the ease of finding and curating popular authors more than outweighs any increase in rewards for curating unknowns.

True, that's why I would say that that "curation donation" window should have actually been made LONGER in the first place, so that it is obviously more profitable to find hidden gems that it is to vote for the same old same old.

I would say it would be OK to divide the rewards 50/50 iF the curation donation window was increased to 200 minutes. This 5 minute deal will just make it easy to chase curation rewards without doing any work (such as with a bot).

And it is the people who seek out these hidden gems who help retain users long enough for some of them to invest their own money into steem.

As for the vote negation, the code was written over a year ago and rejected by the community. I believe this is one of the few reasons the designer left the project.