RE: Voting Abuse and Ineffective Curation: A proposal for blockchain-level change
Why should someone who places a vote get half when it is the creator that has put the time and effort into it?
Think of it as a partnership. Without votes by SP holders there is no reward for the author (and without SP holders collectively there are no rewards to give to any authors). Conversely, without content there is nothing for SP holders to vote for, and further no content or engagement to drive growth of the platform and STEEM/SP value. And, finally, without engaged voters investing time and effort into curation (the point of this post really), there is no way to determine which are the excellent posts that most deserve to be rewarded.
As @timcliff explained, curation rewards are split between all of the voters, but even in the extreme simple case of a single voter, it is still a partnership and both partners are critical to success. Recognizing the importance of both posters (and commenters) and voters with a more equitable split (and one which better compensates putting in actual effort to curation than the status quo) is good for everyone. I don't know whether 50/50 is exactly the right number but it is probably closer to the right number than the current 85/15.
80/20 or 75/25, even 70/30 may be okay but the 50/50 diminishes the value of the labour the content creator does.
If a content creator deems his/herself too good for that reward layout, someone else will happily step in. And, if that much higher curation payout makes owning SP sufficiently attractive (and it WILL make it more attractive to own SP), then those content creators that opt out will be very disappointed in their decision to do so.
I hear people talk all the time about "what if Steem reaches $10, $100, $1,000... what would these payouts look like then?", well, I don't see Steem reaching those types of prices with the current parameters, but making it far more attractive to own SP (buy and lock away Steem) is certainly a step in the right direction.
People aren't going to be complaining about "only making half of the rewards" as content creators if Steem does a 10X price move based on SP becoming a more valuable commodity.
If a content creator currently makes $100 at today's Steem price (call it $1.50) and today's payout parameters (85/15%), they will be making ( { [100 / 0.85] x 0.5 } x 10 ) $588.24 if Steem 10X in price (to around $15) and the parameters are changed to 50/50%, all else being equal.
you'd make a wonderful fiat publisher as they do their best to drive the proceeds to the writer lower and lower while their intake of proceeds goes higher on the backs of the creators.
What I say is true. If curators make roughly nothing, then how is Steemit any different than a site like YouTube (only content creators earn)? What's the point in holding SP?
If you want Steem to be an attractive investment, make this so called "Steem Power" actually powerful. Right now it's more like "Steem Weakling", if you ask me.
If, on the other hand, you're glad with a flash in the pan, short time window to cash out on your content before this all collapses in on itself, by all means keep curation as being paid in peanuts for holding a boat-load of SP.
You gotta realize that holding a high amount of SP is a fairly risky thing and it's those very people that have taken this huge risk who're making it possible for these content creators to be paid (in anything more than mere pesos) in the first place! Don't bite the hand that feeds you!
Should all these high SP holders get fed up enough and they all start to sell, guess what happens to the author payouts? Don't be too myopic in how you view this.