Nice code image you got there. Wonder where you found it. :-P
Here's the downside to not making these changes together. People always complain about changes. They do it with Facebook and they will certainly do it here when money is involved. If the change is bad, we shouldn't do it. If the change is good, we should do it. When we do it, or if we do it in conjunction with something else, isn't as important unless the combination of changes creates something new which changes whether it's good or bad. From what I understand, the Steemit devs tested these changes out and found the results to be positive. If that's true, what's the point of waiting for another hard fork to change the financials here twice, giving people two opportunities to complain about changes instead of just one?
So is changing to a linear reward good? I think most agree yes. Is it "good enough" for those who want everything to be equal for everyone? No, and nothing ever will be. Equality of opportunity is a noble goal. Equality of outcome is impossible. Also, with that opportunity comes a whole lot of things most people don't see such as the whales who are putting in real money to become whales in the first place which drives the price and value of steem for everyone (I see them every week on my exchange transfers reports). Few people talk about where that money comes from, the effort to create it in the first place, the risk involved to buy steem and power it up, etc, etc. No one campaigns for them. Instead it's assumed they are somehow always being unfair to the little guy. Maybe there's more to it... maybe they power up when others power down. Maybe they work harder providing more value to others? It could be a number of things.
I think reducing the vote power is a really good thing. It's not a whales verses minnows discussion as much as a human voter verses bot voter thing. Those voting with bots can adjust their voting strength down and it will be just like before. But those who actually manually curate and only vote a handful of times a day will see a huge increase in the influence of their vote and that's a really good thing.
IMO, setting up more automated, unattended voting is not the answer for creating more quality here. More people using curation trails could mean less people picking what is valued and what isn't. I'd rather individuals vote based on what individuals value. That, over the long term, leads to more diverse quality. I could be wrong here and maybe curation trails are a good thing, but whenever I've done follow votes before, I've been disappointed with the things "I" ended up voting for. I prefer supporting authors I know consistently produce content I value, and I want to reward them to continue doing so.
Maybe a good way to think about it is this: If you were a whale who worked hard to earn your stake, what level of control do you think others should have on your voting activity and why? I'm all for improving things, but I think one of the main ways the distribution will change around here is when whales sell their Steem and new whales buy it up.
Great comment (?) well it's really a post if you think about it. Maybe it should a post. You have very reasoned thinking.
I didn't mention your gift of that image as I didn't want to associate you with the claims in teh post. For anyone that cares I asked a few for their take and Luke shared the image with me of the exact spot of the code where the changes are noted.
I'm down for experiments. But experiments test 1 variable.
I think a leveled approach is some bot voting, some curation trail following, and some manual curation. Bots aren't inherently bad but can be abused. Manual voting isn't inherently bad but can be abused. Concentrating power of votes when distribution is already at 93% is reckless.
I don't view hard forks as experiments. Ideally, the experimenting comes before the fork with testing and simulations (which I've been let to believe the steemit devs already did). To hard fork on a regular basis just trying things out would not make for a pleasant user experience.
Is that based on evidence or opinion? Yes, a whale could upvote or downvote with more power now than before. That could lead to disproportionally higher payouts for some posts. Or it could not. We have the blockchain data to evaluate the voting patterns of whales and simulate things. If they vote for just a handful of things, their share of influence over the reward distribution is still the same, the difference being all the others who only vote occasionally now have more influence. That, combined wth a linear rewards pool, makes it work. I see the overall desired benefit working when these changes are together and (again) from what I've been led to believe they have been tested together.
If SP concentration in the hands of too few is a bad thing, they we should be campaigning for more people to purchase Steem and power up. That's the best long term solution. Other solutions, IMO, create a disincentive for people to accumulate Steem Power to do with as they please.
This is what we have now. It's going to get worse if votes are concentrated from 40 down to 10.
Might be interesting to map that against whale votes and their voting power at the time.