Of course, there is luck involved, but if you see the creators that whales are upvoting, a vast majority of them have very good content and work hard to put them out. They have built a name for themselves. Whereas a vast majority of minnows put out junk or copy-pasted material.
Of course, there are also many minnows who produce excellent content which are getting lost, but that's to be expected. It'll sort itself out once the platform matures.
It can't sort itself out because people are abusing tags and I read yesterday that posts can't be voted upon after a month. Because of this, I decided to quit blogging until I have a following from posting comments. It kills me to post up great info only to have it buried under crap and forgotten. I'm here to share ideas that create true freedom and build tribe and if it's going to take a whale noticing before anyone interacts, I'm wasting my time. Hopefully my comments open some eyes in the meantime.
Your charts are the way they are because of the nature of the system. Anyone that's read the whitepaper and has any critical thinking skills won't need the chart you made because redistribution is common sense. If the whales/stars weren't redistributing some portion of their "wealth", the site would very quickly die. I have a feeling that lots of redistribution is to multiple accounts that the whales hold. If you have 50 accounts and distribute power amongst them, you can power down much quicker. If I cared more, I'd dig into the blockchain and prove it.
With the drastic disproportion of whales and minnows though, there's no way they can go through enough posts to distribute that wealth based upon merit, and as far as I'm concerned, they're upvoting mainly garbage. I rarely find anything interesting in trending but see lots of awesome posts in new that get buried and forgotten.
There are a few huge flaws in this model that if not corrected, will probably kill this idea eventually. Bots need to go. Multiple accounts per user need to go. All accounts need to be verified humans. Posts should be able to be voted upon indefinitely. Tag abuse needs to be stopped. A better search engine needs to be put in place. The follow feature would be awesome. I could keep going but my typing finger is getting tired...
I can understand why you're frustrated. But the model is working. Sure, there are many issues, but don't forget, we are still in Beta.
If you really think there are major showstopping issues, do dig into it and prove it with evidence. I'm sure people will take notice and it will be beneficial for the community.
The model is working for a very few lucky people. The rest are being disappointed pretty quickly or are too dumb to know what's going on. As far as digging through transactions goes, there are others out there with more to lose and better internet connections so I'll let them do the research part of things. I already feel like I'm wasting the time that I spend here.
The problems I listed above in the last paragraph are blatantly obvious to anyone participating and are enough to kill 99% of the hope I had for this platform and many others have said they feel the same. I've voiced these concerns in quite a few comments but no one with the power to do anything about it seems to care.
Also, the lack of curation here is frustrating. If someone takes the time to type out a few hundred words expressing ideas that could improve the site, they usually deserve an upvote for their effort. Everything I post is in the best interest of steemit and the world in general and nine out of ten of my posts and comments are completely ignored. It's sad.