First off @stellabelle, hellova discussion you have running here. Post 10 hours old, started reading it at about the 8 hour mark, 170+ comments. Took awhile to read the comments, dropped a few comments on comments, so it took some time.
One issue I have seen since first joining is the explosion of bots. There really are only a few I feel are worth anything, but wont mention them in this post. Upvote bots need to be done away with. That is my opinion. They add "ZERO" value to the community, (they do add value to the builders and users though). More emphasis needs to be placed on the "eyeball" Icon, the number of views.
So solution to the upvote bot situation:
Steemit currently tracks "Votes", "Comments", and "Views". Any upward movement to an individual's REP should take into account all three of these Items. If people want to see steem differentiate itself from run-of-the-mill everyday ordinary social media, it needs to do so in a fair way. So I propose in order for an individual REP to be increased apply a weighting system to those three items., Number one and heaviest weight would go to comments received, second would be to Views, and the least important one would be number of and value of votes. Vote bots gone, or severely crippled. Of course this would just mean more comment bots, so a way would then need to be found to negate them.
Look like a nerve has been touched on by you @stellabelle, loads of actually very informative and "real" comments, not a bunch of busy body bots.
yeah, i was so surprised to get these post-long epic answers! I guess just opening the can of worms, and saying "your turn'...
It does seem to have gotten the conversation rolling, 350 votes, 235 comments and, 683 views. Those are some great numbers and shows that people really do care and have Ideas about steemit.