Thank you, @mountainjewel!

I'll be interested to see how SMTs, Oracles, Communities, etc all shift this current conversation significantly. It seems that with the SMTs and Oracles on top of the blockchain, Steemit.com and its issues will fade as the Communities come into focus.

This is exactly right. As far as I understand it steemit.com was supposed to just be a proof of concept site to show what can be done and other third-party sites would come along and carry the bulk of the usage. It seems that the Steemit team is still focusing on trying to empower third-party sites to overtake steemit.com and then they can choose the best UI/UX for their audience which I think is great.

That's the whole point of SMTs and Communities and I, like most people here, are really really looking forward to that!