Among the comments I exchanged with other Steemians in my first few weeks on Steemit were discussions around pre-screening of submissions at the time the user clicks `Post`. While this won't directly address vote abuse/farms it will reduce and make less attractive the submisssion of content that a lot of this voting happens on;

At the time of submission content should be checked and matched against a short tree of criteria with suggestions|warnings presented &/or automatic submission action|rejection, eg:

Criteria
- content components (image, text, both)
- length of content (char count, img count)
- % match of existing content (internet/steemit), via tools similar to [checkplagiarism.org](http://checkplagiarism.org/) & [checkplagiarism.org](http://checkplagiarism.org/) (text), or [tineye.com](https://tineye.com/) & [images.google.com](https://images.google.com/) (images, 100% matches only, for obvious reasons)

Advice|Warning
- [Advice] Your submission is very short, containing only `X` characters. Stimulating and engaging content attracts more attention, greater reward potential, and help Steemit grow into the #1 content platform! <BR> `Edit` &nbsp; `Continue`
- [Advice] Your submission contains `Y` image[s][only] [and `X` characters]. Stimulating and engaging content attracts more attention, greater reward potential, and help Steemit grow into the #1 content platform! <BR> `Edit` &nbsp; `Continue`
- [Warning] Your submission is a `Z`% match of existing content: [url_array(≤3)]. Steemit thrives on original content, unoriginal content may attract less attention, lesser reward potential, negative impact on reputation, potential copyright legal action, and reflect poorly on Stemit's reputation. Please consider re-writing your submission using [quote markdown]() and credit original authors where necessary. Rewards for this submission will be reduced by `Z`% <BR> `Edit` &nbsp; `Continue`
- [Warning] Your are attempting to submit work that is a 100% match of existing content: [url_array(≤3)]. Please consider re-writing your submission using [quote markdown]() and credit original authors where necessary. If you proceed a link to the existing content will be submitted instead and potential reward will be reduced to 0 <BR> `Edit` &nbsp; `Continue`

Automatic Actions
- Post reward reduced by `Z`% match
- System warning included on post comments (eg: @cheetah -like statement with `Z`% match & URL list)
- Post reward prevented
- Post content substituted with URL link[s] & warning comment included on post comments

<BR>
### [Sounds like a job for RegEx :P](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/regular_expressions.png)
![RegEx](http://www.w3programmers.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/regex.jpg)