Smooth could make his posts decline rewards, but have a comment people can vote on to burn the rewards on
Do you think that would be better? I could see a case made that doing it that way could be seen as trying to hide the rewards, since there is no way for voters to easily view high-paying comments (if we had a global "Trending Comments" page that might be different).
I do understand that people want to see 'quality content' on Trending, but at the same time it also serves to make visible where a large portion of the reward money is going, even when it is going to posts which serve as fundraisers and aren't necessarily entertaining. I would think that stakeholders having a clear view of reward allocation would be considered important.
I'm interested in other views though.
Trending is pretty useless these days as it's mostly promoted posts using paid votes. Trending comments might be interesting. I know there are people milking the system my self voting junk comments to stay under the radar.