Who cares if it makes it less profitable to upvote yourself if we run the majority of the users off the site?! I am being hyperbolic, but you know what I mean... We are so concerned about trying to plug leaky holes in the dam with our pinky fingers that we aren't doing the things that will bring in tons more people... basically I think we are focusing on the wrong things.

The whole idea of downvoting unworthy content is a joke. What is trash to one person might be gold to someone else. Content quality is completely subjective, which is why I think it is a waste of time trying to focus on it... at least on steemit. Let SMTs and communities deliver the "proof of brain" ideas for content.