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Curation rewards have proven to incentivize gaming curation for rewards.

This is the widely recognized problem that is the reason for this post, and that almost no one will disagree with.

Do you agree that curation rewards incentivize financial manipulation?

I am not convinced that curation rewards incentivize ‘good’ curation.

That appears to be a qualified yes, or at least a probably.

Let me try again.

Are you convinced that curation rewards incentivize 'bad' curation?

Yes, but not 100% bad. I think it incentivizes users to vote for content that they predict will be successful. The original idea was that content that is expected to be successful would be the same thing as content that was actually good. This has turned out to be false in a lot of cases, and it has contributed to the problem of a lot of quality content being overlooked because it is unlikely to get enough attention.

Thank you for a substantive reply!

I completely agree with you in this regard.

They don't vote on the best though, only the most likely to make the most, some times inspite of lack of content. By capping how much is force funneled into larger accounts, would it not allow for the excess to be spread elsewhere. $100 being arbitrary, it could be $200 or $50

It is not that simple. There are 'good' and 'bad' curators, where 'good' ones are the ones that are actually taking the time to search out and reward good content.

If they are finding it consistently at the top of the trending page, how hard are they truly searching? I have no doubt there are random votes that find there way to the netherlands of steem, but most votes are precast amongst a select group ad infinitum, I'm as guilty as charging in some cases, there isn't always enough hours in a day to seek new, and your favorites will always get the best of you. My idea in no way punishes good content creators other then removing some lazy votes perhaps, it punishes curators who become to complacent in riding the trending page and pop topics like 'steemfest'

The idea of diminishing returns would make it less attractive to upvote the same authors (including oneself) again and again. I described it like that:
"How about if after each vote on a specific account (including ones own account) each further vote on the same account would lead to significantly less curation reward for the voter and less profit for the upvoted account? Thus, when upvoting an account which I had already upvoted before, my voting power would be smaller than in case I upvote an account which I didn't upvote before."

I disagree with your assessment.