Almost every single idea in your post is exactly correct. I would only disagree with the referral 1% (which opens up the Ponzi scheme nightmare, and presents other difficulties), and am perhaps unclear on what you mean by departments.
If you mean actual offices, I'm agin' it. However, you imply that the Curation department is us, and that just means the public decides, which is cool.
I reckon one important matter you have missed is that some votes are worth more than others, and this isn't cool. As you point out, just because someone has a grip of ducats doesn't mean their opinion is of greater value than a pauper's.
Votes should be equal.
This also eliminates a great many work arounds and fixes that have been put into place, including bots curating, to try to feed rewards to authors with small holdings of SP.
Frankly, all of those work arounds pale in comparison to simple popularity, as folks should decide what is good content, not tricks, timing, or the thickness of the wallets folks are packing.
Great post! Imma follow you now.
Sorry I missed the curation cutoff, or I'd have thrown a vote at you too.
I didn't mean physical departments, I meant it should be separated. I'm not a fan of equal votes because there are better curators then other. Imo the folks should decide who are the better curators.
That's what reputation is: vetting by the community. I'm quite in favor of VP being weighted by reputation, for exactly the reason you state. I'm also hard agin' SP being used to weight VP, for all the reasons you mention, and mebbe more.