It would be wonderful if people start seeing it as multi-use platform @glenalbrethsen. I agree that people are using this platform to best suit their interest. The communities feature would help with identifying the brand of steemit when it comes out. At least I hope so, but until then, we will continue to use it as deemed in our minds.
I too have come across a bank on here. Steemit mimics the real world very much, so why shouldn't there be banks? Someone has to fund the economics of Steemit. It's just a matter of who will fall for the shark-bait. If it is worthwhile of the interest in the person's opinion, then definitely a perk to have on here for someone.
As for long term health of the platform, that too will depend on the behavior of the mass. There was a psychology study done once about rape. I believe it was found that people are more inclined to take action when they are the sole person at the scene. When there is a group of people there, they are less inclined to take any protective action because they expect the other person to do it. I believe the same mentality applies here. Many people don't expand beyond their own blog.
Perhaps it may have been a more engaging post if it didn't take me so long to reply back to people. My apologies, life gets busy and next thing I know, it's the weekend again!
Seems to me like there was plenty of engagement going on here. People just kind of did it. :)
We all got to do what we got to do, and we only have so much time to do it in, so no worries. I think the topic here was good enough to get the conversation going, so people jumped in and kept themselves occupied.
I think we're all looking to communities to do something good. I just hope it meets some expectations, at least. The more I hear about it, the more I'm getting concerned that it won't be a fix, or that it won't cause other issues. Not that there's a precedent here for that or anything. :)
We seem to live in a world of unintended consequences, and Steemit in particular is good at that. Someone might argue that unintended consequences are just consequences that weren't accounted for, or that were dismissed, or that might not be so unintended, but I feel better when I give people the benefit of the doubt with their actions and don't automatically consider them incompetent, arrogant or evil (or all three). :)
I definitely know I need that same mercy extended to me. Still, it would be nice for things to do what they're supposed to do, and on top of that, people be happy enough with it that they don't have to come up with ways to circumvent it.
I am so happy people engaged! You definitely are contributing with your thoughtful comment, which I appreciate.
I haven't looked into the communities features although I hear it's supposed to be on the wavelengths or reddit and solve all our steemit world hunger. ;) Will see what consequences will follow.
btw, do you know what gentebot is all about? I see it upvoting some of our comments, but not sure why.
I have also been the recipient of the gentlebot, but I have no idea how or why.
Just checked. It hasn't posted or commented in six or seven months, but is earning a healthy amount of rewards through curation, so it's only upvoting, and probably mainly comments. It's not a bid bot that someone paid that I can see, but it is receiving a 50,000-plus delegation from smooth, which is one (and probably the original) of a few accounts I've seen with smooth in the name.
Smooth's account was created in March 2016, so they're one of the earliest adopters or part of the original STEEM team, while gentlebot has been around since June 2017. So, maybe it's just smooth's way of going around and rewarding engagement. :)