if you can't afford, then work until you can
This thread is full of people worried about adopting masses into Steem and how not spending enough money will... what, make it seem like a childish platform? What planet are you people from?
Work until you can, is just about the best way to drive away mass amounts of people. Like the mindset or not, it's the fucking truth.
I like your addition of a keyword system though. It could be a good middle-ground between our two differing views.
(Also, not to be antagonistic, but just because someone runs a successful business doesn't mean you should listen to them. "Appeal to authority" / "Listen to the top" is the most blanket & pointless statement I hear often nowadays.)
Steem has been advertised as a platform with free-handouts. "Come to Steem, contribute and earn free money", which was a good way to attract masses of people who simply opened up their hands. But they're the same people who cry about Steem being ruled by whales. Truth is: the world is being ruled by power. And money (regardless of FIAT or CRYPTO) is just another form of power.
Selling Steem short by giving things away for free didn't work out, which is why I don't think it's smart to give away communities for 0.4 USD. Instead, IMO this will simply result in people not valuing the underlying product. It doesn't need to be 1000 STEEM, but it should be at least 5$ or 10$. If you don't have that, you're lying to yourself.
I'm not referring to them running a business. I'm referring to the fact that matt, aggroed and the rest of the Splinterlands team, created a thriving ecosystem, which has steadily gained in value. Even their own currency DEC has enough sinks to hold its value. Which is why their opinion should be valued.
Everyone's opinion should be valued, but I'm just saying that referring to their past (and tbf, current) success in spite of what they are actively saying is sorta a moot point. I look at what is being presented to me currently, which is a guy saying 1,000 STEEM should be the cost which, regardless of his history on this platform, is a crazy fucking idea to spout out.
We're not selling Steem short by "giving away" communities for cheap, we're lowering the barrier to entry. The reason Steem hasn't hit mass-adoption even though we've been signaling the "free handouts" as you call them, isn't because of them, but in spite of them. Steem never succeeded due to low levels of marketing, crypto-confusion to normies, fears of ponzi-schemes (which surely isn't helped by charging high fees for something literally every other community-based site offers for free), and an overall lack of clarity as to why the platform is special.
We need options for people to freely & easily hop aboard, poke around, try things out, and not be afraid to do things. Charging high fees for creating a community goes against this philosophy.
And in reality, what is the ACTUAL cost of making a community? Pennies? If that. Plus they need RC credits and thus need to hold Steem anyways. The more communities there are the more Steem that is being taken out of circulation. Making them expensive makes 0 sense and it's bad for everyone.
Hear hear, let's not ignore that aggroed just posted a, picture of a double rainbow and less than 20 words at a value of 20 dollars. This place is not worth discussing..
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Agreed, the lower steem is valued the more it will be burned. We want communities to be attractive enough that it would create a good burn rate for steem. $0.40 or 3 steem would be way too low. If it's fixed to a specific dollar value and steem goes up in value, all you have to do is hold on to your steem till you can afford a community. Any name 5-6 characters or under should be sold at a premium price. Like if you tried to register "zap" you would pay 10,000-20,000 steem or something.
For non-premium names maybe $25-50 worth of steem.