Speaking of voting:
A. People shouldn't be allowed to Up-vote their own content, especially whales who can instantly push that content to the top of the /trending page in the category (tags) they posted it in.....AHEM! (Yes I am guilty of it myself so I am not a hypocrite)
B. Any system where a post gets 100 up-votes and is still under $5 Payout is inherently flawed, IMHO. Just look at my Post History and you will understand why I say that. If there are that many people who like the content it should be paid a reasonable and fare rate. Which brings me to my next point.
C. The current structure of Steemit and especially the Voting system means that no matter how good or desired your content is, if you do not get Whale votes you do not make jack diddly squat for your efforts. I have over 50 Blog Posts with less than a $5 payout, most of them with a metric butt ton of votes. This leads to the next comment...
D. Because of (C) there is a growing subculture in the Steemit Forums and Chat of Vote Swapping, Begging for Votes and so forth. Which sadly still leaves most posts not getting paid anything or very little....even the ones that are Quality Original Content and deserve to be rewarded.
E. All of the above have led to an environment where you have to suck up to Whales and convince them to "Feature" your article under their account to get any recognition. Which means they keep 100% of the Steem Power and you get 100% of the Steem Dollars. Now this, on the surface, seems well and good and beneficial to everyone but the problem lies in the fact that it actually does very little to help the "Featured Author" and leaves them still a Minnow no matter how many times they get "Featured" while the whale (who often features numerous writers) gets even bigger and fatter off of someone else's work.
*** Point is that while steemit.com is an amazing place that gets 90%+ of my freetime now the current voting/rewards system is going to be the downfall of steemit. As more and more whales get fatter and richer the minnows that are here are going to continue to grow disheartened and eventually leave. Additionally, any new members that arrive, with the hopes of making money on steemit are going to rapidly realize they don't stand a chance and move on as well. Without a constant influx of new users who contribute (and get a fair reward) new content steemit will not survive and will ultimately go the way of Digg/Slashdot in a few short years....if not sooner! ***
Also check out this Suggestions post I just finished (revised edition)
RE: The Politics of Negative Voting