A correctly posed question contains half of the answer :)
You ask the right questions and answer well. Yes, unfortunately, at the moment, Stееmit is more needed by the participants themselves for some kind of earnings. Formally, this is a social network, formal communication takes place, but the main purpose of this communication (with rare exceptions) is the game "catch a whale".
There is an initiative at WOX to encourage commentators. There are more comments, they have become more detailed...but their essence has not changed. These are not comments for communication, but comments for the sake of comment and encouragement. Unfortunately.

If you want to find information about "Sheep Shearing", then most likely you will not find it here, as already noted in the comments below. This means that any search engine on the issue of "sheep" will lead you anywhere but to our platform. Maybe it is with this question that the improvement of the platform should begin.

There are thematic communities. But if you carefully read the content of the posts... is there a lot of useful information for a third-party guest?
Hashtags... the search for information on the Internet begins with them. We have common hashtags focused on internal contests and initiatives...only the first 5 (maybe) make at least some sense for internal search. But this is not exactly the thematic guiding thread for an external guest.

Quality control... how many copies have already been broken in the way of "quality content". We need common criteria and moderation, but I can't even imagine how this can be done in our conditions. We are trying to attract as many people as possible...but quantity does not grow into quality automatically. Messages for the sake of messages that no one reads...

Maybe it is necessary to create "elite units" with limited entry, quality control, increased incentives? But I know how quickly "corruption" can develop. On the other hand, such a "division" could be an incentive for self-development for users.

The increased attention of @steemcurator01 could be an excellent motivation to improve the quality of their posts in order to get into the "elite" of the platform. Perhaps some kind of analogue of the "white list"

Thank you for the post @ty-ty, you made me take a different look at my own posts :)