Great ideas! (I missed this post)
One other thing is that when the price of Steem is rising the whole mood changes, but like all cryptos, Steem has been dropping for nearly all of 2018 - three months of rising cryptos and this may be a much happier place.
With no bots people get stuck on a reputaion and can't go up - which is discouraging - apply your genius to that problem too!
For example, in my first 18 months as @sift666 I went from 25 rep up to 64 rep, but stayed on 64 for six months. So I started this new account, used bots, and went from 25 to 66 in six months in spite of the fact that Steemit was running like a bag of shit (Hardfuck 20)
Anyway, Happy Xmas and all the best for the New Year