The Game of Curation Rewards

This is what I view as the first real game played on the platform here. It has been much discussed by all members of the community and in those posts, going back as far as 3 months, I have seen the purpose of curation rewards referred to as a means to reward users contributions for doing what they do naturally, that being reading and responding to posts with their votes and comments. What I want to explore is wether this has been accomplished, and what further refinement/changes could be made.

The Game Of Kings

Curation is a game for whales and dolphins. Minnows are unlikely to earn any significant return on their votes. Minnows should stick to posting and commenting. @dantheman Curation Rewards and Voting Incentive

When people are paid to curate they start to adapt strategies. Votes are cast for personal gain rather than for the benefit of the person they are voting for. This makes voting a selfish act rather than a generous act. The spirit of the site changes from one of rewarding content to one of "playing the game". @dantheman Lessons Learned from Curation Rewards Discussion

This is not an attack on the words, or about the person behind them, it's a simple acknowledgement of fact. One that is even addressed by himself when he states:

"Any attempt to give advantage to smaller accounts will result in large users dividing their balance into many accounts. This in and of itself is not a reason to stop looking for more democratic solutions."

And again:

"The reason for curation rewards was to incentivise link building. We want to reward people who sift through new stuff and discover it first. These people provide tremendous value to the platform. The challenge we have faced is that rewarding this behavior simultaneously rewards undesirable behavior."

Incentivized Bot Behavior

Curation rewards as they exist today probably worked better before the introduction of our feed button. While the game was still being played, people were at least forced into the new page to seek out the authors and content they felt were likely to get rewarded. An organic byproduct of this was exposure to everything coming through which allowed room for humanity to assert itself.

Rather than refreshing every thirty seconds for familiar names, you would skim the articles and hunt for what was good, an unknown name was not the deterrent to vote it is now. The bot behavior seen as the problem, has been largely exacerbated by enabling everyone to become a bot through the very feed button meant to connect us as people.

Incentivized Diversity

Assuming everyone is going to use their votes in the most self serving way possible, as a bot would, how can that be made advantageous? At the very least, how could it be used in a way promotes the humanity implied in a social media site?

I have had several thoughts and have also struggled very much with a solution. Mostly I tried to think of how a human user, not necessarily a whale or dolphin, could compete with a bot effectively.

I would think it is safe to say that the more often I vote for an author, the more I would be stating their content is what brings me to the site. Therefor what is wrong with saying that each time I vote for that person, I would be giving up more and more of my curation reward to that author?

How's That Look

I am going to quote @dantheman again:
"When I up vote something, I give the author $150 and I get to pocket $50"
Of course that reward grows the more votes pile on after his and he spends some time going over that. Limiting the number of votes to maintain the power of his vote. This doesn't provide any incentive to look for new authors, it simply provides incentive to time your vote correctly. We have seen the result and it is a source of frustration currently as "safe bet" authors are continuously on trending.

So what if the curation reward scale didn't factor in the time it took you to vote? What if it factored instead who your votes were going to?

If I visited this site twice a day and every time I voted for posts by the same 5 authors. A case could very well be made that those 5 authors are the sole reason I come back to the site. If that is the case, why wouldn't each vote for that author give an increasing amount of my support to it? Using Dan's quote above again as an example:

Day 1: Dan votes for my post (yay!)
I receive $150 and he receives his $50
Day 2: Dan again loves my work and votes
I receive $155 and he gets $45
Day 3: He is really digging what I do... AGAIN!!!!!
I receive $160 and him $40

There would of course be a cooldown timer on this as well, but what have we changed when consecutive votes have additional rewards to the author?

It's Still A Game

Yes, and it will always be. People will seek to gain advantage over others using the system model. This will in no way mitigate bots and their role in the platform, it does however change what they need to look for. Minnows more and more will be used as an indicator of content and quality and their votes will gain power by the votes that follow them. Content creators will begin to feel that their work can be noticed...
and that changes everything

Oh, here's a picture. I was told at one point good posts MUST include a picture.