Looks like we have a similar understanding, but different priorities. That's fine as long as we get there before too long.

But I would add that I'd like to see numbers. I've been asking for numbers since the announcement of EIP in HF21 and haven't seen them. It's too late for those to matter now, I guess (though I'd still like them... what percentage of the rewards pool was going to abuse?) The new numbers I'd like to see are:

Are middle earners rank and file? Which is to say, do most top level posts earn $4-10? Or is that actually still a part of the top echelon? Is the freewrite community an outlier, or are we the norm? I think we're the norm, but it's hard to know, but if we are, there must be a lot of regular users out there who are getting $0.20/post. To me, if that's more than 50% of the crowd, that's the rank and file.

The curve exists to serve a purpose. Punishing responsible low-earning users isn't the intent at all, but is an unavoidable side effect.

I know it's not the intent, and I know the purpose, but is the cure worse than the disease? ATM, I'd say yes, especially considering that we didn't try the EIP without the curve first, which is what I'd like to see. Boy howdy.

I'm glad the downvotes help. They'd help even more in a linear reward curve. But sure, more curation. I'd even love to see a whale make a whitelist of "responsible low-earning users" to give those $0.20 upvotes that get them back to where they were. That'd go a long way to ameliorating the unavoidable side effect.