In addition to all that you have mentioned I hear that there is a lot of quid pro quo voting going on and in order to get noticed you have to have a large stake.
I am trying to grow my stake and believe that you should be taken more seriously if you have a high stake but using stake in vote exchange manner also does not encourage good content.
And Taraz is one of my favorite authors on Hive 😀
This is still around: https://jryze.me/hive/.