With you and @nickyhavey on this.

Although I am quite conservative in nature, I think I am learning to make decision and take leaps of faith. That's why I did join this new techie, alternative thingy. Seeing potential. I believe the potential is still here but it hurts to discover how it's being wasted.

About alternatives - I have tried managing other platform accounts (once or twice - and a couple more only half-walks through the registration process). I have yet to discover any such platform that looks as if they put more thought in it and did not just clone the idea. Maybe I am concentrating on other things.

About bots experience - I did try those, too, thinking I should adapt to reality. But ended up not so sure it was reality. And I think the moment I quit was when I accidentally bumped into that war of opinions post you mentioned. Or a similar one, although I think your nickname looked familiar later when I got to know you as part of the now #powerhousecreatives community. A comedy interview before that, now I remember.

About First Impressions of those Hot and Trending... I wanna cry. It's true. It's imperative that this changes. The only way I see is by convincing the big fish/sea mammals that they will help immensely save themselves and us all by taking care to manually distribute votes. Seen many of those? I had one from @blocktrades last October, I think. It was like six @curie votes. (Later I learned from an initiative of @anomadsoul that it's being done regularly. A good example.)

About hope - dolphins like @tarazkp, @delishtreats, and @worldcapture (for me, you're already a dolphin, buddy). Other communities like @crowdmind, @bananafish, @c-squared, @creativecrypto and major projects like @fundition... Why am I bringing those here? (Alright, while I am on that thought... which occured to me in the future... let me also include hope projects like @qurator, @travelfeed, @share2steem and creative projects like @freewritehouse, @gardengnomepubs and @archisteem). Well, because people who care about effort, quallity, future and stuff should, as you said, focus together. My closest thing to military tactics experience is playing games, team or contact sports. But same rules apply, no?

About superstars. Well, I did find somebody on steemit.com when he had just joined, a couple of months after me, I think. I knew him as a star in my sphere, which is photography. (Well, generally, only some photographers and very rare other people know who the star photographers are. I guess the same goes for modern poets but less so.) And he did prove quality matters - the progress was quick. How? I don't care. Look at his work - it stands out as top world level. That's @timothyallen.

The effort and quality you, @quillfire, put into replies and your own work certainly impressed me and continues to do so. And I love to see there be other non-quitters out there. In here.

I care about suggestions what Can We Do to improve things. So now I find myself in projects, left and right. But suggestions are always welcome.

Oops, it's lunch and I promised I will be cooking today. Anyway, I hope it was worth it.

Yours,

Manol

P.S. A suggestion and a question - is there a tag and/or Discord channel dedicated to talks about the future of Steem?