Just finished reading the interesting discussion on this post. Different perspectives and proposals have broaden my understanding of the platform. I will talk about one point raised by @chriddi:

We need loyal audience who just want entertaining content like on Facebook or Instagram etc and nothing more.

• To get more audience/readers, we need interesting content.

I'm more of an Instagram person so I will talk about it. It's interesting to see the effort micro-influencers put in their content. They don't get a penny for all their hardwork and sweat until they get a following of several thousands and hundreds of comments on each post. To get that level of engagement, they work really hard on their content in hopes of attracting audience and getting loyal audience requires constant hardwork and excellence.

Why can't we have that level of dedication on Steemit? Because we get rewards regardless of our followers and engagement on posts.

In most cases here, first we get rewards then we get audience (an sc01 upvote and then people come to see why a big upvote here). I believe curation means just that - curate content to make it trending for others to see. Only if it's reversed; let others (readers/small curators) find content first and then let big curators reward it.

A post shouldn't be rewarded unless it meets a certain standard and it should go for all authors out there. We see comments only on Engagement Challenge posts. Hardly few people bother to be as engaging on the posts outside the challenge. Once again, we see a could-be-useful initiative as merely a way of earning more rewards which destroys it's true purpose.

Like chriddi said, maybe wait for five days to see the engagement on a post, if it's got meaningful engagement then big curators can reward it with a generous upvote.

I think I said more or less the same what you guys already discussed but that was what my initial thoughts were after reading your points.