You raise many valid points, I do not agree with everything but much has already been sorted out in the comments. 

> Some might call this a “feature”, but in reality it is another way that users are being pushed away from using the platform.

I call it Darwin's sieve :) They'll come back later. Only the most resilient "steemers" get to become pioneers and to prepare the praries for the great storm. I find it great that this impedes growth naturally as long as the word "beta" grins from the upper left corner. 

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@bloe-orgy and @mark-waser have a good idea. I complained about whales being privileged in that they can fine-tune their upvote, minnows can't. The reason is that then their vote would vanish completely. It makes sense. But how to discern my upvote for a lazy "shitpost" with good pun from my upvote for a well-researched, thoughtful and inspiring post? Then, instead, give minnows the ability to "stack" their upvotes, even at an exponentially growing cost in voting power with each vote for the same post, if it is abuse that is feared. Sometimes, you just "want to upvote an article more than once". Why turn this into another "hooray democracy" à la Facebook? If it is equity, not equality we're after, this might be the way to go.

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But this is the single most important one: 

> People want to see content they are interested in, not a bunch of content they don’t care about. We need to have the ability to filter out the tags they don’t want to see and be able to still have the trending/new/active, ect. ranking of posts to explore.

Make subscriptions to streems possible, allow to sort them by new/trending/hot etc. Make it possible to group these subscriptions into interests. I also believe it is already in the works, I got on everyone's nerves with this from my first week on.

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And since we are at it: add a row to the table of the database; let it be in the format of a "post" with the difference it can be edited any time, indefinitely. 

This way, a user could save all sorts of information for himself or for others: make it a "profile" page, where people introduce themselves, link to their favourite posts, present their friends, embed a soundcloud player. This is what made MySpace great, and it can make MySteemit great, if it is possible to also include a CSS script to beautify the profile page. Later, maybe, I expect no miracles.

Let this be where also the presets for one interface can be dumped for another interface to parse. Let us say there are steemit.com, steemstats and piston.web, and I have a list of streems I follow on this interface, then I can embed that information XML-style and, if the other interface supports it, read it out and activate it. The possibilities are endless.

All the streamlining of the user experience, so that these need not be edited in one huge text file, could come long after that.

I think we all need c redistribution in weight of stakeholders. Just use some squere-function, which will down votes of whales and up votes every dolphins, and problem will solved. Yes?

Yes
I Feel:
Readers should get rewarded
I think a market place would sit steemit on top
Whales should use a % of votes a day or week to minnows and dolphins as well
Minnows too
People are not up
voting=means 
not reading=could mean 
because need to be rewarded for reading
People use use votes

Absolutely. Everyone needs to find their tribe. I look forward to the emergence of a "groups" feature of some sort. Tags are simply not serving that purpose right now.

Completely agree with OPs points.  Mainly regarding New Users and how they have absolutely no power. 

It's in the best interest of this platform as a whole to give more power to new users. Right now only a handful of whales get to decide which content becomes popular, which in turn encourages everyone else to post the same type of posts--- basically anything promoting and praising Steemit. If you want this platform to be an advertisement for Steemit keep it this way. If you want it to be a melting pot for fresh content discovery  where the majority gets to decide on what content they want to see then change it, give the users a bigger mic

Really, as a new user that was expected creativity and social... Steemit is just the next buzz feed... So far I have only found 2 creative posts and 3 discussions. The rest all articles that might as well been in buzz feed.

As a new user, i view it as a matter of perhaps modifying the reward structure as described by several above, but equally important is modifying expectations.  If the pitch is "blog and get paid", the motivation and expectations of new users center on the "paid" part.  The product will need to deliver/meet expectations on that or disappointment and flight will ensue.  My sense is that mainstream social networks are built on a premise of parity (each user vote is equal).  If steemit is to diverge from that standard, it should be made painfully obvious as to why or new users will feel 'cheated'.  That said, i see great potential in the platform and plan to stick around.

A broader range of people are making money than I have ever seen since I started here (near the beginning). Look beyond the first handful of posts, which are dominated by known personalities, and the Trending page is far, far more representative of diversity and rewarding of newcomers than ever before. It's a work in progress, but progress is clearly occurring.

Some good points for sure, for me a nice change would be curators dont earn from upvoting. Most minnows only upvote the crypto-celebs to try pick up some SP scraps on the flood. Take thoses scraps away and see how much they make. It would also kill robotic/bot upvoting. Upvotes should still benefit the poster in the same way just not the upvoter.

This is a great topic, but honestly, it almost feels like Steemit is so new yet that everyone here is still a new user along for the ride of the beginnings of Steems life.

I totally agree that tags need to be made more like subgroups​ rather than hashtags that are always changing, could both be incorporated somehow? 

One other issue I want to raise that wasn't mentioned is the power of commenting. Right now getting rewards from commenting is damn near a waste of time. It rarely nets any reward. I have spent more time I think reading, commenting and trying to be interactive than some of my posts with little to no reward. It would go a long way for the future of Steemit I believe if we have lively interactive conversations going on in the posts, I think finding a way to incentivize the activity needs to be looked into more, and in the case of Steemit, money talks. Even if 80% went into SP instead of SD with increased rewards for commenting would be a great start. Or am I the only one feeling this? I look at most posts and it is a bunch of 0.00's in the comments, even great comments seem to go unoticed as a by product it seems.

How do you address the downvote situation though? There are no rules on what you are or are not allowed to do with the flag feature. Should flags just be for plagiarism? What about content you find offensive, mislabeled, or just plain idiotic?

It seems like it is far too subjective for any consensus to be reached for the community as a whole and as long as there are no rules people are free to set whatever criteria they want for what content warrants a flag.

As a new user I agree with your points.  I plan on sticking around for a while as I understand the platform is new and changing.  I have some small amount of Steem Power and would like to see what this community evolves into.  That said I am also keeping my options open with Synereo and see what that network evolves into as well.  My bottom line is I want to put my time and attention into a social media outlet that will pay me enough to justify sticking around for the long haul.  Right now I am somewhat disappointed with the payouts, but understand there is a learning curve and growth curve involved here...just as anywhere else.  Appreciate your views!

I agree - the fact that minnows are low on the pole doesn't bother me much, but the fact they have NO weight does. If they had even a tiny amount they could group together - they could all swim down, as Nemo said. It's always seemed to me that if many, many minnows feel a post is valuable, that should produce the same result for the author as if one whale thinks so.

I think lately, there's been a lot of improvement on scarcity of payouts and we now see more and more users are happy...

I believe most of this is on the agenda, and I'm glad you said it all just incase.

One of the biggest things we have a problem right now with is fear of the long term success.  That is only because of our latest bubble.  I just wrote a post on my blog today to quell those fears.  But perhaps I'm not getting the exposure  I hoped for because many of these items on your list aren't coded and implemented yet.

So fingers crossed we see some of these in the next month or two.. I bet you we will.

Your first point is I think the most important one. It is the one that will drive retention up. Let's hope they will focus on this :-)

Well said sir well said.
http://imgur.com/52wG0p6.gif

We must empower the people before we have no people!

I believe it honestly comes down to self-motivation and willpower. Those who come and don't have instant success and then bitch and whine and complain about how it's a "scam" or "you have to be well-known" are just they type of people we **don't** want on steemit! I wasn't greeted by some amazing success when I first joined and I didn't quit.. You know why? Potential. Those who aren't willing to look past the fact that they weren't greeted with (or even a month or so down the road still haven't had any) instant success, don't have faith in it's potential. They aren't willing to truly put in an effort and produce quality content and not make it about the money. Steemit should be looked at as a community first and an outlet for possible financial success *secondly*, not vice-versa. As time goes on though, even those who are complaining and crying about not receiving thousand dollar payouts for their post of a meme (or other various, useless posts) will start to even see their posts become more valuable (even when they aren't really, to the masses), as more and more people who are like-minded to them will join and stay. One of the biggest issues with the steemit users who get discouraged, is **them**! Patience is a virtue and steemit is the type of place that, with a continued persistence and will to continue providing content, you **will** get noticed and you **will** be appreciated for your work by those who find it interesting/worthwhile.

Just my thoughts on the matter. I don't believe anything is wrong with steemit, in fact, it's only gotten better as time has gone on. :)

<div>  <p>  This post has been linked to from another place on Steem.  </p>  <ul>        <li>      <a href="https://steemit.com/steemit-idea/@blueorgy/the-upvote-multiplier-more-curation-power-at-the-cost-of-voting-power-ui-design"> The Upvote Multiplier - More Curation Power at the cost of Voting Power? + UI Design </a>      by      <a href="https://steemit.com/@blueorgy">  @blueorgy </a>     </li>        <li>      <a href="https://steemit.com/writing/@strangerarray/taking-the-mask-off-steemit-does-steemit-work-for-you-or-do-you-work-for-steemit"> Taking the Mask off Steemit: Does Steemit Work for You or Do You Work for Steemit? </a>      by      <a href="https://steemit.com/@strangerarray">  @strangerarray </a>     </li>        <li>      <a href="https://steemit.com/quality-content/@krnel/the-qc-quality-content-featurette-5"> The QC - Quality Content Featurette (#5) </a>      by      <a href="https://steemit.com/@krnel">  @krnel </a>     </li>      </ul>  <p> Learn more about  <a href="https://steemit.com/steem/@ontofractal/steem-linkback-bot-v0-3-released">    linkback bot v0.3</a>   </p>   <p>Upvote if you want the bot to continue posting linkbacks for your posts. Flag if otherwise.   Built by @ontofractal</p></div>

they have to change their sales pitch, instead of attracting people with the promise that they can make money, they should use something else, as they're creating false expectations and once people realize they'll never actually make any money of it ... they're disappointed

while if they were to advertise the quality of the content, the active comment section and the fact that people can participate, no censhorship etc ... that would solve a lot of the bad mood that's now hanging over steemit as a dark cloud