"This bastard child of Reddit with all the luxuries of a Craigslist interface"

Agree. I'm new to Steemit and was interested in the payout formula (esp. could be good to freelance writers, considering places like HuffPost sometimes don't even PAY), but currently there is no way serious writers would come on here. It looks scammy as hell and the UI is way worse. It just looks not credible, even if their potential financial rewards would be better than say, Medium.

Also, the community has the potential to be super toxic.