I think you mistake differences in the time horizon of curators' expectation of rewards for for the type of reward (psychic vs. income).
For example, I curate for the @gardening-trail and the @foraging-trail with the SteemTrail effort. I curate and upvote posts that I know will not give me a lot of curation rewards, i.e., the most immediate rewards. But my curation, along with leaving comments on almost every post that I upvote for the trails, is geared to long-term rewards.
How? By creating community around shared interests. New folks on Steemit have a clear path to connecting with other people. Steemit regulars have topics that they can come back to. And it is a hook to getting new users onto Steemit, whether they want to be authors, commenters, or just readers banging out those upvotes without even knowing what they really are.
I don't do all that for the short-term income through curation rewards. I don't do it for psychic rewards. I do it for the long-term growth in users, the value of Steem, and thus, my own long-term income.
I am 100% sure that your curation creates real value for Steem, both in the short- and long-run. Instead of debating theoretical things, I would like to use an example in your trail:
https://steemit.com/fruit/@tangmo/ma-yom-or-star-gooseberry-one-of-popular-fruits-of-thailand
This post has 9 views and 109 votes, and several dollars (probably from the guild). If 9 people or somewhat more, say 15 people, read the post, where does the rest of 90+ votes come from? Do they ever comment? Do they read? Do their vote based on the post itself?
In your case, all the answer is "yes". You read the post, commented on it, upvoted because you think it's valuable. But I think other 90+ votes answer all "no". They don't add value through votes, but just add some meaningless noise in terms of content curation (not profit game), dilute real curator's influence. I really want to see you become more influential.
This is what I am saying, and please see my revised version (link is added in the end of this post)
The 90+ votes are there because that is how the SteemTrail process adds the earnings value to the post -- by pooling their collective vote power. It doesn't dilute my curation influence, it amplifies it.
In tracking whether the foraging and gardening trails are working to build community (long-term value), I do not track the votes for individual posts, like the one you mentioned. Instead, I look at collections of posts. Here is what I said in my last report, covering 27 posts over the past 30 days:
For an arcane topic like Foraging, during the slow winter season, I think one post per day is pretty good. And it is a unique set of posts unlike posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Medium, Wordpress blogs, or YouTube. They make Steemit a unique place.
Thanks for the link to your new post. I read it several times over and I am not sure that I get your points there. It sounds like you now think that curators that seem to you to not care about short-term income are now not the problem. Instead you are now proposing to shift 3-10% of author rewards to investors.
Only regarding to this post. Assuming bots consists 50% of voting power cast, they actually dilute human voter's power by 50%
It's good thing. How do you identify a post meets foraging or gardening trail? Only by tag or by author? Probably you read and decide, and your effort adds value.
They are already getting 3% (on average) rewards via curation. But by their best cost-benefit maximizing strategy, they don't want to spend time and effort, which actually contribute this "content" platform. Investors reward is a lure to separate for-profit users and to protect real curators from money-driven powers.
If there's any way to prevent profit-driven votes (no reading, no evaluation), like CAPTCHA, it would be the best option. But this is blockchain... it's impossible as far as I know.
Thanks for your kind words of encouragement. And your offer of SP delegation. I will take you up on that after HF17, if you still want to consider it then. I've enjoyed including some posts from the Korean community on the @foraging-trail, like from @bontonstory. Thanks for the discussion. I got a lot out of this.
Kr also has real farmer @jejujinfarm. She's growing tangerines and some other plants. I just knew @bostonstory is there. Thanks!
I see your point about dilution in total, rather than for a single post. I do think that your cost-benefit has to consider opportunity costs, too, though. I know I reduce my total income by curating rather than writing more articles, especially since my SP is not enough to earn very much curation rewards. So I am not necessarily a rational actor. And with people being able to interact directly with the blockchain, it is more difficult to set up some kinds of systems, like you point out!
NO! IMHO you are the most rational actor in the long-run. You are making the pie bigger, while other seemingly rational actors are just eating up the pie.
Although gardening is not my cup of tea, I really value your work, and my movements aims to support devotional guys like you. I am also supporting and building Korean community, so most of my power is used for it. But if you need more Steem Power, I can consider to delegate some after HF17 :)