This is excellent, this dialog needs to grow, else SteemIt will be viewed as a shilly joke and eventually people will walk away. I'm still quite new and trying to orient myself here. I don't understand all about the different types of bots and tricks people are using to "game around" the idea of actually creating interesting, quality content. I do see the horrid shit on "trending" and it's clear that the workarounds are producing results unfortunately. Thus far my strategy to push my content forward (short stories, which of course are subject to personal tastes, but, do take me many hours to outline, rough draft, edit, etc - and it is not something I started doing last week....15 years in the making here), content I believe is thoughtful and of high literary quality, is to interact (as much as time permits) in the spaces where people who I think will like my content reside. I try to find the literature curators, provide feedback and thoughtful comments on their ideas/projects. My first story here was upped by curie...I looked through the content of the associated curators, interacted with them, introduced myself when appropriate, etc. The vote buying bullshit is certainly here, but we all need to push as best we can to get eyes on the good content - not only ours, but others as well.

Your point is very clear though. The whales selling votes are diminishing the value of their own Steem, they are defeating themselves. New, better methods for delegation needed? More Curie like projects? I still need to learn more in order to have stronger ideas. Anyhow, nice work here @richardcrill