I must say i agree with alot of your toughts, i was here only the last weeks of HF19, but that time felt more rewarding for me as a minnow, had a lot more views and the few comments I got back then, where usually real input, and not just "follow me" spam.
It felt good to have a little more to give to people on a upvote, but then again it constraints me that I now have to keep a close eye on my voting power. For me the community and the different areas I feel I can learn more from trough other posts have gotten so much harder to connect with. The influx of new users with the reward pool changing has led to a lot of spam, which makes it harder to find quality writers. We can only see what will happen, but I predict that hf20 will arrive soon, atleast if someone is reading the feedback. the distribution problem is quite big, but can be managed over time. As you say, peer-peer interaction is worth alot more!