Like you I am a newbie to Steemit, though not to writing or professional communities. It seems that some up-voting is being done by ‘robots’ (computers executing programmed algorithms). IF this impression is correct, I feel that we should ask the authors of these programs to explain why they benefit the community, unless they have already done so and now could not simply provide the URLs. I'm not saying they do not benefit the community; but am only asking for the explanation, which at this point I do not have and would like to see.

Also, an up vote that is associated with text that exposits what things about the article the commentator thought were helpful or stimulative of questions that need to be raised brings much more value to the community than the “empty up-vote” or even the ubiquitous "great-article" comment.
Thus, some 7 to 10 days after an article has appeared and has garnered significant commentary of the kind just cited, the author should go back over the comments and identify the ones that seem to significantly add value to the package of communication that comprises the original post plus the comments.
The authors of these selected comments should either receive a special up-vote or the author of the post should recommend to the “Editorial Board” that they be awarded tokens not unlike those offered to curators.
The contributions of the curators are without doubt valuable; but when people sit down and significantly add value to a post with their extended commentary, that too can benefit the community in important ways. An accumulation of these idea-rich commentaries produces valuable enrichment of the website. After a while, the set of these commentaries will help to raise Steemit to a higher level of quality as a source of helpful information.