Good post, Joe. Regarding an open reward window, consider that as time goes on there will be a cumulative diminishing of each bit of the rewards pie each new post can get, because it is also competing against the whole history of the blockchain. I think there's certainly room to increase it from 7 days to something longer, however. I've also posted before about my "reverse curation" idea. I won't bore you again with the details ;) , but I can fill anyone in on the idea if they want to hear it.

Posts with wasted potential

What about all those posts that you posted at the beginning that got less than 10 views. They are basically worthless now because even if someone finds it in the future, you won't get anything from it after the first few days. (Or is it a week?)

Regarding this, I'm planning on recycling some of my old posts when I get a bigger reach.

Regarding your 'investing in people' idea, I think this is an excellent idea. I'm going to have to come back to the rest of the post, as it's still too early in the day (4pm) for my mind to be firing on all cylinders... ;)