Hi @loreshapergames,
I agree with a lot of the points you've raised here... I've got some ideas on how to set up a system that continually pays an author for their work, but haven't had the time to build the platform yet.
In regards to your inverse, that's a great idea and something that's entirely possible. Maybe check out some of @sambillingham's tutorials, especially the Finally Comments wordpress plugin. Otherwise, I think www.steemmakers.com is doing exactly what you're thinking, and I'm pretty sure it's open source, so that might be a good starting point for you.
I feel the same about Steem bucks... it's very monopoly money, and it could do very well for us in the future, but it might also not, so it's hard to know how much effort one should invest.... but I guess that's the same for every investment ever...
Great post, I don't always comment, but I really do enjoy a lot of your content.
Darn, I remember seeing a Steem frontend that did allow you to filter out your feed by tags... and I can not for the life of me find it now. Arrrgh.
oneplace.media does something like that.
Yes! That's the one. Thank you!
I hadn't seen Finally Comments, but it's a good one. Steemmakers also looks good, but I really am looking for something that allows a sort of hybrid approach with both traditional and Steem blockchain content side-by-side.
With that said, Finally looks like it supports all of our needs; I just need to look into how exactly to get it set up (and, of course, deal with organizational inertia; our website always lags a few months behind our work, because I'm awful that way).
EDIT: Also glad to hear you enjoy our content. I try my best to keep this place updated frequently, and give people what they want (and, of course, things that can help them, when my humble abilities are capable of delivering that).