First of all, thanks for the tip.
I think tips are a great way of encouraging content creators. And it can complement the upvote system. If it does become a neon here it can influence or encourage content creators to create content for the long term and most importantly find their niche. As a content creator I have to try several things to stay relevant. However if I discover people like a certain type of content I would spend more time creating such content. Most of the upvotes here are done automatically so you can't really tell if actual humans are consuming your content
Yes, that's a bit of a problem. The main reason why people auto-vote is to optimise the curation rewards. Since you have to get in within the first few minutes to earn more. I think it's time to revisit that and remove that window, so that the curation rewards are equally weighted, regardless of when the vote came in. That way, curators can take their time looking for what they like and upvoting in their own time.
Autovoting isn't all bad. It allows for that Patreon style support.