I agree with a big part of what you're saying. It is not up to par yet to really attract the general public, which is why I have not yet spread the word to all, only a few geeks/nerds.
A few points, firstly the UI:
Simplicity is good when it’s done right, think about the UI in Nokia Lumia versus the one on Apple iPhone.
I prefer the Nokia Lumia UI, iPhone is just a collection of icons to me. Unfortunately Microsoft was too late to really make an impact.
Now my major gripe; multi-language support. I wrote a post about it some days ago; https://steemit.com/steemit/@blevley/support-communities-with-multi-language-support-a-quick-approach.
To me it is still unfathomable that a global initiative like Steem(it) does not support more than one language.
One other reason I haven't introduced many people yet is the, at times unpredictable, behavior of the whales. While I agree there must be a way to weed out spam and plagiarism, the way it currently works is not ideal.
A anarchistic, decentralized solution like this needs to discuss these items openly and allow everyone to give their input.
Unfortunately there is no central place for a discussion like this, that would be beneficial.