This is a big problem for us all.

I think partly this has to be improved by us as a community trying to make people feel welcomed and appreciated but it also has to come from the continued evolution of Steemit itself.

If I was Dan or Ned - I would hire/create a small team focussed purely on bringing new users in and helping to retain them.

I think there already is a section of the community doing this in the form of the Steemprentice Initiative with users like @sykochica, @virtualgrowth, @rubellitefae etc putting in a huge amount of their own time to help new users.

I would immediately hire these people and others like them full time, both to continue to do this and also help guide strategy in this regard.

That would be my immediate first step.

I would also give a few staff members full time curation posts to look for overlooked material and give them sufficient SP to grant decent upvotes to it.

Finally sorry I missed your Anniversary post. I do try to keep up with things but as you know it is easy to miss things. Belated Congratulations on that if it helps!

Also I will say Happy Birthday now too just in case I miss that post:)