I do agree with Marki99 and your general observations, also based on eyeballing, not in-depth analyses. The gaming effect to be the first in voting new content, is not something most of the users will go for, we can't be at the screen for the entire day since the revenues are too little for most of the users. I actually believe after trying for 4 years reward based blogging, we shall move away from complex reward mechanism, which includes curation revenues. Curation rewards can be made easy by giving a fixed percentage of the vote value. No gaming needed anymore, since revenue is always the same, regardless of time of vote and order of vote. Added to that, introduce a random post channel with the same period as payout period and make this the prime channel of all Blog UIs to HIVE. Maybe even create a Comment channel like the Post channel, like Twitter, or mix new comments with posts in a channel with the option to the user to allow personal settings...I know, these are frontend features not related to the blockchain rules itself.

More strategic, I think HIVE needs to launch SMT quickly. At the same time, remove distribution of HIVE tokens to content creators and curators. SMT tokens shall serve the purpose of rewarding content. HIVE tokens maybe used to support communities in one or the other way. Maybe by creating community owned HIVE accounts with large vote power that will be used by curator teams. The community will have a say in which team is allowed what accounts etc etc. Key for this to happen is: 1) transparency (not in form of posts, but a website with all information 2) community voting system (part of mentioned website, not part of proposal system) 3) super easy discoverability of this website (buttons/links at all frontends, prominent placed, not hidden) 4) human powered governance system (to address miss conduct, abuse and all) paid by the HIVE blockchain. I believe these 4 points are required, though I never discussed this with other users/people in detail to understand if I missed something.