any Steem Guild votes on team members’ posts have compensated them directly for the time they have spent tracking authors, pulling posts, reviewing, and voting to allocate rewards appropriately.
While I don't want to seem ungrateful, because I am, I don't really feel comfortable being on this list at this type of expense...
If I were a staff member of this guild it seems I would be able to write virtually anything of any value and get the collusive votes which is not a true representation of its value. It's just friends voting for friends which doesn't offer value to the bigger picture...
I would like to see collusive voting happen more naturally with less organisation but it seems there's little to incentivise people to honestly give credit where credit is due... I'd refer to @snowflake 's recent post as it brings some important points to the problem and suggest that the whales not voting might not be such a bad idea. The problem with that is just that the power simply gets passed to the next in line and for that reason I would be more interested in discussing that old controversial idea of "vote negating" brought up by @dan many months ago.
If you could down vote an up vote instead of the author that would discourage this kind of collusive voting which appears to be great for those who get the support... But ultimately isn't good for the whole community...
Your points are fair and I appreciate your perspective. If you would like to opt out from being a supported author, we can remove you. As far as team members' compensation, I mentioned in the post that we are looking at alternatives and on streamlining to a greater degree. Steemit is still a young platform and everything we do is a work in progress.
Have you considered a model similar to the one set up by @instructor2121 with @steemtrail?
Rick and I are in close communication and have worked together on various projects. It's a very different niche and need here. In the future, I hope that curation will be smaller scale, geared more towards individual curators, and I'm a big fan of what @steemtrail is doing.
I completely hear what you are saying. I am a team member and I don't see this as a permanent solution. This is merely a realistic reaction to the current situation. To be honest, I hope the situation drastically changes as soon as possible. I hope thousands of people join the community and the system can work without us. In the meantime, I desperately want to help retain the creative people who are currently here. It's not a perfect system, but we are constantly trying to improve it.
Thank goodness for @beanz! I shall not say any more as it will be interpreted incorrectly! Votes for Heinz ... I mean @beanz.