To clarify at least one of my complaints and offer a solution regarding unnecessarily complex and unfair curation reward distributions, I think a more successful model can be formed that is designed around two core principles, simplicity and fairness.
The most important aspect of the model is fairness, that all curation should receive the exact same ratio of return per invested STEEM. Currently the curation rewards are gamed in two ways, timing and total eventual rewards. The exact timing to optimize reward is based on some obscure algorithm that favors automated robot voting services, and it is easy to predict which whale accounts will inevitably receive the most rewards, so optimizing curation rewards is accomplished by automatically front-running predictable whale votes with an upvoting service, which is much different than the stated goal of supporting "higher quality posts and manual curating" that was used to promote the last fork. Also, dust votes are negated, which limits the earning potential of our smallest wallets, which deters new users. I understand there were some issues with Sybil attacks and dust votes being used to farm, but maybe instead of trying to control so much of the rewards pool with large wallets micromanaging everything and putting in tons of unpaid labor hours, we should create a reward system that is simple and intuitive to use, doesn't require so much labor, and automatically rewards everyone fairly according to their invested STEEM and minimum standard of participation. A simple and fair model would look much different than micromanaging 10 upvotes and 2.5 downvotes per day, without any knowledge or explanation of voting power for new users on steemit.com, based on some obscure curation timing algorithm front-running predictable whale votes, and there are too many different levers to adjust on the reward pool to be overly attached to any particular configuration, but I would prefer a more simplistic and fair reward system for curation that allows users more control over their voting power. I would like the option to use 1 vote per day instead of 10, and create automatic curation lists of my favorite authors that would automatically use my voting power in ratio to the number of posts by those authors at the end of each day, and automatically receive a fair linear curation reward regardless of when I voted on the post.
There is no totally fair system and what we have could work, after it was already tweaked. A lot of the issues are to do with the people. I do my best to support those who need it, but some others just care about profit when they are probably not desperate for money. I want more people to have the possibility to earn.
The current system is notably unfair in the way that curation returns are disproportionately awarded to the quickest automated bot voters instead of manual curators, which is the opposite result of the stated intention to change the complex curation reward algorithm during the last major fork to reward manual curation.
I was not in favour of reducing the voting period. They should do what they can to encourage manual voting. I don't fish for curation rewards.