Like I said, I think we are compromising the authors for the curators at the cost of maybe winning over some short sighted individuals, who might not see any value in changing their ways in spite of incentives.
If that happens then our only course of action is what we have now: warn of the pitfalls of self voting (making the platform look like a joke/scam and the insufferable lonely and cold place such people deserve should everyone do that) and if that doesn't work tell anyone and everyone who will listen, HEY! Is this OK?!.
It's the same for spam and self voting, they are equal in my eyes. I wish there was some kind of incentive for flagging people and there isn't, but flagging is very effective if the account has enough power.
If a post is worth $100 and there is only one vote and you vote and nobody else votes, you're not going to get any more than if you voted for something that nobody voted for, because as far as curation rewards go you're not getting paid 25% of what the post makes split 2 ways (12.50), you get 25% of what your vote was, the other 75% goes to the author, so if your vote is $0.12 then you get back $0.03 for voting.
I think people have a misconception when it comes with curation rewards. You get 25% of your vote, your vote being a function of how many votes are cast thus far and their weight behind them over the rewards being voted on, so that if less people vote or less large accounts vote your vote will allocate a larger portion of that reward pool as it's not as spread as before, other than that without powering up you won't see a change in the curation rewards.
<"...you get 25% of what your vote was, the other 75% goes to the author, so if your vote is $0.12 then you get back $0.03 for voting."
This is much different that what I understood. I thought that curators received 25% of the post value, so that the curator in your example would receive $25.
I am now alarmed that it is my comments that produce over 2/3 of my rewards LOL
I am not following, I guess. If curation is allotted 25% of the total rewards for a post, and (in the example you gave) where only one vote applies, then for a $100 post, that vote would seem to be worth $25, regardless of timing.
In a real world situation, where there are likely to be many votes on a $100 post, then the timing of the vote would clearly change that, due to the allocation you mention.
Right?
The problem with flagging is that there is a pretty severe opportunity cost.
A person flagging is granting rewards to all posts which have active votes instead of using their vote to gain rewards. Yes, some people will do it (perhaps gaining social capital) which is good, but if we simply consider rewards, and not reputations, I think this action actually isn't economically rational.