Yes, those are my assumptions because that was a premise upon which the whale experiement was based (abit did some math and determined how low votes needed to be to largely stay out of the most superlinear part of the curve). The overall effect, while not perfect, was to dramatically reduce the vshares in the pool and therefore increase the weighting on smaller payouts. It is very similar to the effect of linear or convergent linear.

The biggest problem with the whale experiment was the high cost of the downvotes, and indeed that is probably the biggest flaw in the original white paper design, and likewise also in the assumptions that went into switching to linear (that people would downvote, retaining what is effectively a non-linear curve, and avoiding the self-rewarding issue with linear raised by the white paper). Since downvotes are too expensive, that didn't happen (more then 0.01% of the time at least). Everywhere you look, expensive downvotes are a problem.

With cheaper downvotes, any curve works a lot better. Without them, any curve works poorly.

Whether the upcoming changes will make downvotes cheap enough remains to be seen. Social stigma, retaliation, and uncompensated effort may still impose too high a cost.