I think the best strategy is to upvote content you think is good or funny or interesting or thought provoking, rather than take too much notice of who is big or small. There is some benefit to looking strictly for small people but I think the content is the bigger thing there. Even then if you go "Yes I'll help the little guy", you vote for the little guy that has content that you like. This goes both way. The big guys who vote on big guys should only be voting on content that they like from other big guys, not just voting because they are all big. People are going to vote for friends because they like their friends and want to help them. That's not going to stop. If someone I knew personally was struggling to pay bills etc and I knew they were on here, of course I would upvote them because I know they need income to help them survive. But people should be looking at the quality of the content when looking at strangers, not just going "That person is big / small as well - I'll vote for them". It should be based on the quality of the content. It's like how I like some other small YouTubers but I also like some big YouTubers.
We defintiely shouldn't have groups that agree they will all vote on each other's posts though and there seems to be a few of them around. The circle jerk vote only helps those within that and means those massively voted posts are always up the top of certain categories.
"where whales acknowledge a minnows effort by voting 100% for minnows rather than 3%, 2', 1% and now voting a whale colleague with 100%"
I don't think I quite understand how that works though - you can somehow choose what percentage of your vote goes to who? How do you do that because I don't know how to do that? I seem to only be able to click on the upvote to vote and have no control over percentages and shit.
Hello birchmark!. You are right friend