You are correct that Steemit.com will be adding "communities" to its user interface. This should be happening with the next hard fork. At that time, SMTs (tokens for these communities) will also be added.
At that time, I plan to track important information about those communities and tokens. At present, SteemTribes.online only lists information about tribes/communities that were created by Steem-Engine SCOT.
So in the future, I hope to have information on Steem communities that were initiated/created from either.
Yeah. Great. I checked out Steem Tribes Online. I went to the different sites, the different Steem apps. Brilliant. So, when is the next hard fork?
I was trying to find a definitive answer but could not find one. The best information I found is that developers want SMTs to be tested for about 3 months (source: https://steemit.com/tsp/@steem.marketing/the-steemit-podcast-interview-w-justinw-and-vandeberg which was written about 2 weeks ago). And SMTs are supposed to be delivered in the next HF (if I am not mistaken).
When they deliver the SMTs during next HF, will the tribes be integrated into Steemit for example? I'm asking because I see that the tribes have separate websites, apps, that you have to log into similar to how you log into Steemit, Busy, Dtube, Partiko, etc, separately. So, are the tribes supposed to be integrated so you don't have to log into each tribe or app separately? Is that the goal? Are the developers, etc, on the same page concerning that?
Tribes created via Steem-Engine will continue to remain separate. Tribes from Steem-Engines cost more but have more customizable options. SMTs/Communities coming from Steemit Inc will cost less from what I have heard and will offer fewer options and should require less technical knowledge to set up. But honestly, until they come out, there is still a lot that is unknown.
So, in other words, two different things. I like the idea of having different Steem apps like Busy, Steemit, Partiko, Dtube, etc. So, that's one thing. So, the thing would be to add a tribe feature into the code, the blockchain of Steem itself. I guess one of the challenges is in regards to the ability to moderate your own tribe like a person might moderate a Facebook group. So, I was reading a bit about that earlier. So, I guess it's a debate between whether tribe leaders should be able to delete comments, posts, threads, etc, on their tribes, or if they should only be allowed to hide all of that. Technically, I would vote for allowing them to hide the posts. But if it is hidden, then where would those posts be? Would they just want to keep hidden posts at the bottom of a tribe? Perhaps, they are all debating these types of questions right now. I've heard that blockchains either cannot or should not allow for comments and posts to be removed, that they stay in the blockchain forever. So, tribes could encourage people to chat more, meaning something closer to a chat room. But would they factor in RC Mana into that? If so, some people might run out of mana if they're commenting in the tribes too often.
So here are a few thoughts:
Tribe Incentive:
Yeah, they should let tribe owners sell or delegate RC out to their members. I think I've read that is the plan. Yeah, I heard that an app can remove comments from the UI, the App, be it Busy, Steemit, etc, like you said. It remains on the blockchain. If I can't find something of mine on Busy, then I can swap out the domain name for another, in the URL, to find it, perhaps. So, if Busy removed something of mine, I might still find it on Steemit, etc.
Finding Hidden Content
But in Tribes, I'm not sure how that would work in regards to finding things via the URL address bar because I don't know what kind of system the tribes might have, how the URL system will work, etc.