@scorer, I read this article with great interest as it touches my heart as a newbie. Certainly, I was in the shoe of your story but I have no idea what else I can do besides having to wait for SP increase and Voting Power resumed to 100%. Having said that, I do see many quality articles around even among newbies.
On the "competitor of Steem", I am too new even to understand the existing Steemit. I rather park this item and learn to do steemit first. Anyway, that was a good alert
Cheers