The question is how many of their own sock puppets are they up voting? They can write under a lot of different names, several have multiple accounts. They cherry pick and promote very few people, I am assuming those are the ones who made it between minnow and whale and why there's so few of them. It also explains why a newbies vote is worthless, built in self protectionism. Seems to be that if you aren't talented enough of a writer the only way for someone like that to get anywhere is to buy in, use bots, create their own army of sock puppets to vote them, invest in delegation. Otherwise you'll be long dead before anything significant pans out here.