I‘ve been thinking like that as well as you probably know but now I‘ve started thinking this way:
Are voting trails really killing the community or are they finally showing the true face of the community? That most people out there are content creators and not consumers who are just too busy creating as you also said. Were they maybe always forcing themselves to do this interaction and the voting trail is now doing the job for them? “I’m on a voting trail, my duty is done.” Are people thinking about it this way? Hard to say because probably nobody will admit...