You make a compelling case @ats-david, and I'm inclined to agree with the idea to simply "move it."
I'll preface this with the statement that I know little about the technical end of this equation, but I have a fair handle on the human psychology and dynamics of virtual communities end.
Lately, I have also been thinking about @theoretical's recent resurfacing and the suggestion that perhaps what is needed is to learn from everything that was part of the Steem "experiment" (as I recall, Dan used to call it an experiment) and instead start a completely new chain that uses the positives and and simply doesn't include the negatives, and the loopholes that can be exploited. And yes, I recognize that the process of starting a new chain is infinitely more complex than forking... and far more time consuming, and perhaps we face a bit of a time crunch here.
But let's assume that we do simply fork and create a decentralized home for the community. The challenge with forks... building a bit on what @indigoocean said in her comment... is that they almost inevitably turn out to be "watered down" versions of the original. And I'm not just talking blockchains here, I'm talking all forms of "moves." I've been participant to dozens of community moves related to message board communities going back 20+ years, and the "fail rate" seems to be around 95%. There's a massive dilution/fragmentation issue. People are lazy, and often disengaged.
Now, if a "move" actually could just mean that everything remains basically unchanged except for a few dozen key accounts being "nulled out," that might play. Particularly if some of the now unemployed Steemit, Inc. developers were also onboard, as they might have knowledge of any parts of the system that was "kept close" by Steemit, Inc.
Anyway, I'm certainly open to moving, if it can truly just bypass the relevance of the entire current circus.
I understand the hesitation to believe that this can be successful. But I think a lot of people underestimate the devs and stakeholder interest in running things without a centralized organization pulling the strings and mostly making poor decisions.
I also think people overestimate the success of the current chain once it's left to Justin's control. Without competent devs and users in the community willing to run witness nodes, the chain will be extremely vulnerable to halting, particularly during hard forks. Even with devs that had years of experience on this chain, we were subject to multiple halts of the blockchain when hard forks were implemented. Those people that were able to troubleshoot it and get it operational are now gone.
I'll give you one guess where they'll likely end up. :)
Thanks for the reassurance!
I would be very hopeful that the former devs and other contributors would be onboard with "our" fork; just the fact that they quit Steemit, Inc., as a group, says a lot. I suppose it all fits... Justin acquires yet another blockchain app with no users...