If you could change one thing about Steemit, it would be introduction of user ID verification. By dedicated team working directly as Steemit employees or by Steemit project as Steemcleaners.
The information about user's personal IDs would not be public, of course. It would be kept secret in database after verification.
Users who are not verified could have their reward limited to having only 5% of of total payout from the post.
While verified user could have full rewards.
Steemit is very much revolving around capitalistic concepts regardless of it's use of cryptocurrency, and capitalism cannot work with anonymity (cryptocurrency earned on Steemit is converted to fiat currency). It's impossible.
Right now, Steemit has become scam haven because there are no consequences for scamming or any abhorrent behaviour. Majority of new posts being posted right now are either spam or some attempt to cheat or scam (plagiarism, comment farming, identity theft, etc).
I am not a fan of requiring and storing user ID data. At that point you become another Facebook. I think the majority of people here feel the same way.
I'm not a fan of storing this information either. That's why I am in favor of our current method of "trust" with posting to an existing social media site or blog. However, we do need a dedicated person to do the job and I am hoping after the new site is up in a couple weeks we have one on board already to do it a bit more proactively with a personable approach.
!Doh - I replied there with the wrong account.
There is no other way to avoid scamming without identity check. What scammers fer the most is others finding out who they are. If there are no social consequences for scamming behaviour, then scamming with flourish.
The option would be to copy all such data to cold storage and keep non of it online.