Thanks for the post and observations; I just was thinking about the same, after taking the screenshot below.
To me it smells of panic (a bit like the idea of the 4 weeks power down). None of this really helps, it just gives everyone the feeling 'they are doing something', while in fact they are too lazy to go around and curate. And it made 2 accounts skyrocket their rep....
The last HF brought a reshuffle of voting behaviours, but in the end it seems like 90% fell back into the 'autovote biggest reward post' scheme. It is better than before, but far from what it could be!
Do not forget about the authors, without them this platform would be pretty worthless and empty, and your wallet too!
It should be about the content with the economics in the background, but it seems some people are too focused on the mechanics and not on actually growing the platform. At least I got some discussion going.
oh yes, this is working quite well on steem nowadays, more people seem to participate in (and listen to) these discussions.