RE: Steem's Transparency Is A Two Way Street - Damned If You Do And Damned If You Don't
I don't think Steemit.com was ever intended to come out of beta and is only a proof of concept website. If it were meant to be used to onboard the masses it would have been worked on more by now.
I'm sure Elon Musk's first version of the Tesla didn't have a nice paint job, a radio, and electric windows on it, that came later once it was proven it could work. It's clear to me that Steemit.com is not ever going to move out of beta, but it has not been communicated very well to all its users, one of the things causing frustration for the users.
He's already working on a new site which he alluded to in this post that is meant to onboard people not into crypto.
While we wait and debate what features it may or may not have, other developers have taken the initiative to create their own superior UI's
SteemPeak.com, for example, has a much better UI that incorporates what users have been asking for with more features being added almost weekly. You should have a look at it and add some of your suggestions listed in your comment. Specifically, chat integration and groups and communities would be a great feature to have.
I'm currently working on my own site to make it easier for users to find active communities on the blockchain that interest them than what we currently have. Don't want to say too much about it until it's closer to release.
I don't know downplaying steemit.com is as reasonable as it is. I mean most of the Steem Inc. costs derive from the website traffic, as well as redundancy and I am not sure how many developes were devoted to mantaining the site, but I am sure at least 1 full developer was from the potential 100 people staff it was said they were at one time.
Maybe it was never meant to come out of betta, but that doesnt mean to get in the way of many of the contributions from the people that wanted to have a better UX with steemit. Like it or not, steemit.com is what people first see when dealing with steem.
But leaving Steemit.com aside, steem blockchain itself didnt really change much in this 3 year process. The accounts and economic model wasn't very revolutionary specially after @dan left.
Sorry for being too negative but this was not a new feeling, I was always suspicious about what are they doing with a fully funded, fully staffed company that didn't seemed to move as much as I though they would. And just like many of the VC people and people from the industry says, giving millions of dollars to a new company is a sure way to kill it. I think this was the case with Steemit.