We need humans.
No, we shouldn't try to make a social platform built for humans, run by robots.
I think that it would be unwise to measure the expense of running blurt in dollars. I think that is relatively low, maybe $100 to $200 per month.
The thing is, running blurt is in fact very expensive. Blurt is expensive because it demands the time of highly qualified people to operate and maintain it. In the case of blurt, 100% of those people are 100% compensated in blurt itself. Furthermore, 100% of those people are 100% compensated in staked blurt. On a few occasions that I can recall, we have paid software engineers and other currencies, but in at least a couple of those occasions, I do recall feeling a distinct lack of alignment. I find that it is much better to find people who are enthusiastic about blurt and then teach them how to build on it, rather than finding people who are already programmers, whether good or bad, and then paying them to work on it. Desire is a key factor here.
While this is a strength, it is also arguably a weakness, but it probably has to be this way for reasons of publicity and internationality (people may not be able to pay themselves in their local currency or may have to pay expensive fees). Witnesses are not immune from getting depressed when the course falls and not doing maintenance and upkeep on the system if they don't feel like it. And then enthusiastically getting back to work when things are looking up and the course is "going to the moon".
From a classically traditional point of view, it would be wise to be able to pay coders and developers more reliably, i.e. not to have to use the coin itself. But then the question would arise how else to pay them.
As a rule, good programmers and developers can pick the cream jobs and have no need at all to work on speculative objects and get involved with an uncertain currency. Unless they are not particularly outstanding, maybe not even mediocre at what they do (or are youngsters, still in their training phase). Exceptions prove the rule.
If you go to pure tech forums and see how much zest, interest and expertise is exchanged there, the whole thing here seems more like a soap opera. Though I think soap operas are liked and watched by the majority of people. Mediocrity is what sells best, even if everyone denies that. Genius sells badly if no one understands it.
To the third point, the enthusiasm you speak of last. If you're enthusiastic, you basically don't care what others say, whether they think what you're doing is stupid. The enthusiastic person ignores that. Since it is probably not possible to maintain the same level of enthusiasm all the time, a system thrives on exchange. Old people leave, new ones come. Some take a break and come back. Others leave and are never seen again. And so on. The enthusiastic need the frustrated and vice versa.
Now this is something people perceive and enjoy as drama when the enthusiast turns into a disappointed person. For a very strange reason people like to blame others for their declining enthusiasm. But even this is understandable when one is left temporarily from humor and good spirits.
We never raised a dollar for blurt. We never will.
How would you rate the quality of Blurt compared to other crypto-based platforms with a blog function? On a scale of 1-10 (1 = very poor, 10 very good)?
I think that leaves us just rating the forks of steem against each other and in that case my opinion is that blurt is the finest one of them. The reason for that is the transaction fees. In fact in other ways the platforms are very similar to each other. I think that the transaction fees are what are likely to ensure that blurt remains sustainable over time.
Please understand that I have not been chasing features, the only feature that we have added to blurt really is the transaction fees, otherwise we just tweaked some of the protocol distribution settings to deal with how people earn coins. Frankly, I still think that both steem and Hive are very good and that they both should be concerned that it doesn't cost anything to store stuff forever on their blockchains.
I think what is neglected on all Chains is user-friendliness, ergonomics and the browsing experience. More so on one and less so on the other.
What is abundant on one platform does not exist or is not visible on the other, for example so-called communities (which I prefer to call thematic interest groups). I don't see them on blurt. Do they exist?
Someone who knows the ropes once said to me that every system has to be oriented towards the absolute stupidest, so that the user-friendliness can be improved. Professionals and technicians often make the mistake of not taking seriously that non-technicians have a completely different view of the digital environment than they do.
What do you mean by fees? The fact that every vote costs me something and every publication on my blog?