Really good post @charles1 you definitely cover a lot of material here and have some great suggestions. I've remained silent on this subject and pretty much hoped they would burn themselves out. What seems to be happening is the more it is suggested to stay away from someone, human curiosity gets the best of them, the check out what they're told is bad and end up liking what they when to check out or upvote out of spite. It really does seem like a war and the ones that are will take the damage is everyone else.
I agree with a posting limits. I see so many, red fish and minnows, that put out a large amount of content, most of which is a meme or just a photo copied off of Google. In order to produce good content consistently you it's difficult to keep up with 8-10 posts a day, unless this is all you do.
For me, the only thing that 'keeps' me at it is curation. I get to learn a lot about the topics I don't know a lot in and hopefully get t engage in conversation. With trying to keep up with good quality content it takes time to research to come up with good quality content and for someone like me, it's is seemingly pointless. Unless I can double my followers and they actually read and upvote my content, curation is pretty much the only way for someone to grow right now. A better way to make connections.
I agree with removing trending it showcases just the whales and we lose a lot of great content that is it not being seen by the vast majority. As for the whales any of them speak, they're followers will upvote them no matter what and that's fine. That's how the game is played. I guess this is where I need to do more research on the reward pool. Seems to me if we work on collaborating and banding together on the lower end it may be enough to balance things about bit more.
Good point indeed, thanks for your comment. However the whales are the people who invested in steem and not all are bad...lets hope for a lasting solution
You're very right many the vast majority are vested and fighting to keep working towards solutions. It's always those few that just have to make life rough for everyone.