Some very interesting points you raise @fionasfavourites and many of them lead to much wider concerns for steemit which need addressing before this platform has any chance of providing an appealing (easily understandable) user experience, especially as a new-comer.

That said, I am so interested in what people consider to be quality. I have written posts that I've considered "up there" as my best and they've had little if no traction. Others I've dashed out and they've been really popular (lucrative), and one even got "curied". It confounds me.

In regards to curie, the curators have to follow a very stringent set of criteria that focuses on rewarding undervalued authors. It is not perfect but works as well as can be expected in the context. So, often a post that you may consider better than one you've previously received a curie for may not get a vote due to the fact that it is extremely risky for a curator to submit a post for review that is not older than 2-4 weeks. This can cause a lot of confusion for people when they first arrive at steemit, or if they don't learn the criteria curators have to abide by. If a curie curator recieves too many rejections by submitting posts that don't follow the guidelines, they loose their place as a curator. I honestly think steemit.inc should list various nuances of how curation guilds work on the landing page for new users so that they can understand from the start what to expect.

In regards to some posts doing better than others, with no seeming recourse to quality in why they haven't done so well, this has happened to me many times also. I find that the underlying factor often is due to me not being able to network on discord at that time. My experience of steemit has been that if you don't network, you don't get anywhere and even, as you've pointed out, when something entirely out of your control stops you from putting the time in, the engagement can fall off very quickly. I have experienced this recently as well.

This is not to say that every post interests me, or that every post that my blogpals write interest me. I mean no disrespect when I say that there are topics in which I have no interest and similarly, if I write about something, like cooking, about which I am quite passionate, am I going to follow every food blogger.

I get where you're coming from completely, and I am only focusing on creative writing, as it is what I know I'm good at and I have some contacts in mainstream publishing that might be able to help me explore this idea beyond just a steemit community. But I honestly believe/hope that the SMT mechanism could help all writing interests on steemit take back the platform to reward quality content within their discipline. Whether it be, blogging, subject specific writing, creative writing, film making etc. Of course communities already do this to an extent but the whales (and delegated SP going out to bidbots) have huge amounts of their Steem Power tied up. The community minded among them delegate to communities focused on content they value but that system is essentially an oligarchy dictating what has value on steemit. If an SMT can create a bubble where a big amount of steem power can be locked up to reward content based on quality, while bringing more outside investment/interest to the platform, we the small fry, can possibly level the playing field. An SMT ICO could possibly achieve this. Ha ha, this is the type of thing I want to explore with devs at steemfest.

So, it's about engagement and yes, it's equally about the reward. like you and many Steemians, I need to be generating an income. If I spend time here, which I enjoy, but I'm not seeing material benefit, I have to spend my productive time elsewhere.

I think that this is a key and will/can destroy this platform if it is not addressed. Quality content creators, in all disciplines, will leave if they don't see reasonable growth based on a fair factor. Ha ha, I think my video shows clearly that I believe that factor should be quality. I'm hopeful that this idea could increase this dynamic in the creative writing fields. I hope also, that others do the same for other subject areas.

Thanks for your insightful and thought provoking comment @fionasfavourites. It is these types of comments which help an idea evolve :-)