Hi Denmarkguy
I agree with a lot of what you say in this post but
it brings in people who have (A) no interest in creating content, except as a means to make money and (B) no interest in building community, just an interest in filling their pockets.
There is an option C in this scenario. People who came to steem with a high level of writing in whatever genre; travel writers, story writers and people who write quality articles that you'd see on niche websites. These people quite rightly hope for more than a few $ for a 2000-4000 short story or a long well researched science article. But it's not right to say that they only do it for the money, they also do it for the love of the creative process. But having said that, why would any decent writer spend 4-6 hours creating something polished and not feel disappointed when it makes a few dollars when you look at some if the sht on trending 😉 There are communities and curation guilds that reward these types of long form content creators... sometimes.
But the inconsistency in value/quality that happens on steem is something that many decent freelance writers won't stick around to experience over and over again. I've stopped putting my best writing up on steem for this very reason. I earn my living from writing, and that ain't gonna happen on steem at the moment, so the large part of my short stories, articles etc go to various websites as commissioned work. But I'm not 100% down on steem. Sure it has its problems, but also potential. Instead of leaving, I've simply changed what content I create for steem and the time I expend here.
You said it well when you described steem as having an 'Identity Crisis.' At the moment the content is a mishmash of blogs, vlogs, travel articles, short stories, serielised fiction, competitions, poetry, fitness dapp logs, DrugWars spam posts, steem-centric articles etc... the list goes on.
This all looks very messy and confusing to a new comer and generally most people who don't have a curious nature to figure it all out leave soon after joining. This is one of the problems that needs addressing tbh and it might be solved if steem develops into a more focused platform, rather than trying to be everything to everyone.
Anyway, that's my two cents 😉 I stick around on steem because it's an interesting place and it's still early days.
No drama from me m8, these are just my thoughts and opinions. Ha ha, that's something else I've noticed on steem and it's not necessarily a bad thing; people get riled up about things so easily. I guess it's an indicator of how much passion people have for this platform.
Well @raj808, I agree about professional writers being justified in their disappointment when they only get a few cents. On the other hand, if they are merely republishing something they have already published somewhere else, then any extra coin they get is basically icing on the cake... and since this is an "alternative" sort of venue, they also get to pick up new followers.
I say this, coming from a background as an article writer for magazines and a number of writers, as well as 20-odd years of contributing to "get paid for content" sites of many varieties.
Building a following is tough, no matter what you do, and where you publish. There are about sixty BILLION web pages out there, and this post is just one of them! That's a lot of competition! In a sense, it's a small miracle that maybe 50 people have read this post!
You're quite right that the feeds often look messy... one of the top things on my "wish list" is the ability to filter posts by "site of origin." I'd love to be able to view content purely through the lens of Steemit, SteemPeak and Busy, for example...
On the whole, I feel the good outweighs the bad... so I am still here, and still promoting the venue and interacting... as I close in on my 1000th top level post.