Thanks for this excellent recap!

It's good to hear all these different ideas being brought to the table... one of the questions for me remains something both @stellabelle and @lukestokes have brought up at various times... in order to work towards a common goal, we really need to come to some sort of consensus on what Steemit IS. Maybe even a mission statement of sorts. Is this a social content platform? A place to develop apps... with an eye towards SMTs? A place to make money? There seem to be so many ideas-- excellent ideas-- brought to the table from people who however have vastly different impressions of what Steemit IS.

What do I do? I came here as a content creator, and I remain a content creator. My gig is "engagement" and interaction. I probably don't do all that well financially but I often have 30-40+ comments per post (15 times the site average per post) and many of my posts actually end up with as many (or more) views than votes.

At one time, I posted more content externally... but I have somewhat slacked off on that because I have reservations about staking a 20-year content creation reputation on a site with so much spam and auto-bot voting and stuff like that. Communities are built by PEOPLE, not by code and automation and bots.