It was a complete killer for diversity, which ultimately is what any social network thrives on.

Absolutely this. This has been a major focus on my part in the last couple of weeks and being able to scale my votes and distribute them more evenly among deserving contributors.

I am glad I ran into this thread and notice more users are doing something to prevent this going on the same way and that its making it harder for newcomers to really get into the Steemit Experience because some authors with same-ish content get voted up to trending several times per day.