>Simply saying "Nice post!" and posting a gif file is not very friendly to the community

Yeah, I know which account you are talking about here, been trying to warn him not to spam it and that it absolutely isn't worth it in the long run. I hope authors getting that spam will realize it in time and stop encouraging him with votes as well.

>One thing I must ask is to keep honestly curating content

I read most of the content I upvote and have over 22k manual upvotes behind me. :)

Good post!

I'm new here (few days), and I have noticed a lot of this going on.  I'm hoping that the steemcleaners guidelines help to keep this in check.  Read up on them here; https://steemit.com/@steemcleaners

It does not happen to me.... so.

I pick a couple days and really try and curate and engage hrought my day...painting shuts down my engagement systems😏

I really try to only upvote posts that I've read because it benefits me to read the posts. I get to learn new things, see things from different perspectives, and get to know a little something about the other people on the site. That's what works for me, anyway.

I used to think that whales upvoting each other was a real problem for the future of this platform but then realized that the most important thing is not how people use their power but how easy it is for users to gain influence. The easier the faster things will balance out. @smooth and @abit are currently running an experiment which makes influence more accessible for everyone and soon there will be another change with the reward curve which will make influence even more accessible.
The whales are an integral part of the system, without some kind of hierarchy steem power would be useless , we need to strike a balance between making the system accessible to everyone while still keeping the purpose of a stake weight based system intact.

i agree with you in principle. 

my take on this whole issue is that for the time being, until this place musters enough steam (no pun intended), and builds a lot of inertia, for it to run on its own weight, we have to encourage even the smallest of interactions. 

everyone is different. so, this place has to cater to everyone, until we, as a community, decide who we want and who we don't. your blog post, to me, comes across as such: who do we want on this site? this is something that the community as a unit will decide with pull and push factors. this is something that will be out of the hands of any one individual.

so, i do appreciate your contribution. keep blogging and ink your observations. :)

Unfortunatelly I have to agree with your main point. I think a ton of adjustments will have to be made until Steemit will become more "stable". Just remember, its still in a very early stage.