So I'm not sure if the voting meets your quality standards. The tail it votes is huge, so there will naturally be stuff in between where not everyone agrees.

I'm not sure that it doesn't. I certainly don't expect everyone to agree on everything.

A huge tail is a good thing IMO, but at the same time it can be abused (if the tail consists of a lot of sock puppet accounts from people taking advantage of the idea that "voting for a tail is good" and not actual growth in the user base). My bottom line view on this is that as long as we don't see net user base growth and Steem gaining in overall visibility and influence (e.g. as visible in alexa rankings) it is all kind of a failure, even if well intended (not intending to single out curangel here, in case it seemed that way; it is even possible that with more support it could help turn the whole ship around).