Is this platform abandoned by the dev(s)?

As per the rules stated by he rewarder this article is not going to get much attention from it, nor will it show up as recommended, probably. I write it nonetheless, and spend the coming hours, lots of hours, writing this and researching this, and re-thinking this. And it still may never get published in the end.

I have debated (with myself) an awful lot whether I would write this article or not. Chances are that it will elicit a lot of negative responses, if not outright anger and hate, because of what I am suggesting, or better said fearing.

But after giving it a lot of thought, some time, and checking my assumptions against the symptoms or signs that i think i'm seeing i decided that if i'm right then i'd rather know it for sure now than be caught completely blindsided later with no plan B to turn to for my writing urges to vent to.

You see I am here on this platform to put my writings out into the public, in a place where it gets read, at all to begin with but also read by people who appreciate it, and where other people write things that i appreciate and appreciate me reading their works.

The smile of my son, my joy that fuels me to go on.

The fact that it gives me the opportunity to, once a week or once every two weeks, make my Son smile happily more than i would've been able to otherwise is a huge bonus, don't get me wrong, but certainly, i think that i would publish my writings here even if i didn't get anything for them.

Not here for the money. Love the money, but its not why i am here.

In fact, after i'd written the previous paragraph i did some checking and i think (not entirely sure) that the latest articles are getting me less and less even though some of them have been the longest pieces of writing I've posted on here so far. So i seem to get less the more i write yet i write more and more. I might be developing a dependency problem here, getting addicted. ;-)

[DISCLAIMER]That last part was meant to be funny. Even when it was not, it was intended to be.[/DISCLAIMER]

I'm now realizing that I'm going off on a tangent, digressing wildly here. So, just a second... *SLAP, SLAP*

Auch, that hurt. But it did get me to refocus on what the point of writing this article was supposed to be. You see, i am getting more and more worried this site has been abandoned by its creators/devs to burn itself out, or miraculously turn out to be self-sustaining against all odds and expectations.

Not working towards the intended purpose of the platform

There are a number of reasons for my worries, and why they're growing. I'm going to write them all out for you in this article, but i am going to start off with the main reasoning behind the thought. Even though the number of accounts is still growing, Since August 2019 the number of users, i am guessing that includes inactive and other problematic (ie. not actively writing content) accounts has risen to 71.446.

Sure, if you'd have to shake hands with every one of them, that is an awful lot of users. But if you look at it from an internet platform, social media, attracting people to a site for a purpose point of view (let's be honest) it is next to nothing. Compared to Steem, Medium or even our own little sister Noise the number of people on this platform is small. And this is a problem, i think, for those who created it.

Their purpose, again, was to get as many people as possible into contact with Bitcoin Cash. I believe that the dev once even said "This is not your job, we didn't hire you to write articles on this website" or words to that effect.

Devs getting demotivated and fed up?

This brings me to another issue that i think has diminished the dev's motivation for working on this platform. The Many many "sub-communities" who are all sponsors of each other, upvote each other's 'articles' and comment each other while also inviting each other, their friends, family, neighbors, and pet parkiets to get their affiliate "earnings" a rolling start. There are a lot of people on here that are clearly trying to get as much of the "fund"'s Bitcoin Cash as they possibly can and some even are making a living doing it. I've read some postings here proudly describing this, encouraging others to do the same. That is not what this platform was created for.

And i think that the devs began to get despaired trying to combat behavior like that, besides the constant uphill fight against clear spammers and exploiters, copy-pasters, rewording bot users, and so on.

Noise.Cash not helping read.cash

The motivation for trying to make this platform work as intended seemed to have been even more drained when Noise went up and took off. There are now over 200.000 noisers and the numbers are rising (I've been told, can't seem to find stats for the noise.cash site). With those numbers, a mobile app in the Google Play Store, and with an affiliate system now implemented, it seems the devs have their focus completely on that platform, as it brings the numbers they're looking for.

Symptoms beginning to crop up.

But its not just speculation that brings me to the fear that read.cash is being abandoned. If you try the top posts for 24 hours, three days and for the week then you get this:

It all seems to work still, mostly.

And this isn't just a temporary glitch. it's been this way for weeks. So there is functionality that isn't working but isn't getting fixed. Another thing that no longer works is the EXC tagging for articles. That's been broken for weeks now, too. It seems that the Rewarder is not using it as criteria any longer, it seems to work without it to me, but it could explain the growing number of times that i see articles getting rewarded that are barely in English and less than 4 minute reads.

This, and the way in which readcash is spoken of in several Subreddits and forums, some of which are frequented by people involved with the devs or are devs i suspect, lead me to suspect that this platform has been set on auto-cruise, and is being left to go on until the fund runs out (which, i grant, might be awhile yet, with @MarcDeMesel having stuffed it with close to a million dollars worth of Bitcoin Cahs) but certainly no longer maintained or developed.

Absence and silence

The roadmap hasn't been updated in months, the readcash account hasn't been active in months here and as i've shown earlier in this article there are functionalities no longer functioning, and clearly the fight to "force" users to create quality and exclusively for this platform seems to have been given up as well.

I am an avid user, and enthusiastic writer here!

Now don't misunderstand me, please. I am deeply saddened by the thought of this platform being left to entropy, slowly travelling to inevitable demise. I love this platform, and almost exclusively post my writings here. Other platforms don't have the community feel that i get here, and it was here that my most successful articles were those i wrote describing how miserable my life was, despite having had all the chances in the world to be ridiculously successful! It is here that pieces that i wrote that would get 1 or two views on most other sites get at least looked at by numbers in the 2 digit range. And that's stupendously few views on this site where some get hundreds or thousands of views.

I've got 4 sponsors that earn me $0,42 per month, practically nothing compared to others on this site, but i am prouder than i am able to express none the less that there are already 4 people that are willing to have their logo and link appear in stuff that i write every single time!

I LOVE THIS PLATFORM!

But i fear that one day there will be a notice stating the end of the platform or most of its functionality. The last line linking here, explaining how to download all your posts and how to 'selfhost'.

Please comment your view on this issue and this platform. Prove me wrong. PLEASE?

Thank you for reading.

Stay safe and stay happy!

@AnonSunamun