Yeah, I remember the "Whale Experiment." I even remember getting flagged by Smooth a couple of times... and actually being somewhat in agreement with the flags, within the confines of the experiment parameters.

"Fair" voting is a tough nut to crack. N^2 didn't work. Now we have linear. At the time, I remember suggesting a "reverse logarithmic" curve... tiny minnows start with n^2 voting power and then relative voting power gradually decreases as your SP increases till maybe 100,000SP and up, where it just becomes straight linear. That weighs votes in favor of smaller accounts... with large minnows and dolphins (typically the most active people on the site) also having the most benefit. That suggestion got shut down because it would "discourage investment."

At the time, I didn't pursue it, but in retrospect, the comeback would be "why are we so obsessed only with LARGE investors?" Why not have a system that favors thousands of people putting in a few $K each, rather than a handful each putting in a million?

For the moment? I simply choose to support the smaller manual curation organizations building here... I support the more "community based" witnesses... I encourage people to join initiatives like @abh12345's "Curation and Engagement Leagues," which are growing organically, and filled with highly "interactive" people.

Afterthought: I think a lot of the "slowness" in Developing Steemit is a result of "them" discovering that building a social media venue on a decentralized system like this? Getting all these people to go in the same direction by consensus? SLOW system. It's like city government with too many committees that have to be consulted. It takes forEVER. Or so it seems...