What about some system of curating the curators? With there being a much larger population of minnows and dolphins, why not have a curation list show for each whale that in it self can be followed or upvoted by smaller users.
If the point is curation of good content, why not pass these 'selected quality posts' back to the larger group to see what they see. Personally I would love to be able to reward those curators that ACTUALLY take the time to find 'diamonds in the rough' versus a bot who just trails behind looking for payout.
One other idea to enhance reading of a post (and I'll admit I have no idea how this would be done) could be to have a multiple choice/fill in the blank question about the post content to see if the info was truly absorbed. In the 'Should I stay or should I go' post listed below, the first half a dozen commenters completely missed the point of the post. I don't mean this as a know, but just a multiple choice question would have shown who absorbed the meaning. Maybe have some curation adjustment for those who answer it right. This would reward those who truly read it, without having a punishment aspect.
That is what already happens. We get the ones the whales voted for in active, trending and popular. The other way we interact with steemit is we search for pearls in the dirt, as it were by looking in the new(created) category.
Now, to me, in both ways of interacting we miss a lot of great posts. There are too many for the whales to curate from new. That's why there are bots curating.
We are back to the book store. We have a list of favorite authors and we buy books from them. The curation system is broken because it comes from the top.
I think there a enough newbies to curate content for the user level accounts. As a user level account myself(10-100 steem), I would like to see a newbie approved new category. Which have been approved by users that have between 1 and 10 steem. Amoung other users I can read the favorites of the newbies(1-10 steem), assuming I have time for that. Those that have over 100 steem power can look at posts voted up by users like me. Continuing in this way, posts will actually be read before they got into trending.
Generally this kind of approach can be done with instead voting power, or reputation. The plaform is new but whales don't scale
Rather than the steem power of users this could be instead the maount of voting power behind the posts or the reputation of the
I like the bookstore analogy as well as your idea of better possibility of 'bottom up' curation to supplement the 'top down' style we currently have.
Maybe even tying a curation reward with a bonus/boost when paired with an upvoted comment on that post.
While I know it's not always practical, I would love to see a snippet of WHY a post was curated such as being a preferred topic, originality, moved by art/music, genuine bearing of the soul, etc. (Sorry, I'm just brainstorming now) But just like having some description of why a post is being flagged is/would be a huge help to reduce negative reactions, I'd assume others wondering why a post was curated (say over theirs) could help with the envy or jealousy of others having success.
@leprechaun That's actually a really good idea. I hope @dantheman sees it.
Curating the curators is a good idea. I suppose the reputation system is supposed to be doing that to a certain degree but it has no effect on whales unless other whales flag them. It would also be interesting to see some statistics on how well whales do on curating content that is upvoted by other users - and not the other way around. This may give an indication of how they compare at curating compared to other users without the influence of attention a whale vote generates through the immediate prominence it gives to a post.
I think back to the old video store where each employee has their stack of weekly picks put out. After a while I would find whose recommendations I valued more (typically because of shared tastes or interests) and more than likely watch (vote) on their picks.