloggers and others who either create original content , or synthesize the work of others. I'm not fond of articles which are a rewrite of one source, however, nor do I like it so much when a photographer posts just a single photo (a painting of high quality is an investment of weeks, months or years, in contrast to a photo that may take no more than a couple hours, excepting wildlife and specific landscape shots which can take days, weeks or even months of patience), although I'm sure there are exceptions.

I guess I could go on and on, but the point is pretty clear. This system is full of flaws and there seems to be no real management to deal with people who abuse them.

For myself, I produce original work without references listed because, in most cases, it is a synthesis of numerous resources that I no longer recall and half a century of experiences. I rarely put up short messages with links to the works of others. That some of my articles have received no notice despite being worthwhile is, of course, a disappointment, but I'm not surprised.