Have you read the Steem Whitepaper yet?
It is anything but light reading but don't let that intimidate you, it really does explain a lot of things about Steem, the blockchain, and how everything works as well as the philosophical underpinnings upon which everything is built.
I think this quote from the whitepaper speaks to every point I am trying to make.
The challenge faced by Steem is deriving an algorithm for scoring individual contributions that most community members consider to be a fair assessment of the subjective value of each contribution. In a perfect world, community members would cooperate to rate each other's contribution and derive a fair compensation. In the real world, algorithms must be designed in such a manner that they are resistant to intentional manipulation for profit. Any widespread abuse of the scoring system could cause community members to lose faith in the perceived fairness of the economic system.
I think it's safe to say the current algorithm falls short of being resistant to the nonsense we're seeing, and it's fair to say that nonsense is widespread and some community members have lost faith in the perceived fairness of the economic system.
I hadn't thought of it from that perspective yet. Is the answer simply to change formula? What would that look like?
I'd love to hear some thoughts on this, or point me to other posts discussing this because I haven't found any.