Now we are hurtling towards Hardfork 14 on Tuesday with its deeply unpopular vote balancing change and NO ONE, outside of perhaps 10 people on Github, has any clue how to prepare.

Spot on. It is ridiculous that this is still happening and I have talked to few people who actually agree with the change to the vote balancing.

The idea for having someone to liaise with the community is a very good one. I also think your idea to have a team or panel of authors of various genres or disciplines to help communicate community sentiment is also a great idea.

Whether it is accurate or not there is a feeling that the top of the Steemit management tree are aloof to the concerns of vast majority of the community.

The outrageous attitude towards @berniesanders / @nextgencrypto is an example of this. In addition to various curation projects he is involved in he does also talk to people in the chat too. To make him out as some kind of mercenary traitor is outrageously disrespectful and just shows a lack of knowledge about what is going on around here.

That is not the only thing that has been ignored though and I'm sad to see notable contributors like @tuck-fheman making posts about quitting because their warnings and concerns have been ignored. Just check out his latest post to see why.

When the voting changes come I suspect it we will see a big fall in voting and the people who will suffer most will be the small minnows. Further those who were actually doing a lot curation will end up getting fewer rewards and will have less reason to curate as much.

I think this will prove to be even more of a failure than the shift to 12 hour payouts.

Anyway I've said enough. Very important post and thanks for having the balls to come out and say what needed to be said.