First of all, it took me a lot more than 30 minutes to read the comments on this post. Probably longer than any post ever. But I still agree with reducing this penalty period. :)
Second: thank you. Finally. This thread is EXACTLY the adult discussion and open conversation I've been hoping to see. @blocktrades , thank you for starting this thread. <3
Overall, I agree that steemit lacks a "proof of brain" enforcement mechanism for up and down voting. Which sucks. I need to think about it some more before I can suggest anything actionable.
My favorite idea in this thread: hiring curators. I curate A LOT. My VP is rarely above 70%. Most of my curation is manual. I trail steemstem because I know their curators are awesome and I support the initiative, but I also make sure to invest the time in manual curation and commenting. So... anyone wanna hire me? :)
What I'd like to add: An interesting concept would be somehow connecting comments with post payouts. For example, if the post author could assign some of the payout to a particularly useful comment on the post, it would encourage people to provide insightful comments.
(shamelessly self upvoted this comment for some visibility in this lengthy discussion)
Heh, I have to agree with you on the 30 minute to read the comments: I've spent many hours reading comments here. But remember the 30 minutes only applies to my post: the other comments can be upvoted based on when they are created, not based on the time of my post, and I think they can all be read and voted on in less than 30 minutes.
It's an interesting side issue that comments just don't tend to get rewarded much (look at all the high quality comments on this post, for example), despite the fact that most human curators would probably make more by voting on comments under the current rules than on posts . But since most people simply don't know this, it doesn't happen much. It brings out another problem with the 30 minute rule of reward shifting: most people, even experienced curators, often don't understand all the the consequences and optimize accordingly because of its complexity. So even a potential benefit of it such as encouraging voting on comments doesn't come to fruition.
Hiring curators is one approach, and several whales have employed it in the past, smooth's team being the one I recall most clearly, as it was probably the first one (at least the first publicly disclosed one that I read about). If curation was more profitable, I think we would be more likely to see whales hiring curators again.
My idea is a bit different, but certainly related, and is probably driven by my passion for self-employment. Instead of me hiring curators, I prefer to offer delegations for pay and have the delegatees run their own curation business, where their success or failure is in their own hands. In my experience, many self-employed people are the most motivated to succeed. But, I'm not saying it's the only path for delegating to curators, it's just the path I'd like to take. It's understandable that many worthy curators couldn't accept the potential for income variation with time that often occurs with self-employment, although I suspect that variation wouldn't be too high for a curation business.
For your final idea, the post author can always directly payout some of his own reward for the post to commenters. In a similar manner, an author with a lot of SP or a SP delegation can directly reward commenters on his post. I usually do that on all my posts, although I've refrained from it for now on this post as I didn't want to influence the results too much of a public discussion of a change in blockchain policy and obscure the sentiments of other stake holders. I'll upvote my own favorites near the end of the post's lifetime in this particular case.
I came across some stats post today that puts me in the top 50 comment upvoters on the platform. Going over the list, I am pretty sure I am one of the only humans there. I treat comment upvotes like they're Facebook "likes". I can spare a 1% vote to acknowledge having read someone's comment, and usually more if it's a really insightful or amusing one.
How is that different from offering a percentage of the SP earned to the curator doing the work? For example, I got a delegation from steempty cause he's nice and awesome and we have mutual RL friends. Wouldn't it be cool if he got, say, half of the curation rewards I get thanks to his delegation? We would both earn and it would depend on how well I curate. If I didn't do a good job applying the SP delegated, we'd both be making less and I'd eventually lose the delegation in favor of someone doing a better job.
I am in love with this idea.
Yeah, I totally get it. Smart move. Let other people agree and disagree through upvotes first.
And once again - thank you for starting the most interesting thread on steemit in a long time. Even though the sheer volume of comments is too close to crashing my browser.
<3
This is done. I have been recruited to comment my heart out on posts because of my radical views, and I have also just been tipped afterwards, just as contest winners are paid, for comments authors found relevant.