Very good points. So far, I have yet to see any super technical content on Steemit, although some people have claimed that some of my posts are like that. :/
We will be continuously improving the algorithm and listening to user feedback.
Currently, most of the top voted posts are either personal stories or updates to Steemit. We seek to provide a tool for people to find posts that are intelligent and in a wide variety of topics. #academicspotlight substeemit is also doing great work.