Sometimes i am not sure i want to know! I mean, from one point, seeing people upvoting your post/comment makes you feel good (not just for the extra income) because you feel productive, that you work you give to the people is something they appreciate. However, if you find out that some of them are by bots, might discourage some people.
Sometimes i feel that if bot-voting explodes too much, people will start interacting via comments less and less and will just upvote posts, but on the other hand, i know how encouraging it can be to authors and also helps a lot the community to grow, especially for the newcomers.
Yep, that is what the voting trails give us.
My votes may be on a trail, too.
I guess I should look to see who votes in order.
Since im not that deep into the steem 'vocabulary' yet :D, can you clarify ? By train you mean to see some graph with who is voting every one of your comments? And if yes, how you can see it, from steemd?
I use steemstats, voting trails come from streemian, but you'll have to look that up yourself, I don't know much about them except that I don't like them.
Ganging up to grab loot doesn't appeal to me.