I get that, and it does make sense. Regarding these changes specifically, do you think they will encourage people to buy more steem and encourage more people to use steemit.com?
I feel like we are so focused on appeasing the small community we have here instead of focusing on making this more attractive to the 7 billion other people out there... that we end up focusing on the wrong things, this being an example.
The goal is to address the failures of the reward pool to serve its intended function, which is to attract and reward those who add value to Steem, and to also serve as a content discovery mechanism which makes Steem/it attractive to general web traffic and recruits more users into the economy.
What we have seen over time is a spiraling downward as the alexa rank of steemit.com has dropped (so fewer people are even seeing it, likely due to the shit content that is posted and 'promoted'), along with the price of Steem and its ranking and visiblity to cryptocurrency investors who might buy it. And at the same time, the reward pool mechanism has been undermined by rampant milking which (along with the price) has been the main reason that hardly anyone can earn any meaningful rewards (without buying them, which doesn't count), and also the main reason why there is less highly-attractive content and poor content discovery, leading to a decline in general web traffic and potential growth (because, after all, if there is nothing but garbage here, or at least nothing but garbage that is easy to find, why would there be any general web traffic).
As I alluded to earlier, there are numerous parallel efforts to address Steem's stagnation and decline, as well as the slow pace of progress on any and every effort that might do so. One of those is SPS (DAO), which is intended to provide funding to numerous decentralized efforts (development, marketing, promotion, etc.) where Steemit Inc. has not been knocking it out of the park to say the least. Another one is the revamp of the reward pool mechanism, of which enhanced downvotes are an essential part. The development team working to reduce the cost of hard forks is yet another. And perhaps also SMTs and communities, someday, if the slow pace and mixed quality of development from our one centralized and shrinking development team is finally able to pull it off.
I do not know and I can not guarantee that any or all of these will actually work and pull Steem/it out of decline, but I think they are credible, sincere efforts, and I do know that we absolutely need to try or the tailspin will only continue.
I feel like we are so focused on appeasing the small community we have here
Literally most of your examples in this post.