There is nothing "abusive" about n^2, but it was far too much in terms of calculating post payouts. Pretty much everyone agreed that n^2 needed to change to a more linear algorithm. But there wasn't much agreement on a full linear algorithm, and self-voting/sock puppet voting was one of the reasons why. Many people spoke out against this change precisely because of the behavior we're seeing now.

With a more-than-linear curve, it would be much harder to give yourself large rewards without other voters agreeing on rewarding the content. Obviously, full linear requires no such agreement from other users. So having a more-than-linear algorithm is at least a moderate deterrent to naked self-voting for rewards.

But the 10-vote target was a "solution" for a problem that did not exist. And rather than make things more "fair" or "equal" for smaller stakeholders, it simply allows spammers or anyone else to siphon rewards into their own pockets with minimal content that requires not even the slightest bit of consensus...or any agreement whatsoever from even one other user.

It's the combination of the two changes that really exacerbates the effects/problems. Even if they were implemented individually, either one would still create similar problems. That's why I say they should be rolled back.

Change the full linear algorithm to less than squared but more than linear. (STINC has claimed this is too hard to do.)

Get rid of the 10-vote target altogether. It was completely unnecessary.