I agree with the 30 days
Rewards for content producers were a lot higher before the bid bots came as curation was the only way to get some return for steemians with loads of steem power. The steemians with no time were following curation trails like @curie whose 1 vote would be +100$ because of that. I was voting away 20$ a day and i spent an hour a day doing so. Now i get 20$ a day and i don't have to spend 1 minute, huuray for the bid bots? Hell no, i truly don't like them but my philosophy is going the easy way as water does. Bid bots away or more curation and we are back giving votes which would all go to you, the content creator. Believe me, you would be better off with one of these ways.
Ah well, it will sort itself out in the end, one way or the other.
There have been a lot of changes just in the short time I've been on the platform, so it will be interesting to see what the "final" version is when they finally roll it out to the masses, and we cease to be in beta.
what you say is absolutely spot on.. VERY few people have enough time to curate.. so we NEED bid bots..
what IF bit bots were all whitelisted and niche.. and delegators sent some SP out to the ones they respect. at.. got back 80% or whatever and EVERYONE is happy! WHen you build in ROI to the bots (like mine which is 11% firm), people will happily bid on them to get upvotes.. and they can STILL get random upvotes as we see now..
you see the numbers surely.. even 1000 whales cannot ever keep up curating 100,000 people.. so we must have delegation, and i believe bit bots to address this issue.. This then is a win-win-win rather than doing things like elevating the curation rewards which i agree with @crescendoofpeace is a terrible idea! It makes way more sense to let curators make way more from taking rewards from bids..