There wasn't an special calculation performed to come up with 50/50 vs some other combination. 50/50 is just a reversion to a formula that was working better.
After the switch to 75/25, we saw the rise of vote bots and the result was that manual curators like me pretty much gave up in disgust. The rules of voting became simple under 75/25: delegate to vote bots or have your stake eroded badly versus those who didn't delegate to vote bots. Either way, eventually all stake was going to be delegated to voting bots.
I also saw a pretty clear decline in the quality of articles on trending as a result, destroying the promise of "proof of brain" on the platform.
hey, thanks for answering. This is pretty interesting. You think reversing the formula back to 50/50 would have an impact against bots? Manual curation can be increased after this hardfork?
That's the main intent of the 50/50 change, to encourage more manual curation again.