As I try to spread the ideas below I add my comment not only under the main article but also as response to your comment, because otherwise I guess you wouldn't get aware of it:

Some time ago I formulated some ideas to make self-voting, circle-voting and spamming less attractive by ...

• ... thinking about a reward curve which started as n^2 / exponential (thus flat), and then later changed into linear which would work against self-voting as well as excessive rewards.
  @clayop had a similar idea.

• ... implementing diminishing returns when upvoting the same accounts (including own ones) again and again.

• ... reintroducing the restriction to four (or less) full paid posts per day (from some hard forks ago) which was very reasonable.

• ... considering also other ideas like the one of UserAuthority from @scipio.

When I wrote these articles some time ago I really had hoped that more witnesses/big account holders would have joined the discussion!