I don't know what select group you think I'm in, but if you mean those with a significant ownership stake, then yes I'm interested in increasing the value of our ownership stake by encouraging more positive, casual, entertainment type content that people actually enjoy as this insightful post indicates. I believe that will attract more users, increasing the value or our ownership stake (and I conversely believe that if we don't attract more users, then this platform will die out and our ownership stakes will become worthless).
The sort of bickering over who is right and who is wrong, who is a sock puppet, which posts are more deserving of some particular dollar value of reward, etc. to which you are referring is exactly the opposite of that, and will have (and is already having) the opposite effect. There are rampant fake profiles, sock puppets, upvote bots, likebots, etc. on other social media platforms (you don't really think that B-lister has a million real likes do you?). If those platforms were constantly polluted by arguments over it instead of people enjoying interacting and being entertained despite a certain background level of cheating and abuse, those platforms would be abandoned instead of having a billion users.
Steem/it has a stronger, more robust set of economic incentives to mitigate against that sort of abuse, thus over time it may end up being less prone to it. Whining about how it isn't perfect now is nothing other than self-destructive.
If you like the content, vote for it. If you don't like the content, don't vote for it or downvote it.
BTW, I have participated in some of the downvote wars surrounding @armen and his poker posts, by upvoting critical comments that had been downvoted since I felt the debate over quality was worth some visibility. If I missed yours, I apologize, but I can't be everywhere all the time.
I generally agree. The only loophole I've seen is someone that uses posts on steemit to lure people into scams elsewhere. Technically, the bait isn't breaking any rules because the violations happen off-site. This way, you can have a good reputation rating on steemit even though you ought to be tarred and feathered in the outside world.