Part of my goal here is to take people which show promise, educate them, help them write better articles and make them socialize and get noticed. The rate of success is small, adding another hurdle will reduce the comments they will make and thus their exposure and their involvement. 
Do you think that people will post quality things while in the trial period? They will post "nice article" until the trial period is done. Then they will post "nice article". Because what is changing in their mentality? Psychologically speaking? Why would he not?

And there I thought I'm rewarding the efforts of the newcomers... what a downer.

Nevertheless, knowing what I know now, I'd do it again. My efforts didn't go completely unnoticed and my participation in this discussion had some people take a closer look at what I'm doing. The end result of me making noise and putting miles on my mouse is that I've got 550 SP delegated to continue doing what I did so far.

The only thing I regret is destroying my voting power. It will take me at least a week to regenerate it :-)

I appreciate your reply. Thanks for not ignoring me.

>Do you see the rewards that go to the hundreds of minnow who do engage well on my account? None of them would be affected by this proposal because they engage well and don't spam.

I see where you're coming from. You see the small fish on your account engaging meaningfully and getting properly rewarded for it.  Props to you for taking care of your community, but most of us are not on your blog engaging with you. Our interests lie elsewhere and I don't appreciate the proposals that will damage my community. 

Try to see a perspective of somebody who's not following the big accounts here, somebody who's interested in a *niche* topic that sports betting is. There are no big accounts there, and the most members have less than 0.01 vote. What's worse, the nature of the beast is such that great essays, photo travel logs, recipes and such are not to be found (no chance to get @curie reward or to be featured by @ocd). 

The most valuable content a member of our community can produce is the tip. Which outcome to bet on. We don't care for 2000+ words essays, we care about the profitability of your tips. Now, you may call the content we produce to be not worthy of the reward, but I can say the same thing for the umpteenth artsy fartsy post by someone well versed in the gentle art of kissing up to the whales.

Should we all drop what we are doing and line up for the crumbs the big accounts are bestowing upon us? Screw that!

Every proposal that discourages the engagement is beyond silly - it is suicidal. With the eos around the corner and the panic that will ensue here, the last thing needed is to piss on the small guys just because the big ones are tired of seeing spam.

>So now, What is your suggestion to stop spam posts and comments?

Whack-a-Mole. Do as I and report the spam to the steemcleaners when you encounter it. It takes time to get an account here, and mere seconds to get it flagged to death by them. The solution we have works well enough.

Don't fight a relatively minor problem this platform has by solutions that would kill it completely. If the solutions the two of you proposed are to be implemented the steemit is done for.

See the numbers in the reports that @paulag is making. Spam is not this platform's problem. Dead accounts and meager engagement are.

So our voiçe is only valuable once blessed by a golden boy?

Bring back the n(something) and a 100mv vote cap until we get enough users to slowly raise the cap.

> I have a few dozen people I have brought onto the platform **and helped** (bolding added by me).

EXACTLY!
New users NEED to be helped, otherwise they are totally LOST among the vote-buying bots and other gimmicks. I'm finally out of the dust stage and made it into the minnow category, yet even after a year of working hard and honorable, I don't have 1,000 SP despite putting everything I earn into SP. The way the system works, the more users that come on-board, the harder it is for the new users to earn anything at all. Putting greater barriers on the new users is not the way to grow the platform. Without those helpful votes from dolphins and whales, it is pretty much hopeless to start from nothing at this point in time. I've had a few random big votes or curation trails land on my posts and let me tell you; it's like winning a lottery!

Please don't stop at helping only your friends, but spread some love around, because the platform desperately needs that now. There is no reason why Steem couldn't be a real currency already in use, except for the mindset of those in control.

Your account is more then a year old. Times where different then. Times where different six month ago. Voting power for plankton is on a decrease.

> the hundreds of minnow 

And what about the plankton? 

> very well in time. 

that in time is getting longer and probably exponentially. I don't think you can reach dolphin in one year any more. Heck you are now hard pressed to become minnow in a year. 

And what do you propose for all the new users that downloaded the Steepshot App from the appstore?