I am not sure a linear one would be 'more fair' than the quadratic though.
Whitepaper page 17: "Inother words, the reward is proportional to votes squared rather than votes. This mirrors the value of network effect which grows with n squared the number of participants, according to Metcalfe’s Law."
I do think it would be good to include in the votes squared some type of function to take into account and weight based on the voter's reputation. Kind of like how in SEO a link from CNN or Bloomberg is worth more than 10,000s of links from nobody websites.
I really like how Steem has framed the question though. From the whitepaper on page 16:
"The first step in rewarding millions of users is to commit to distributing a fixed amount of currency regardless of how much work is actually done or how users vote. This changes the question from being “Should we pay?”to “Whom should we pay?”and signals to the market that money is being distributed and is being auctioned off to whoever “bids” the most work."
"Inother words, the reward is proportional to votes squared rather than votes. This mirrors the value of network effect which grows with n squared the number of participants, according to Metcalfe’s Law."
That part in the whitepaper sounds strange to me. Metcalfe’s Law is about telecommunication networks where the connections count not about how valuable a blog post is. Metcalfe’s Law could be used to value the steem platform itself or to value a currency, but not to value a blog post. The value of a blog post seem to be linear, not quadratic.
If a post about how to cook a cake reaches 10 persons 10 persons will know how to cook a cake. If it reaches 100, 100 know how to cook a cake not 10000, also the quality of the cake stays the same no matter how much can cook it.
The discussion about the post could be worth more if more engage in.
But even for that we don't need necessarily an exponential payout, because so or so the more votes you get the more visible you are the more votes you get etc...
Not to speak from the follower you get...
This in itself is exponentially, so why make it double exponentially?
Currently your voting power is linear to your steem power. This sounds fair, because in the end its a part of your steem power that is redistributed as post rewards.
Nevertheless the idea of having your voting power increased with your reputation sounds promising. This would also reduce the Self Voting problem.
You have my vote for that!