You are pretty much right, except that a) financial rewards aren't the only issue that determines participation. It actually matters very little to me, personally. But, I am weird =p, and b) because financial rewards are so important to so many, characterizing the most upvoted posts as the 'best' is inaccurate, unless by best you only mean 'the best post to game for financial rewards'.
Again, I believe the real solution to the problem that rewards are being too concentrated doesn't involve the split between curation and creation rewards, but rather how VP is weighted by SP.
I have posted numerous times on the matter, and my views have so far been but reinforced as time passes. Full and in depth exposition of what I think is the best way for Steemit to move forward would create a wall of text here, and that wouldn't be appropriate.
I'm not particularly against changing the split. I just don't think it addresses the central issue.
I have read some of your arguments elsewhere and have some sympathy with them. In practice though, I just don't think Steem could change to the extent you would like, but increasing curation split may be feasible. I'm aware that many unresolved issues would remain.
You may well be right that Steem won't make those changes. I'm not sure that not making those changes will be optional, in the long run. The SEC may have the final say, and that would be devastating for Steemit, and, in particular, @dan. Not having Steemit would devastate me, so I advocate those changes I think will optimize Steemit.
I do appreciate your reasons for finding such changes unlikely. Frankly, I share your pessimism regarding the likelihood of Steem adopting them. As I have said before, though, Steemit code is open source, and at this very moment forks are being written. If Steemit doesn't optimize, it will be likely to be superseded by a platform that is less centralized.
It is the plethora of issues that stem from one matter, and that is weighting of VP by SP, that most strongly, IMHO, advocates for addressing that particular issue, rather than continuing to sprout a variety of mitigations for each symptom, and that includes altering the rewards split.
I am a Steemit fanboy. I really want to enjoy this platform indefinitely. A couple of the symptoms of the essential design flaw of Steemit are of existential potential, even if we disregard my speculations regarding growth, appreciation of Steem, and discouragement of new accounts. These are the SEC, and Sybil attacks, at least.
Improving curation rewards at the expense of author rewards can't address either issue.
TBQH, until today, and on occasion in the past when I've managed a post that gained attention, around 2/3 of my rewards are from comments, rather than posts. Since my comments usually accompanied by my votes (presently I am desperately trying to recharge my VP, which threatens to never recharge unless I do. I apologize for my rudeness in not voting), increasing curation rewards would be very beneficial to me personally, financially.
I think. LOL Of more import than the ratio of rewards still, is the fact that I can't gain curation rewards if I can't curate, and the VP curve is preventing me from curating. Indeed, as I have explained before, the VP decay rate is driving self votes due to so many fewer votes being available.
In the vote desert, where minnows can only cast ~10 votes/day, new accounts are starved for votes. Desperate to get SOME rewards, many of these new accounts self vote. If minnows had ~100 votes/day I suspect this particular cause of self votes would evaporate.
Self votes to gain exposure, by driving comments to the top would still happen. Self votes from accounts just mining the rewards pool would too, but changing the VP decay rate would impact whale self votes, by increasing the amount of self voting necessary to maximize the rewards mined thereby by an order of magnitude. I expect this would have dramatically greater impact than altering the curation/creation rewards split to any reasonable ratio.
One more observation regarding altering that ratio is that a good post takes a lot of work. Casting a vote takes almost none. Regardless of the impact on self voting that increasing curation rewards may produce, it is difficult already to justify granting a quarter of the value of a post to those that need do no more than cast a vote on it.
Bah! I apparently am incapable of not producing walls of text. =/
I apologize if you find it annoying. It is not my intention, but is a result of my intention to respond substantively.
It doesn't bother me, but I don't have time to ingest it thoroughly at the moment. I'd suggest you pin it down to a succinct argument and make it all available on your blog (maybe even weekly), and link to it from my relevant articles if you wish. As I say, I have sympathy with some of what you say, but changing to that degree would be like turning the titanic (as the cliché goes).
your point at end about the curation rewards getting a lot already is very true