I agree with all your suggestions. I think that more less you got it all right :-)

There is just one correction I would do - only allow self upvoting for users with less than 5000 SP. In the end, we deserve to upvote our own content that we have worked to create.

About Whale Jerking Circle - they will always find a way to exploit the rewards. They just have too much power, unless some serious changes are introduced to the code. This is unlikely to happen as their are also major investors or witnesses who try to protect their privileges of their higher social Steemit class - self guarding the status quo.