Sure you can drop random links and vote whatever your mouse pointer accidentally finds, but such effortless strategies would not lead to relevant rewards, I´d say.)
One of the reasons (probably the main reason) that posting un-commentated links is now frowned upon is that this is exactly what happened
Really? I haven´t observed that. I haven´t seen many un-commented link-posts at all and I don´t recall any with a significant payout. Do you have examples?