You can find part 1 here, recently updated with some stats I forgot to add.
Today we'll be looking at engagement based on data collected from steemle for the month of August. This will be measured in votes, posts, and replies. I'll be furthering my case as to the impact of 
Votes per day increased dramatically, even if you look at the full history this was above and beyond the average. Early this month we saw peak steemit voting. For a random Thursday/Friday it's easy to want to look for a reason why we saw such a strong outing. I'd happily point to new contributor
The Pros: The creation of 'wealth' through votes and a higher user engagement. It's been often speculated that new users are quick to leave if they don't make a bigger payout in their first few posts. I don't have access to churn data to check that out, but if this is the case, a higher vote turnout could be one way to subdue the tide of new users leaving.
The Cons: We have no idea where are next bump is going to come from, and if those users are even going to stick around. We'll have to wait and see in the coming weeks, but I do think it's likely. Given that his audience and steemit's seem to overlap.
Posts per day saw a huge increase in the same time frame that some well watched YouTube videos around steemit were released. I'm skeptical that this has much of an impact on steem. We can see that replies and votes both dipped for this time frame. This leads me to believe that a lot of these were introduceyourself posts. And while introduceyourself posts are known for making a lot of steem off of, they do have lower engagement, and are easier and quicker to write. Leading them to be kind of one off's that don't lend much to the site.
The Pros: Yay! More people.
The Cons: Low engagement posts mean's prior users have less to work with unless they want to read through a trove of similar style posts. This was also nowhere near a peak in posts. Currently around mid-July when steemit was receiving tons of free advertising through blogs and news sites.
Another measure of engagement that helps to rate the ability of posts to generate conversations, or at least for steemit users to show appreciation. Again, we see that on the days the vigilante was first new and fresh we saw a rise in replies (and likely due to other factors) that level of engagement dropped off.
The Pros: The start of this week and the heavy inflow of newcomers could have contributed in stemming an outflow of engagement. For the days leading into the end of July we saw an average reply count of around 17,000. Historically a peak of engagement measured by replies, but this also corresponds to the end of the bot era, so numbers could be skewed.
The Cons: It's possible we're headed into a downward trend in engagement It certainly looked that way before our influx of new steemit users and the end of the week continues that trend. This is absolutely the opposite of what we want to see on steemit. Replies help to foster growth, security, and community. Without them we're just consuming content and leaving. User's need a reason to stay, discussion gives that to them.
Conclusion
I'm excited to see what comes in the next few weeks for steemit. I've decided to make these posts twice a month to let historical data grow and for their to be more to analyze. I'm thinking of doing an overall conclusion each quarter.
Author's Note: Apparently you should hit post before going to bed. Otherwise your posts will be several hours apart and feel very disjointed. I apologize to anyone who expected this be out sooner.
Feel free to follow for more posts like this. I also blog in Psychology, specifically Character Strengths, Stress, and Learning.
Again the first post in the set can be here.