From one artist to another, I just want to suggest you give it more thought and some time. You need eyes on your work and by the sounds of things, this plan could help with that. Right now, many potential curators choose to be paid to look away. The proposed changes offer incentives to get paid to look.
In the arts and entertainment world, these changes are much like offering a standup comedian a smaller cut on a slow night because the venue is offering consumers drink specials. The drink specials are there to fill the house, the performer ends up earning more by accepting a smaller percentage because the seats are full. Had the venue not offered the drink specials as an incentive for people to show up, the performer would have taken home far less money, even if offered the full cut, because the seats were empty.
We have too many empty seats here at the moment. Too many performers, not enough content consumers. Everyone is in the back, waiting to go on stage, to perform in front of an empty house. Back room is packed. Something needs to be done to change that, or we go out of business. I've been saying this now for a very, very long time. If it works, it works. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Personally, I prefer to see people succeed. Standing room only. People hanging from the rafters.
I guess the downvotes are there because every venue needs a bouncer to handle the drunken riffraff.
You hit the bulls eye
interesting. The hard forks have always reduced the value of my account. I am sick of it. I see you have been on here about as long as I have. I don't see where they have ever done any good. It's pathetic. I already actually powered down a while ago and had done nothing - that's why I am plankton instead of a minnow 3 - which I could never get beyond - but even powered down, I am making more money now than I ever have on a regular basis - but it's more to do with having found my community in eco-train than these idiots antics which have basically drowned us... and the google ads make it even worse.
I used to ask why, rather than purchasing votes, why don't these folks just flag my work into oblivion, for free, because the end result is the same.
Me publishing a post that includes art is much like putting up a display behind my shop windows. People are to walk by and notice it, then maybe step into my blog and browse around. Unfortunately, since they started selling votes, I put my work up behind the windows, and some asshole comes along and plasters shit posters and advertisements all over the glass, meaning people can no longer see what I've done.
I went from working my ass off, starting with nothing, working up to having the odd organic trending post from time to time... to nearly losing it all. That was all due to the people being paid to look away, and those offering the incentive to earn by looking away. What is any form of art and entertainment without the eyes and ears looking and listening? The views come first, then the money. That's the only way this business works, and thousands of years of history prove that, but somehow these folks who don't really know much about the arts and entertainment or its potential to generate billions yearly concluded it would be better to earn a few hundred or maybe a few thousands measly dollars selling votes. Blame the platform, blame those in charge... but let's not forget about the actions of the people as well. I'm looking at a lot of those folks who are getting paid to look away, and they're not even here to see me staring at them. An attention economy.. LOL! And these folks pay people to look away. Common sense says that's sabotage.
You are making a lot of sense. I won't lie I just passed my first year on steem. I have grown my account with the use of bots and vote services due to the clear fact that they looked like they worked. But only once a week so I go around looking at posts. I spend all my time running my blog and working with bots cause it was the best way to grow it. I talk to the people that enter my stuff but that is about it. This change would cause me to want to pull back my delegated steem. To start to look for content I like to vote for. The only issue I see is moving it to 50% won't work well with the rule that the biggest account to vote for it first gets the biggest cut. I really wish they would address that to just the biggest cut of the pie, not no one who votes after gets any of my pie. I never really understood why that was here.
I started out here years ago, with nothing. I've made a little over 1500 STEEM by manually curating content. It would have been more had a not been inactive for a total of about ten months, spread out over nearly three years. For me, with 50/50, I get a raise. I never tried to maximize curation rewards either. Simply voted whenever. I'm a content producer first though; that's the main reason I'm here. I'll benefit either way. If my post values drop at first, I could just make that up with curation rewards.
I don't agree with such a drastic drop in author rewards. But that was a very nicely point argument.