The good thing is that it's currently impossible to game things I think. My blog is mentioned in this article. I post all of my articles on HN and so far I haven't noticed any pattern that would help me predict which ones will do well. The algorithm seems pretty robust.

Too late. Like 2 years late.

I've seen some people asking for boosts on facebook, and my circle isn't even that tech heavy. So people are gaming it, but it's hard to say how effective they are.

I agree. I think this has been a problem for the longest time, and content scrapers are definitely not new.

SEO is a minefield, and when standards should be set, they're always transgressed.