Well @davemccoy, you raise many excellent points, including the primary What IS Steemit? question.

The sad thing is that even though this is — by most standards — a well-read and "successful" post, there is essentially a near complete absence of whales and witnesses from the 160+ comments below (well "above," when I post this). And sometimes "silence" makes a bold statement, as well.

In my limited wee minnow (more like a tiny bit of "cat fluff"...) travels I have come across more than a few well-spoken content creators who have opined — in different ways — that "Steemit is an awesome place for developers and lousy place for social content."

The sketchy history of Steemit suggests this was largely created BY developers with the "social bit" largely being an afterthought or "window dressing." Very little more. Consider this: It's 2018 and we are sitting here with a circa HTML 4.0 looking interface with some creators even hard coding their posts in the age of drag-and-drop widgets. Hello? This is a SOCIAL platform... and yet without basics like photo albums, the ability to "group" followers, no messaging, etc., etc. which speaks VOLUMES about "what's considered important" about Steemit.

Meanwhile, all the talk from STINC is about "SMTs this, and SMTs that, and SMTs here and SMTs there." All of which — pretty much — amounts to more pandering to developers.

Which brings us back to your question: "A Bot Gaming System," in the sense that this is yet another "feature" relevant to developers not to the general social media user... but I should add that the Bots are just a small segment of a greater underlying issue.

It all gets very complex: part of the problem we face is that we have a bunch of people running the asylum who suddenly ended up with (the equivalent of) "$2 million in the bank" thanks to being early adopters, where before they were struggling techs in a cube farm. Expecting them to know what "investing" is — including such concepts as "preservation of capital" — is probably folly. And because much of this was "instant wealth," there's that easy come, easy go attitude that would gravitate someone towards "Geez, I can make a LOT of money with bots!" rather than examining something like "How can I turn my $2M windfall into $20M in the next 10 years?"

Seems to me that's a large part of the struggle around here. Bots are simply a superficial manifestation of that.

Personally? I just want to create enjoyable content with some "value" to people, and enjoy the social interaction.

But what do I know? I'm just a little black cat...

=^..^=