I think that it would be a mistake to go back to 50/50 since now there is an incentive to create content. The problem is that people are just creating spammy type articles and have other people that are automatically upvoting their posts regardless of what is being said or the effort put into the post. The solution to this really has to be changing the culture on here. As long as there is money involved people will continue to upvote posts that they think will get them paid regardless of content. I know I am following a user who creates 3 posts a day that all seem to get upvoted to a $40 value which are just quick essentially news snipits which don't require a lot of thought.

One solution for the self-voting and trying to give minnows an advantage would be to set a limit to when a user can upvote their own post based on the amount of SP they have: minnows right at posting, dolphins 3 days after posting, sharks 5 days after posting, whales right before voting time runs out. (Or whatever aquatic animal that you identify with.)

This should help to incentivise whales to still create quality content while giving a small advantage to minnows while they are trying to grow their SP and clout.

@rocking-dave and @fechaugger you guys may find these ideas interesting.