I think we all tend to focus a little to exclusively on the financial rewards of using the site. As we look to attract new users, we need to start looking at ways that distinguish accounts from one another and offer goals beyond the monetary.
Profile Page
Today, we have user reputation, that little number beside our name is the only thing we have to gauge and compare users against each other, and it's not effective. We can improve and expand on this with changes that encourage participation and protect our users as well.
Let Us EARN It
Hashtags can begin to have an icon representing them. If I post largely in science, I build up my science badge based on the votes from my posts going from level 1-10(?) with each level becoming progressively harder to reach.
Reputation stops becoming a potential weapon. If my reputation becomes centered in a few fields, people can disagree and flag for any reason (ie: disagree with content/pay amount) without affecting my reputation unless they are of a higher rank in that category.
Troll Badge!!
Even behavior can begin to be achievements. If on these pages we could vote for badges that reflect our experience with the person, it begins to shape them in general. These votes would be outside of the voting system we see today and not impacting to our curation/reward voting power.
Say I saw a comment that I found particularly offensive for whatever reason. I could click the users name and vote for their troll badge, or perhaps their "Super Steemian" badge if it was a great comment! It allows us to begin to generate a meaningful profile for each people as well as define how their votes on the posts affects the author.
So if a whale (let's say Dan) flags a successful post of mine, the system looks and says this is a writing post, and Dan only ever posts on Blockchain/Steemit/Philosophy. My reputation in these areas is completely unaffected and only the monetary consequences result from his actions, which sometimes is the reason for the flag to begin with!
These are just thoughts on what could be done going forward to make the experience a bit more pleasant, and personal, to everyone. It helps us form and develop moderators of content naturally over time, which in turn will help us achieve diversity of content as people begin to compete for these spots.
Photo Credits:
Badges: http://hivepgh.sproutfund.org/project/digital-badge-lab/
Troll Badge: http://www.zazzle.co.nz/troll+badges