I think these kinds of metrics should be added to the rewards calculations. Another good example is diminishing the effective weight when you repeatedly vote on the same account...
To be perfectly honest, the voting scheme for monetisation of content has a lot of big flaws. In my own designs, I don't use voting but rather calculate rewards weights based on network connection metrics like numbers and amounts of ledger transactions, indeed, even peer relationships like creators/hosts/consumers, to distribute rewards to new connections more than old ones. To my mind, Steem is just the first generation of content monetisation systems. There will have to be many experiments. I'd even say it would be worth forking the steem blockchain just to test these alternatives out.
yes I think it has great promise but is still very vulnerable to be gamed and take advantage of. I think your view of first generation might be correct and other iterations will follow. I'd like to see this one succeed though :)