The one thing, that has been outdated in the white paper... or maybe it was never so, is that nice graph of post payouts.
Showing a long tail, and a gradual rise.
The reality was a very steep rise, and the long tail was cut short by making the minimum payout almost impossible to get to. 100 minnow votes didn't do the job.
Even now with the flatter algorithms, it is nothing like that nice graph.
Yes, the algorithm should be easily accessible to everyone. The very nature of our consensus algorithm is hidden in a jumble of undocumented code. It's very unprofessional.