I'm not sure this is really my top, it's maybe second, but my top would be duplicating @meno quite a lot and this one doesn't seem to be mentioned.
I think we need an intentionally-designed structure in place to welcome new users who are able to immediately create excellent content, and ensure they get enough financial and social rewards to keep them here. We talk a lot about acquiring lots of new users but not a lot about what happens to them when we get here.
I personally like playing with gamification, which is why I'm using my own stake to explore building a small system of that sort using gamification at @themesopotamians. But there are other approaches as well.
The important thing is that we find some way(s) to prepare for an influx of new users so that we can catch them as they come in and turn them into consistent contributors who are personally attached to the success of Steem. If we just start adding new accounts without that we'll be wasting a huge opportunity.
As a new user myself (31 days according to Steemd), I totally agree with you @tcpolymath. However, I can see the perspective of you more experienced Steemians too, that you wouldn't want to waste your energies on many of the n00bs who join SteemIt and then never leave the n00bie swamp, those who never progress beyond the upvote-for-upvote and follow-for-follow mindset madness. As you say,
...that is the key, is identifying those who are worthy of investing the time and effort (and maybe delegation) in. I aspire to be worthy. 😎
I very much do not want to imply that anyone is not worthy who comes here with a goal of producing good work. Getting people to come here and learn to do good work is really important, too. But I think that if we can bring in people who have shown they have that expertise elsewhere, they can be a big part of helping the people who aspire to greater things get there. That's how many of the communities I'm a part of in the outside world work.
You certainly look like a good poster to me. Followed.
In order to do that, I think SteemIt needs to market itself more as a "blogging platform" like Medium.com or WordPress, rather than as a "social network" like Facebook. I'm also active (at least I was, until I got here to SteemIt) on Minds.com, a similar crypto-social-network under active development, and the emphasis there at present is very much on being a replacement for Facebook. If you attract the FB crowd, you can expect to also attract the mentality that comes from the FB crowd, and there is a large majority there who would fit in nicely in the SteemIt "upvote-for-upvote" swamp and never get any further. I think you're spot on here @tcpolymath, attracting those who already produce good content, similar to DTube targeting quality YouTubers, is the way to move forward here.
Thanks for the follow, by the way.
I keep reading "Excellent" and "Good" content ...... but what criteria or characteristics does a post require to meet these subjective labels? The 'Trending' page is full of cr@p posts (by my subjective evaluation) and yet there are many Steemians toiling each day producing what I believe is 'quality' content for no or extremely little reward. Two examples I can think of offhand are @jaynie and @mrprofessor ... now these are not 'Self Improvement Blogs' or 'How to make a million dollars in Crypto' or some other life changing thesis ... but what I expect from the Steemian community .. sharing of cultures, lifestyle, cuisine and just general human interaction.
In my opinion, Bidbots and Curation Bots are killing the platform as they keep the vote pool focussed on the same group of assigned people, irrespective of what that person posts. So how does a 'newbie' get traction if a 'machine' or line of code is doing the voting?
Secondly, the 'New' page has a retention of about 40 second before a post has disappeared. So getting noticed is pretty damn random. I know it is possible to click a tag and then new but that is not instinctive. It would be good if one could 'subscribe' to TAGS such as 'Music' 'Cooking' 'Food' etc. and then when in your profile and you select 'new' it gives a dropdown to your selected tags and one can then navigate to all the new 'food', 'music' etc.
I have been here two years and still manually curate and try greet new users but it is becoming a 'zero sum' game.
Trending right now is heavily driven by pay to win bid bots. It always has had people complaining about it, but it is worse now. :(