Those people with 5K SP, likely were all joining steemit about the same time, or bought steem, and powered it up as an investment. When I joined in Aug last year one of the guys that joined the same time as me is now a REP of 64, and has close to 3000 SP, and like me no personal funds invested. Another friend joined in Dec, and he has a REP of 57 like me and 800 SP, once again nothing invested. Neither of these to tried to buddy up, cozy up with whales, they are both a heck of a lot better at content creation than I am and most of their votes, like most of my votes received come from users with smaller accounts. We also support those same people who joined about the same time as we did, only natural we are all learning the ins and outs at the same time.
Highschool seniors do not frequently play with and buddy up with freshmen in highschool. So a the Dolphins tend to support themselves, the minnows, (a large part of them), try to get the attention of the dolphins. The redfish, all have to fend for themselves, that was the way it used to be. It has changed on steemit in the last six months, there has been meaningful social growth.
In january, a small group of people signed on to support a redfish project. Created by someone that Joined the same time I did, and someone that joined in Dec. It was and is called @newbieresteemday. It was the first of it's kind. It was a group that helped new user get a leg up, not a handout, and were not robbed blind by the group, just passed out information of where what and some ideas on how to do things. Now there are a lot of those groups out helping new users learn and grow on steemit.
Three or months ago a Dolphin started a program to help a few redfish become minnows, last month he put a call out for people looking to become Dolphins, part of the steemit middle class, (I was selected), over the course of the last week I have seen no less than two other call from dolphins to minnows to help them grow to dolphins. One of the calls had two other dolphins signing on to support the project.
Not to long ago @timcliff educated a large part of the steemit community about the dust level votes. Out of that that individual who was a co founder of @newbieresteemday, @davemccoy, got together with @danielsaori and created @dustsweeper, to help those votes count for the giver and the recipient.
So I guess it is all about where one looks as to what one finds when they look at steemit. The helping attitude for free started with the redfish class of users. The education and outreach of the various help societies on steemit is having an effect, the number of "nice post" "pretty picture", are getting less and less, the number of new users are growing, the vote for vote follow for follow are all dying. Yes there are bad neighborhoods, yes there are bullies, but over all the society aspects of steemit are growing and changing and I think they are moving in the right direction.
New toys get boring after awhile and then it's back to playing with the box it came in. There are multiple types of people on steemit, so attitudes are going to be quite varied.
Wow..how complicated and obtuse. Do you not think that it would just be easier to simply read a few articles from the 'new' feed and upvote and comment if you like them or move on to the next if you dont?
Does Steemit really need new posses, curation trails, discord channels blah blah blah ?
It needs people to read shit, comment and upvote. Simple....just what the OP suggested....far too many committees here!