Thanks for coming back @smooth.
you will also earn SP curation rewards
quote taken from the last post.
(@burnpost (which you maybe are not affiliated with, but is part of what started this discussion) is the real game if it comes to maxing curation).
We also discussed mentioning voting much later, to keep the posts out of trending. No mention of that, even though this is a concern for many.
The quote is correct. By voting you earn some curation rewards, but they certainly aren't the best.
I don't think it is reasonable to expect people to give up all curation rewards to make a vote which directs rewards to the benefit of the entire platform/community/economy, when they could not only get curation rewards by voting for something else (including by self-voting, vote-trading, or vote-selling), but easily get more curation rewards.
Once again, I must disagree on this point. @burnpost gets many votes (often 50-80% of the total votes that it gets altogether) within the first 1-3 minutes which means between 40% and 80% of curation rewards on those votes is being returned to the pool. Later votes get low curation rewards because the curation reward formula does not pay much to late votes. This is exactly how the curation system is supposed to work on predictable high-payout posts, whether they are @burnpost, or just an author with a big following. Voters have a choice of some (low) curation rewards for low effort or even autovotes, but to earn higher curation rewards, requires at least a little effort, sometimes a lot.
As I mentioned earlier, it would be pretty easy to increase curation rewards from what is earned here or on burnpost, just by finding any post, even more or less at random, which is not obvious abuse and has some sort of content value, and voting on that instead.
I'm working on a revamp of the template and will include that.
Things have been moving closer to the peg recently; I'm positive it will not take too long and all this effort to fix the peg will be superfluous.
In general there seems to be a faction that trusts the things as they are, and a faction that wants to meddle, which is totally ok with me, I just do not think it has any important upside, and it's tough to watch that many votes ending up there.
And yes, revamp that template, please; this has been a good option (almost a compromise) for some time already. It would also show more willingness to react to criticism.