@timcliff
I am glad to see that your proposal about trying to make spam less reward-able will be putting on hold for the moment. But I am also very glad that you wrote that proposal it did open quite some eyes and lots of people (like myself) were unaware of the dust threshold. I do appreciate all thing that you are doing to support the steem ecosystem and blockchain! That why I decided to give one of empty witness spots to you. I was hesitant about doing this, because I do feel that we should create a better middleclass on the Steem blockchain.
This is somethings which is missing at the moment.
We are all trying together to make something out of it. You as a witness, I by trying to interact as much as possible! Both are utmost crucial!
We, did set up recently a small community trying to prevent as much drop outs as we can within our niche! And I have to admit, it is hard work! If you are interested into following our small betting community, you can find us at @sbcbot! The purpose of the bot, is not to sell votes but the give starting people within our niche a push in the back. More niches should try to set up things like things because every users we can prevent from leaving steem will increase the interaction, hence will decrease the drop outs!
Our latest project is a world cup contest! It is getting bigger by the day! So, if you have some spare time left, feel free to join us! Registration is free, and like it should there are no upvote, resteem of follow requirements! You can find it on my blog!

So, thanks again for all the hard work. The steem ecosystem would be nowhere without guys like you!

Cheers,
Peter