That, plus maybe changing author reward split from 75%/25% to something towards 60%/40% or even 50%/50% can in a long run make original, high quality contnet stand out from the crowd and improve the platform.
I think 50/50 split would be a great experiment, but this idea has been already discussed for some time and based on my observation, a majority of users like it (dunno if a majority of stake tho).
So I have a question - when should we expect this change? I assume it requires a hard fork (correct me if I'm wrong), so maybe HF20 would be a good fit?
Yes, it's not a new idea, however I'm not sure if that can get into HF20 (I would rather want to keep that separate from other changes), especially if that would mean delaying HF20 even more.
Would it really be that hard to have 50/50 split like you said and a SBD/SP payout option for curators that mirrored author rewards... would be cool to see that option.