I am still new to hive, but i have noticed some of the problems you are talking about. To me biggest flaw is that there is not a lot of articles. Yes people are writing all the time. But do you really want to read 25 articles about someone's breakfast or strange mark on their skin?
I think that there would be a lot more people if you would reward fun and informative articles. But in most cases they get lost in sea of generic and money seeking posts.
The cons of people posting everyday regardless if they have something substantial/worth sharing to say or not. That's both new users trying to be something but also older ones who have a circle of upvoters hence they know they'll make some $ even if their 3 paragraph post can be summarised to "yesterday I bought low and today I sold high".