I am by no means a Steem expert. I would say the opposite. I have little to no interest in learning the inner guts of Steem or how the sausage is made. I do this for fun and if I earn a little on the side then so be it.

With that said, I am probably going to get slammed for asking/proposing this, but here goes:

If downvoting, or upvoting, could it not be scripted to tie the vote to require a comment on why the vote was given? Would this not eliminate some of the bots, voting wars and circle jerks? I think maybe it wouldn't be too much to ask that if something is worthy of a vote, either up or down, that it is worthy of saying why.

On another note, I left Steemit over a year ago and just returned recently. I have only received one downvote since, and that was on my first post after I returned and only because I mentioned someone in my post that the other person was at war with. It was a big downvote and almost made me say"screw this". I am glad I did not because my rewards for content are much better than what they were before I left. I am glad I came back to Steemit.

Learning a lot from the comments here, other than the spam comments :-)