RE: Meet Steem's #1 Author!
In my experience, my rewards are usually about 3/4 from comments, rather than original posts. As I am sure you either know, or can easily ascertain, I neither use bots, nor - ever - upvote myself. Your proposal would be likely to very much decrease the rewards I receive from my comments.
As I don't have 29k followers, or pander to accounts with substantial holdings of SP, comments are actually my best means of reaching a broader audience. Also, my own limited imagination is no longer the extent of my ability to write, as posts on topics like this aren't often even contemplated by me, greatly improving the negligible reach of my mind.
Can you think of no better way to reduce comment spam? Other than my original proposal to no longer weight VP with SP, that is. Actually, I am not so sure that the idea originated with me, although I did arrive at it independently. What I meant by 'original' is that was the first idea I had to fix the problem.
And it would still leave botnets and sockpuppets as problems, just much lesser problems, and problems we need to find a way to deal with anyway.
Actually I don't think it would substantially reduce your comment rewards. Also if we are only going to think of ourselves and not actually what is good for steemit/steem then we might as well not complain. Making any changes to try to address gaming of the reward pool issues is likely to impact each of us in some way. If we say "Don't do it, because that is where I get most of my rewards" then we might as well not try to fix anything.
I only pointed out my own rewards because that is what I have experienced, and I expect there are many more that also gain more rewards from comments than posts.
That is why my own experience was mentioned. Not to safeguard my personal rewards =p
If such a division of the rewards pool can be envisioned that will not significantly decrease rewards for comments (which are every bit as essential as posts, IMHO, as post without comments are practically void of the 'social' aspect) then I would not necessarily be averse to them.
However, the idea would seem to be to concentrate scams into the comments rewards pool, and if this worked, that would clearly decrease comment rewards. For new accounts, as commenting is the best way to gain exposure (practically the only way, besides paid promotion) this would lock them into a pool of decreased rewards.
Fine for established authors with substantial followings, but essentially a guarantee of poverty for new accounts.
If it didn't work, what's the point?
I absolutely agree that gaming the rewards pool is a great threat to Steemit, and investors in Steem who invested to attain capital gains. All of us should be concerned and intent on solving these problems.
Perhaps trying to stuff all the problems into one corner is better than the present, all-inclusive, suffering, but, because of how it would impact new authors, I don't think it will.
Neither does it actually solve the problem, merely trying to confine in a space where it's impact is limited in extent.
Yeah the idea is that IF someone games the POST reward pool, comment reward pool would be unimpacted, and vice versa. It wouldn't solve the problem it would just prevent a problem in either are from bleeding over into the other.
Comments currently are way easier to get away with scamming, and if it continues it will impact your rewards and everyone else in the comment section whether it is partitioned or not, but at least if it were partitioned it wouldn't drain the post pool as well.
It also could potentially make comment rewards payout better than they currently are since there would be a guaranteed comment reward pool allocated. At the moment I don't know if the bulk of posting rewards is going to comments or to posts, but I would suspect posts are still likely where the bulk of it goes. I up vote comments commonly, but I still think most people do not.
There are also combos, like a vote timing collusion effort I once was offered participation in. The author, trending regularly, has a chatroom, where minions gather to receive advance notice of when the relevant post will air.
All the minions can time their votes so as to be before the 30 minute cutoff, after which the curation rewards are greatly diminished.
I don't know either if the bulk of author rewards goes to posts or comments, all I know I for me comments are usually more financially rewarding.
However, I often make comments that people say 'you should make a post', and then feel guilty, having made too long of a comment LOL
I need to better exemplify 'brevity is the soul of wit'.
As one of those guys who has told you to make posts out of comments.... um... you should make a post out of your comments in this thread, really. :D
I have actually made posts regarding these issues in the past.
I recently was offered something like this as well. I believe it was, if I pay them 4 Steem, they would guarantee 400 up votes. Human beings are so clever at gaming.