Thank you for pointing out some of these things... however, I'd like to add that we have a helpful solution to combat the quantity over quality idea:
Downvotes.
By spreading this awareness we can downvote articles that are getting bot upvoted etc. A downvote doesn't necessarily mean you don't like the article, it just means you want to affect a redistribution of the rewards.

Downvote articles that are botvoted.

https://steemit.com/steemit/@showoff/the-solution-to-steemit-s-curation-problem-us