I'm also seeing somewhat better rewards and new people voting my posts who never did before. But you and I are nowhere near the bottom, @celestal. Many people here less than 1 year and under 1000 sp have left or are very discouraged. Their 50 cent to $1 reward evaporated down to 30 cents or less.
Some were dumb enough to get on the down-voting train with their tiny sp and now get down-voted to zero on most posts. Those are gone or soon will be.
I'm dealing with them daily since I am in the minnow tips game, and it is heartbreaking.
Well, this certainly isn't for everyone, on this point at least when the development is still very early. User experience will improve with Communities though, and more content consumers will come when they can discover the content they like easily. This is what is needed in order to attract masses, because only minority of people are creators. And at that point having any stake, even if just few hundred, is very powerful, because where else can you tip authors and earn at the same time?
What I'm saying is that many small content creators we did have, who were developing stakes, are gone or leaving now. Their few 100 sp did nothing for them, and so they are cashing it out. The new tribes are a bright spot, but many new-ish people do not even understand them. It's just another layer of complexity. Everyone who works with new bloggers here is seeing this. Very few at the top end even know it is happening. They did not look at blogs under 1000 sp before the fork, and they are not looking now either.