Welcome to steemit
It is perfectly normal to feel slightly bewildered, mainly because it’s a slightly bewildering place.
Bewildering initially because no doubt you’ve seen the HUGE payouts some people are getting for their posts and already compared these to your own meagre pay-outs: hmmm.. Something amiss there, right?!?
The truth is, you’re probably better off ignoring those large payout posts: the size of the payouts are typically a result of either those people being part of an early adopter voting circle (a few dozen people), or the result of newer wealthy users buying votes through bid-bots.
This in turn is a result of two factors: firstly - steemit is ‘capitalism’s bitch’ - one the primary functions of the platform is to attract people (and their phatt wads of capital) who want to promote themselves and their businesses and to make money doing so… that’s what you’re seeing at the top of the trending pages…
NB this is NO DIFFERENT to your being exposed to all of those annoying adverts on Facebook or YouTube, but at least with steemit the ad revenue is going to the bid bot owners (see below) rather than the Corporations.
HOWEVER, unless you have $1000s of dollars to invest NOW, you are not going to be earning anywhere near this amount of money for your posts. So please just put those figures out of your mind: see 
Hive account@surfermarley’s stream for a more realistic idea of what you could earn for a decent blog without using bid-bots (however it’ll take you at least a year or more to grow to her level, and there’s no guarantee there!).
The second factor that makes steemit bewildering is that it’s transhuman… it is an environment occupied by both humans and bots… such as the bid bots which provide people with upvotes for cash - basically people with high SteemPower (say over 100K, compared to your 15) will ‘lease’ that steem to one or more bid bots and then other account holders who are prepared to pay for upvotes will buy the votes of the larger account holders… it’s typically a win win situation for them.
There are other bots you'll come across on here too btw, some of them quite friendly, some of them protective.... if you get bottd, just go check them out, it happens!
The reason I say that these two factors (steemit being (1) a transhuman environment (2) its being capital’s bitch) combined make steemit bewildering is that you end up with fantasy trending pages - people with seemingly massive payouts of $100s of dollars for mediocre posts.
HOWEVER, 90% of the value of these votes have been paid for, so a post worth $300 is really only worth $30…. why do people ‘buy votes’ through bid bots.. mainly because if they top trending, they get extra visibility and thus extra ‘real votes’.... But for the rest of us, this is what I call ‘fantasy trending’... please ignore it!_
NB - there may be the odd genuinely good post that reaches trending, but it will be the exception!
So where’s the ‘reality’, where’s the humanity on steemit?
Fear not my ickle non-bot dependent friendling, there are those on the platform who embrace their humanity, the human community, and believe in the principle that quality content should be rewarded through manual upvoting (‘curation’)....
So, if you are one of the many (i.e. not rich enough to invest several $thousand) merely here to produce quality content and to try and get some little reward for it by engaging with like minded people, then this post is designed to set you off in the right direction… I wholeheardelty recommend that you forthwith unfollow the banfields of the platform (and his banobots), and follow instead the 44 people below…
The following llist of 44 (actually it might be 45) people have all worked enormously hard to make steemit a friendly and supportive place, and share the view that quality content should be rewarded by primarily manual curation, rather than working hard to market themselves and extract as much money as they can for themselves.
I recommend that you follow every single one of these people because they are the kind of people who will show you some humanity, and help you connect with other people-people.
NB - please do keep in mind that there are limits to how much anyone individual can ‘engage’ with new members, so don’t necessarily expect detailed replies or massive upvotes from any of them… I’m simply here bigging up some of the biggest ‘community operators’ that ‘keep it (hyper?) real on steemit.
44 good people doing good things on steemit
this is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list. And I’ve selectively put banners in every 10 names or so, based on how pretty they are, to break up the post!
Hive account@abh12345 - impossible to dislike blockchain hippy who runs the curation and engagement leagues and produces some excellent data analysis posts.
Hive account@acidyo - creator of 
Hive account@ocd and manual curator, also one of the highest repd steemians… he mainly live streams games and runs the fantasy football league on steem, but occasionally blogs about steem - recent example here. Defo worth a mention here because of his focus on manual curation.
Hive account@aggroed - is a PAL (Peace, Abundance, Liberty) witness and MSP (Minnow Support Project) Founder.
Hive account@andrachy - the content director for steemit, so if he doesn’t give a shit about the place we may as well all cash in our steem and invest in EOS immediately! NB - before he got his official post he did have a history of producing quality content…and one can hardly blame him for being a little bit invisible on the chain ATM given all the background work that must accompany his relatively new role.
Hive account@anomadsoul - possibly the world’s most down to earth digital-crypto nomad, although I do worry that he’ll burn himself out trying to keep up with the replies to everyone’s comments. ATW he seems to derive an enormous amount of pleasure haranguing people to show their faces on D Live, perhaps that’s his therapy?
Hive account@anthonyadavisii - does development work on and posts and resteems a lot on abuse on the blockchain - bot use, spamming and the importance of flagging.
This is a good post indicating his ethics: the toll road to trending: the single biggest self-inflicted barrier to entry on steem
His comment on this shitpost is indicative of the important anti-abuse work he does.
Hive account@arcange - WITNESS, developer of steemsql and steemitboard amongst other things
Produces the the daily and steem statistics from the steem database, which tell us how many new and active users there are every day, along with a whole load of other useful information too!
@AusBitBank - Another 'good orca'... witness and manual curator - lots of resteems of posts on more technical aspects of steemit issues as well as community/ charity type posts, also part of of #teamaustralia.
Hive account@canadian-coconut - co-founder of @FamilyProtection - posts and manually curates around the topic of state interference in family life, proponent home education.
Hive account@carlgnash - 
Hive account@curie curator and sponsor of Hive account@abh12345’s curation leagues - doesn’t post very much, but active curating in the background, resteems a lot of the best posts on steemit. Also runs ‘
Hive account@r-bot’ a bot which only curates good content.
Hive account@creatr - a Christian surfing anarchist generalist inventor - quite an eclectic mix of blog posts, and very community minded… also has some nice ‘library posts’ which shows you how you can organised your posts into ‘hub posts’...
Hive account@crokkon does some of the deepest data analysis on steemit - worth following if you want a statistical insight into what’s really going on - see this post for example on self-voting analysis.
Hive account@danielsaori - runs the steemit comment challenge and (jointly with 
Hive account@davemccoy) the 
Hive account@dustbuster (GOOD) bot...both of which newbies should check out.
Hive account@davemccoy - runs the 
Hive account@dusbuster account with Hive account@danielsaori immediately above and extremely active in engaging with new users. Also offers up many sensible suggestions about how to improve things on steemit - as with this post here proposing changes to voting power distribution
Hive account@eroche - writes some very clear data analytics articles, often on issues of inequality of rewards on steemit - like this post on how to use steem analytics to easily uncover how all of those mediocre posts at the top of the trending pages are, for the most part, just self-promoters who have used bid bots to buy their way up there.
Hive account@felixxx is a witness and does a lot of humorous posts on ‘steemit issues’ - posts on ideas about possible steem services and runs meme competitions, many of which tap into steem issues, like this one on self-voting.
Hive account@fulltimegeek - one of the few ‘Orcas’ supporting community initiatives on steemit and fighting the abuse of rewards pool from more selfish investors. Doesn’t post much himself, but he’s there in the background working away.
Hive account@glenalbrethsen - is one of the most prolific commentators I know, despite having only joined in December 2017, and maintains a pretty good blog too!
Hive account@golendawne is a homesteader and curator extraordinaire - lots of comments and seems to resteem just about every community curation initiative going!
Hive account@guyfawkes4-20 has invested an enormous amount of energy in working for community initatives on steem over the past year: he’s involved in ocd and snd-box and produces some great philosophical blog posts too.
Hive account@hendrikdegrote - not so much someone to follow as he doesn’t post, but worth mentioning as he’s just about the only whale (as in account worth >$5M) I know of that I’ve noticed on Hive account@curie’s curation trail.
Hive account@isaria - very involved with the @minnowsupportproject, puts a lot of effort into music curation, definitely worth a follow if music’s your thing.
Hive account@jamesc - describes himself as a blockchain developer and activist for a voluntary society. One of the few whales who makes massive delegations to community curation accounts, such as 
Hive account@tribesteemup
Hive account@jaynie - established the #steemitbloggers which focuses on supporting and resteeming undervalued high quality content. Blogs on food and gratitude.
Hive account@josephsavage has to get a mention here as he’s the creator of 
Hive account@steembasicincome - check out this post: steembasicincome the complete overview for what it’s all about!
@KrNel - Witness and one of the highest ranked reps on steemit (76) - interesting, often sociologically themed, posts on a range of philosophical issues.
@Kafkanarchy84 - huge proponent of voluntarism, based in Japan. Very down to earth guy and a varied, interesting blog/ vlog - everything from philosophical musings on anarchism and freedoms to japanese culture and whisky reviews!
@Kevinwong is another one of the extreme minority of Orcas who is a proponent of using his enormous VP to distribute wealth more widely rather than to simply to accumulate it for himself. Many of his recent posts are about such steemit issues, lots of interesting thought experiments such as in this post… Distributing wealth should be equally profitable
Hive account@liberosist - seems to know more about the evolution of the steem platform than most people and has written some very articulate articles analysing changes to the steem ecosystem - most recently this post: [the account based voting revolution] which outlines the possible shift from stake weighted voting to account based voting.
Hive account@lynncoyle1 - master curator, well involved with projects like ‘pay it forwards’ and consistently near the top of ‘the curation leagues’, also worth a special mention as she’s got a Margaret Mead quote in her strapline...
Hive account@lyndsaybowes (along with 
Hive account@hendrix22) - one of the people leading the way in the fight against reward pool abuse (people posting crap and using sock-puppet accounts to make $1000s every day, taken from the rest of us) - nice video overview of the issue here
Hive account@lukestokes - one of the top witnesses and writes/ comments widely on steem issues. Very articulate guy and on the side of community initiatives rather than vote-buying and swapping.
Hive account@ned - well, he is the CEO.
@paulaG - simply does some of the best data analytics posts on steem: such as this one outlining the declining popularity of steemit in Q1 of 2018 with a 121% active user churn rate. Also the sponsor of the curation leagues.
Hive account@pennsif - great guy based in Wales, trying to show that steemit can be used for good things, sucha s with his excellent dollar a day charity project, also big into MSP-Waves 0 I particularly enjoy his weekly alternative lifestyle show - example here.
Hive account@pharesim - witness and another rare orca whose on the side of the little guy - this post outlines how he’s changed his witness votes, basically unvoting anyone that only ‘trades votes’.
Hive account@roelandp - witness, organiser of steemfest and he also put together the web site solicitingpower.com which showcases a lot of the best steem projects worth delegating to, many of them curation projects.
Hive account@spritualmax - lots of informative posts on the steemit platform, a good recent example is this post on why is there so much crap on the blockchain
Hive account@surfermarly writes a very positive vlog about surfing and her life, with many posts on steemit issues, such as this one pointing out that steemit does have quality posts, they’re just hidden under all of the dross. I also think this account is a good indication of the maximum you can realistically expect to earn on steemit if you’re 'honest' (i.e. not just rampantly self-marketing.
Hive account@surpassingoogle is one of the most supportive people on the platform! A witness and major league player but constantly r esteeming post from every level of account!
Hive account@taskmaster4450 - posts about cryptocurrency and especially steem - I really like his regualar updates on equality on steem, focusing on how much of the rewards Whales are taking -latest update here.
Hive account@tarazkp (https://steemit.com/@tarazkp ) - describes himself as a prolific thinker etc. Writes frequent, well thought out, balanced, posts trying to hold people to account for abusing the steem ecosystem through the excessive use of bid bots and misuse of delegations from accounts such as 
Hive account@mrdelegation
Hive account@thedarkhorse - runs the weekly ‘pay it forwards’ curation contest in which people nominate three steemians with <50 rep to encourage engagement, very much working for the community, encouraging new steemians.
Hive account@teamsteem - witness and I’m including him here because he’s definitely one of the good guys. I’m sure he used to post more about steem-issues, however. He’s recently put out a slew of (very highly rewarded) posts just about his daily-life activities with karenstudios in America, and I personally have no interest in this Zoella style vlogging, but if watching other people have fun is your thing, he’s a nice guy, so I’m including him as he’s worth a follow!
Hive account@timcliff - has been here since the very early days of steemit, is very down to earth and iis one of the highest ranked witness on steemit. Very accessible.
Hive account@ura-soul posts on peace, healing and ‘evolving’ - very nice guy, and worth a witness vote too!
Hive account@v4vapid - manually curates mainly posts highlighting the role of the corporate state in keeping us all stupid!
Hive account@whatamidoing - Established the deadpost/ #steemitzobies initiative - details here: - the general idea is that you submit an undervalued old post in the comments to the weekly ‘deadpost’ post by Hive account@whatamidoing (posts have to be at least a month old and valued at <$5) and then people vote for their favorite post via the comments, and the most popular ‘dead posts’ are rewarded.
Hive account@whatsup posts a lot on steemit issues, including the bernie haejin flagwar, and self-voting issues, and general problems newbies have with the platform. Well worth a follow. I really like this recent post reminding us about the benefits of steemit
Hive account@yabapmatt - is one of the few people you’ll hear defending voting bots, and arguing from the perspective of someone who runs a voting bot. This recent post, for example, simply makes the argument for bid bots. Very well considered articles, worth a follow.
Final thoughts…
That’s all for now folks… the above is part of a qualitative database I’m putting together as part of a sort of literature review of steemit…my gradual attempt to understand the platform a little better!
If you're interested in further details on community and curation, you might like my overview of steemit curation initiatives
And just for emphasis: this is a subjective list of those people I’m aware of doing good stuff on steemit, no doubt there are many, many more!
Thanks to Asher for organising the #welcometosteemit competion - i do like a competition. I just modified this post to make it fit in with that! As I said above, it's more part of my attempt to develop a full understanding of the platform by investigating the various 'movers and shakers'.
Peace,
Karl.
project