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Source: pixabay.

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English version

Inspired by @justineh's "My Steem Vision" I reflected my own point of view concerning the chances and the future of our blockchain, and also about the weak points that needed to be worked on in order to achieve these goals.

The unique feature of the STEEM among other crypto currencies is its community!

In my eyes, the unique characteristic of the STEEM blockchain, compared to other crypto currencies, is that it represents the fundament of a social network, a community based on it. This combination of blockchain technology and social media is so far unparalleled, whereby the original thought, to offer authors, artists, musicians, scientists, creative thinking freethinkers, ... an uncensorable platform with the additional possibility to get financial rewards for good content, in my opinion wrongly got more and more watered down and upstaged.

I agree that the performance of the fast, feeless transactions enabling and, due to its 'proof of brain' mechanism, compared to the Bitcoin, resource saving STEEM blockchain should be repeatedly emphasized and appreciated.

I agree that technological progress à la MIRA and the development of great DApps like for example Steem Monsters, NextColony or Wherein are of the utmost importance and will hopefully be driven forward at an ever-increasing pace.

It is crucial to win new members and offer them a great user experience in order to let the STEEM network grow.

These manifold possibilities, all based on the STEEM blockchain, are fascinating and hold a huge potential. Decisive for the success of STEEM, however, in my opinion, in the end will be its
ability not only to attract new users, but also to retain them permanently.
Newcomers should feel comfortable here and soon consider our blockchain as their new 'virtual home'.

Even the best technology can't get us anywhere without enough people who are using it. Facebook's success is not based on technological superiority, but on the fact that this network succeeded in attracting an enormous number of users who are writing there and communicating with friends and relatives.
This means that we should also do everything we can to design the various STEEM interfaces in such a way that they appear non-deterrent for 'normal' people who have not yet come into contact with crypto currencies and who shouldn't perceive our platform as a ghost town inhabited primarily by bots, but rather as inviting, warm and attractive!
A rich pool of satisfied users would also make STEEM much more interesting for larger investors in the long run than it still is today, interesting to place advertisements read by many, to market products, to disseminate information. The value of a (social) network is measured among others by the number of its users.

Where should we start?

In order to attract (and retain) more users, work urgently needs to be done on the following issues:

• Someone who wants to open a STEEM account should be able to do this instantly, without any delay. If, for example, I talked to someone about crypto currencies and STEEM on the train, it should be possible to create an account for him immediately and get started (regardless of whether I have enough RC or not to create an account for him).

• I doubt that many potential new users would be willing to pay for a STEEM account. It's difficult enough to lure them away from Facebook and persuade them to try out something new ... if then I finally told them that they had to pay now, the majority would probably decline with thanks. We should ask ourselves who needs whom more urgently: We new users, or a potential newcomer us, the STEEM? If the answer to this question is clear, then it should also be clear who has to try harder ... :)

• Someone with a newly created account should be able to take part in the community immediately. It's not just that often newcomers are neither upvoted nor receive any human comments, but they are also unable to adequately answer or upvote eventual comments due to a lack of resource credits. Delegations of resource credits to newcomers are urgently needed here!

• Now to a very special topic, the flags. I think it's good and right that the possibility to flag (now called downvoting) exists in a decentralized social network. How else can spam or even worse, such as child pornography, be fought? I also think it makes sense in principle to be able to reduce the reward for posts that are extremely overrated from one's own point of view.
  The crux, however, is that downvotes are often set for the sole reason of pursuing other users, solely because of their dissenting opinions or even completely independent of what they write(!), and denying them permanent visibility and any rewards. This is counterproductive to say the least and makes a devastating impression on newcomers who happen to observe such 'flag wars' or even get into them! We should be aware of this.
  If it were up to me, ways and means would have to be found to contain 'flag wars' waged purely for personal motives. For example, a committee of respected users elected by the community and equipped with sufficient delegated STEEM power could be called in such cases and then decide whether the flags were justified or not.
  In my opinion the suggestion to provide each user with a certain number of free downvotes so that spam (or overvalued posts) would be flagged more frequently in the future, wouldn't really make a big difference under the current conditions. I assume that only whales flagged more often than before, while smaller accounts would still not dare to do so for fear of retaliation.

• Finally, a point that is probably not easy to realize: in my opinion, the community would most likely flourish if as many users as possible (especially those with a lot of STEEM power) would distribute their votes to as many different recipients as possible, preferably after a manual review and evaluation of their articles. In contrast to this, it is currently most attractive to either upvote oneself, do 'circle jerking' or to use bidbots (which, in the first place, serve their creators to gain wealth, but do nothing to increase the visibility of particularly good content - completely independent of quality it only matters who is willing and able to pay).
  By the way, to my mind, this kind of voting behaviour, which is geared towards short-term profit, only apparently leads to a higher return on investment: although more STEEM is acquired, the STEEM price is reduced by lowering the attractiveness of the network for the majority of users and thus also potential investors. I would like to forego earning even one more STEEM if I knew that this would raise the STEEM price to 20 euros in the long run ... :-)

What are your ideas?

What are your ideas to make voting for as many different accounts as possible (instead of just oneself and 'best friends') more attractive? Apart from that, how could the interest of new users in our platform be aroused and kept alive?
I will not deprive you of my earlier considerations, which certainly do not represent the 'answer to everything':
a) The implementation of 'diminishing returns',
b) a modified reward curve (there is a certain tragedy in the fact that both protagonists of this article, @dan and @ned, have left our STEEM community in the meantime).

What everyone can do in any case is to take a little time every now and then, to read and possibly upvote articles manually, even by previously unknown authors, instead of restricting himself completely to autovoting. In order to give more weight to one's own votes, everyone should think about not delegating his complete STEEM power to self-serving bidbots. And also commenting should not be left primarily to bots, because only by interhuman communication real community is able to prosper!