Hey Kevin!
I consider you one of the Steem OGs. I could say all kinds of things here, like, remember what Steem already gave you, don't lose hope, keep fighting the good fight, etc etc
Please just do one thing for me. Stick around until SMTs are live or until you can run something similar to a SMT easily on EOS. Launch your own community and I will join you.
Yes, the incentives for behaviors must be tweaked to reward quality content creation and curation. Awesome content will lie at the heart of an awesome community. Tweaking, testing and playing with the settings might give much insights into what works. Until ultimately, the virality of the thing will dominate the online world.
And yet, in the meantime, I can't understand a lot of decisions Steemit and Steem whales make. I hope their choices will lead to long-term profit, but it does often seem short term gain oriented.
Stick around man, interesting times are still ahead of us.