Hey @john-a i have came across your post only by chance, well the title has a lot to do with it, of course, half a second later and i would had missed it because like you said Steemit web page is a mess, and the only way to find good quality content is to promoted yourself by buying votes or having a lot of friends and followers.

I think the seven day rule makes anyone that wants to make a living of Steemit unable to, a great post will be miss if you don't have the money to promoted it or you are "lucky" enough to find it, i had talked about this in a post a made a few days ago but it is just a drop of water in ocean of whales haha.

What you had said is very important to me, as i live in a country where the inflation is not a joke, (2000% only this year), and using Steemit as income it is a great help for me, i don't know if you will giving heat because you are pointing out mistakes, but there will be always people that disagreed with you that's not something new.

The pack mentality that you mentions is not something only to Steemit, that problem is present everywhere else and there are ways to fight it, but you will fighting everybody at the end.

I think Steemit state it has to do with his competition, right now there is none, but there will be soon, and when they are out Steemit will have to step up their game, or it will become like you said a dead project.

You mention reddit, and i think there is much Steemit can learn about reddit, but the question would be in the lines of what if reddit adopted a reward system like Steemit?, would not implode full users? What about facebook?

Steemit is just but a site and it run by humans beings, it is far from perfect, and i know it is very frustrating that your post don't have the view count that you wished they had, and for that we need more people pointing out the mistakes the sites has, maybe nothing will change in the future, but i need to try because i may depend on this site a lot in the future.

I write this mostly to encourage you and myself, it probably will be read only by you, nevertheless i write it to sort out my own thoughts about your post and the future, and it will be a shamed to just deleted the comment now, so will be leaving it here for you. Until next time.