Solid post. Thanks. What do you propose be done about point 5 that is actually feasible? Bearing in mind the realities of selfishly motivated people, interested in getting rich/making an easy living posting on Steemit etc.
I mean, there is not a lot of value in describing the situation we wish to see if it's neither realistic nor practical (and I'm not suggesting this is what you've done) - I'm asking what pragmatic approach can be done to solve the problem you've described.
I've said from the beginning of my time on Steemit (less than two weeks) that the learning curve is seriously difficult for a newcomer to grasp. If you want the average person to 'get' it, then the economy and the workings of Steem, Steem Power, Voting Power, SBD etc need to be much easier to comprehend.
If we can reach some kind of 'pick up and play' state, where you can do what you observe others doing in a straightforward and intuitive way, then this system will explode and be the amazing thing so many of us see it having the potential to be. But I'm sometimes worried it's design is simply too technical for that, as it stands right now anyway, to truly compete with the likes of Reddit and Facebook.
Very keen to hear your thoughts here.
I think everything is very clearly explained in the available FAQ's, in the Steem wiki and in a lot of Steemit posts how this platform works. The information is not the problem. How information is presented is not the problem.
The laziness of many people is. Laziness to read and learn.
It's the same kind of laziness that makes people accept those long-ass Terms & Conditions contracts without reading them whenever they join the Facebooks & Googles of the internet and then are surprised after a few years that those platforms sell their data or do whatever nefarious things they do.
You can't educate people by force.
I find it a bit similar to what's happening now at a macro level with the crypto market as a whole. I've read many comments and posts in the past couple of days from people that are panicking because they clearly haven't taken the time to understand what blockchain technology is or why it is important. The kind of people that maybe have heard that bitcoin and cryptos are "hot" right now and they can make a lot of money in a short period of time without doing much. The kind of people that can't really differentiate between investments and speculations.
Word!
See, I am not arguing that all the available info is out there and readily accessible in FAQs etc. I know it is, for sure. And I don't deny that the problem is people's laziness.
My whole point is: Steem is not pick up and play accessible, and if we don't look at it pragmatically and from a lens of how the world is (people are lazy and want things easily) and instead focus on how the world should be (people find the resources, educate themselves, come to Steemit informed and ready) then we're not approaching this correctly.
That distinction between how we want it to be vs a realistic look at how people are, and how Steemit's onboarding may need to be amended as a result of this, is really what I am commenting on.
I don't think there is a way around this. I think the biggest learning curve is understanding how blockchain works. Once that is understood the rest is not that hard to pick up just by actively participating on the platform.