Good morning Steemians! I think things are finally starting to settle down, patches have been and are being implemented (for HF20) and people are returning to the Steem-o-sphere!
I've been reading up on the effects of the Hard Fork and seeing what the new changes really mean. I made a positivity post on Friday, encouraging people to look at the long range view. While my vision for the future of Steem is overwhelmingly positive still, I want to bring up some concerning elements this morning and share with you how we grew our account on Steem and why commenting as a newbie is one of the most important aspects of success here.
Here are my reflections...
When new users come to the ecosystem, we are like small fish (unless we already have friends here) swimming alone in a very large ocean. Smaller than fish even, we are plankton. High quality posts are valued on Steem and so is interaction, so that's what we started off doing.
I realized early on that just making posts without interacting would be like standing on a very small soap box like a roadside preacher trying to connect with people walking by on a busy city street corner. That's not my style and it doesn't yield good results, so I set out to engage.
Commenting
In our first few months here (we joined December 2017), we commented voraciously! It was winter then and things were quiet on the homestead. I spent hours on Steem each day engaging, posting and commenting! I made good friendships and connections and beyond the possibility to earn Steem and SBDs, Steem blockchain very quickly became an important SOCIAL site to me. In fact, that is what I missed most during this HF and honestly during this downturn in the price of Steem (currently waffling just below a dollar in value) which has slowed the frequency of interaction here.
We would make dozens of comments each day!
In fact, it was a solid goal of mine to get out and make as many comments as could. Not only replying to the comments on my blog posts and videos, but intentionally going out and finding people, new and old friends alike, to expand my horizons.
I made $20 on a comment once, but mostly the cents just started adding up! This is how a newbie makes connections and starts to slowly grow their account!! This is the basis for the incentive to earn on Steem!
We joined groups like @ecoTrain, 
Connection
I've connected with hundreds of bloggers on Steem and it is THIS which brings value to the ecosystem. This is the backbone and worth of Steem!
Now I have a major concern that new users can only comment or post once a day! This is extremely inhibitory! I know they are still working out the Resource Credit (RC) value (which acts as the bandwidth allotted for transactions such as commenting, posting, voting, etc), and have already made it worth 10x as much transactions as people weren't able to do much with the first trial amounts! But this is not enough!
We wouldn't have come here if it was Pay to Play
Let's talk some honest truth, we wouldn't be here if it was Pay to Play.
I don't think Steem will survive as Pay to Play.
Blogging for cryptocurrencies and joining online communities on a blockchain is already a kind of out there thing. I am vocal about the merits and possibilities of success through engaging on this platform with many people IRL (anyone who expresses interest, I share!) and 98% of people don't care! I can see them disengage most of the time. People are content with Facebook even though their data is being sold (and stolen) and advertised back to them...
But! I jumped over that hump after reading some articles on Medium by 
. Could this thing be real? In December I decided to "give it 3 months." After my first 
vote (way to go, you hooked me!), I knew that I would at least finish the 3 months. I was genuinely excited. 7 months later we are still here....
I learned more and more that it is crucial to bring value to this ecosystem not by being a preacher on a soap box on a street corner, but by being a grassroots community member.
I wouldn't have given Steem a chance if I had to invest to be able to engage
Everyone is taking a chance by being on Steem. We're all investing time, some people invest money and tech skills.
Taking the chance of asking new members to Pay to Play to engage on Steem blockchain is too high of a risk.
The entry fee into Steem must be free. I agree it is wise to provide incentives into powering up Steem (and that has been a priority my whole tenure here), yet I would not be where I am today if I could only comment 1 or 2 x a day in the early days.
I never would've come here at all....
I hope by sharing this that I can provide some data for 
If you are reading this, please share in the comments your own story about how you grew your account and if you would have been on Steem with the 1 post a day parameter for newbies.
This problem must be solved and it must be solved quickly.
Newbies need at least 30 comments, 60 upvotes and 2 posts a day allowed within the base RC allotment. Anything less is simply shooting this entire ecosystem in the foot.