"...it's more profitable to vote for an underdog than it is to vote for an already popular author."
Perhaps in theory, but the ease of finding and curating popular authors more than outweighs any increase in rewards for curating unknowns. This is what the market shows, at least.
"...instead of downvoting an author, you would be downvoting the curator and the author would never see a difference in payout."
This is actually a brilliant idea. Particularly for those that neither post nor comment, leaving no vector of susceptibility to flags.
True, that's why I would say that that "curation donation" window should have actually been made LONGER in the first place, so that it is obviously more profitable to find hidden gems that it is to vote for the same old same old.
I would say it would be OK to divide the rewards 50/50 iF the curation donation window was increased to 200 minutes. This 5 minute deal will just make it easy to chase curation rewards without doing any work (such as with a bot).
And it is the people who seek out these hidden gems who help retain users long enough for some of them to invest their own money into steem.
As for the vote negation, the code was written over a year ago and rejected by the community. I believe this is one of the few reasons the designer left the project.
Everything you said here makes sense.
Thanks!