The reward system has been working against the good of the platform also though. I see plenty of comments adding no substance like "great article" in an attempt to be first to comment and make a few cents.
Personally I'm just going to focus on making good content like you said and try not to worry about gaming the system.
I could not agree more, just wrote a post about this very thing, and I am still confused with regards to effort vs value and reward. but hey I shall continue learning.@heavycream
But maybe there is some kind of glitch which somehow needs to be tweaked from the inside :-)