I don't think that focusing on the money that can be earned here is the right approach either way. STEEM should be treated as a utility, a tool that supports/sustains other business models that are only indirectly related (or completely unrelated) to content creation. Blogging was a proof of concept use case, and Steem has a lot more potential than that.
Whether or not bid-bots are good/bad for the ecosystem is a red herring, because it focuses entirely on the ecosystem of creation/curation and implicit rewards that are not the whole picture. Even if they were, the role of a witness is to secure the chain and approve/decline hard forks based on their contribution to Steem as a technology (not as a blogging platform).
I oppose the Hard Fork because it's equally a red herring... moving deck chairs instead of focusing on long-term strategic development. When RC's and witness votes become the dominant reason people own SP (instead of curation and delegation for upvotes), then how the content creation rewards pool is distributed will prove to be mostly irrelevant. For that we need full focus on SMT's, not playing around with 50/50, rewards curves, curation curves, downvote pools, spitting into the wind, tugging on Superman's cape, or messing around with Jim.
Well said, I'm in complete agreement with all of this in its entirety! I have stuck around because of the untapped potential I see that others like yourself also see.
I need to check out your post that's been referenced a few times lately. And also follow you and/or convince you to become a witness lol..
I was solely focusing on the blogging aspect as that's what seemed to be the crux of this discussion here. I'm not into pissing in the wind or saving time in a bottle. But, I do like the songs. I am into blogging but only because I don't have anything else to currently offer this platform.
I got drilled by a steemian for expressing my views on what I feel a witnesses responsibility is here in my eyes. Being that this isn't just a POW chain and there is more to witnessing than securing the chain for consensus witnesses. As you said in its simplest form they need to approve or decline code from a is this innovative and efficient for the technology. But, for now I will quote a whale that's a witness that said "blogging is still the best game on steem" and until we define this place or have the communities and SMTs that bring utility and more use cases I get that we all feel compelled to do something..
Steem is different things to different people and I'm a late arrival compared to the emotionally and financially motivated users that are entrenched in that mind state. I never expected lambos or moons and I would appreciate a culture that doesn't focus on rewards only.