So HF19 happened and at first it seemed great! More voting power for us little minnows and guppies---yaay! But then the catch. Now apparently we can only vote about 10 times per day before depleting our steem power to levels so low it's just not worth voting at all until it replenishes. So our votes carry a little more weight, but we can share less of them. This is very frustrating as there are many posts I would like to upvote but now feel restricted.
Even after HF19 minnows are still in a bit of a bind because we need to swim out into the great Steemit sea and upvote and comment widely in order to increase our follower base, as well as find those we want to follow yet we also need to support our current follower base, however small. It's pretty tough to do that with a mere 10 votes per day. Most of my follower/following community is composed of minnows---very talented minnows with a lot to offer, and I want to support them as much as possible. Yet the poor can't help the poor.
The whole minnows/whales concept is counterproductive in the sense that it does not incentivize people to vote for quality content, but rather to pursue whales and upvote just to get a piece of that pie whether the posts really deserve it or not. Certainly there are a lot of great whales out there putting out quality content and of course they deserve upvotes for that. But under the current oligarchical system, they may be getting upvotes just because they are whales
It seems to me that everyone's vote should carry the same weight. Steemit should be a true meritocracy, not an oligarchy. Just because someone has been on Steemit a long time or because they've perhaps purchased a lot of Steem doesn't mean they are more qualified to judge quality content nor are they more deserving of higher payouts solely because of that. Besides, it must drive them a bit crazy to be chased after by schools of minnows just trying to suck up. Who wants to be 'loved' just for their steempower?
Aside from that, and just thinking off the top of my head here, I'd really like a feature that would let me choose a 'top 20 or top 50 list of people I'm following so that I would be sure to always see their posts in my feed. This would help build community and encourage active support. Maybe also a top 3 or top 5 list of favorite categories would also help streamline things so each steemer can zero in on the content that most interests him.
I'm just a minnow here so maybe I'm missing some things. By the way, I have nothing against whales who have worked hard and put forth great content so I just want to be clear about that--this is not a rant against whales. I just think there are improvements that could be made in the system which would benefit everyone and help keep Steemit growing. I welcome your comments fellow Steemers.