Very much agree with your approach. When voting I try to reward @ 100% when someone obviously put a lot of time and effort into a post. If it is just a photo of a meal or a cup of coffee, or something churned out quickly, then I use the slider. For comments, I like to reward cleverness, thoughtfulness, and insight.
In addition I use tools like SteeMVP to make sure I pay special attention to the blogs of those who vote often for my contributions, or those sea mammals who have shown me generosity. I have also identified a few fellow newbies, newer than I am, who impress me and who I would very much like to see succeed on Steemit.
It would be extremely helpful to me if there were an option on Steemit that would allow a user to identify "favorites" and have a feed option which displayed them.
I most definitely go along with the idea of favourites. It would keep the posts you most wanted to see in your feed for longer