Well, there's actually nothing wrong with an introduction of a voting trail. But notwithstanding, the "said" trail leader is the actual point to consider. I understand that in anyway, there's always going to be these urge to upvote favorite authors, but then, there are still certain community runners with a really diversified voting activity.
So then, I am not totally against voting trails, but people following trails should be worried how the leaders use these power given.
Yes, using a curation trail only makes sense if the curator is voting consistently with the way you would vote.
This brings up an important point:
I began trailing @calumam because he had clearly demonstrated a commitment to high-quality curation and a commitment to transparency and also a willingness to call out folks with questionable voting practices (and a commitment to identifying and flagging plagiarism, but that's an altogether separate issue).
However, this just got me thinking, maybe a better use of @calumam's time would be identifying and ranking good curators. He developed a very intricate scoring system for his POB Word of the Week contest. He could surely do something similar for POB curators. If @culamam wanted to shift his efforts toward that end, I would even support a proposal to compensate him modestly for that from the @pob-fund. Of course, he would also be able to earn author rewards for submitting posts that analyze and rank various curators.
@calumam is clearly exceptional so far, I honestly wish to dedicate so much time but then, my lazy as wouldn't let me.
However, following two to three trails might just do the trick. I mean while trail one upvotes posts under the "pob-wotw" tags, trail two upvotes posts under "information wars" and trail three could be general, but this doesn't mean they can't upvote anything outside these said topics, just that the major focus would be on them.
By this, a lager rewards system will be introduced, where the upvotes are widely spread across. It won't be compulsory to follow all three trails as that maybe damage one's Hive power, so maybe two out of three with a "not 100% threshold"
And that brings up a question : how are posts not published through the proofofbrain.io interface treated?
All quality still receive the deserved rewards or there's a reduction?
I honestly don't look at that while voting...
I, personally, do not pay attention to the originating front-end -- if it's good content and either uses the #proofofbrain tag or originates on the proofofbrain.io front-end, I consider it; however, I believe @calumam has publicly stated that he does not vote for any posts that do not originate on the proofofbrain.io front-end. The rationale behind that is the authors who post using the POB front-end receive 80% less (40% of the total rewards instead of 50%), with the balance going to the @pob-fund (which is dedicated to maintaining the front-end). He is honoring their commitment to the tribe by only voting for content originating on the tribe's front-end.
There is no reduction in rewards per se, except that some folks who might have voted for your content (if it had originated on the tribe's front-end) probably won't even look at it.
It's easier for me in all honesty. I do want to reward people taking part directly in the community but I'd be lying if I said it was completely selfless. I try not to spread myself too thin in this environment, it's very easy to get overwhelmed.
I'm up for the task at some point, but currently, I'm up against it with the WOTW contest, voting, and keeping up with my own engagement (not bad problems to have by any means).
Once I have some of the responsibilities for WOTW delegated out to a responsible team of people I'll shift my focus onto this. I think it's the next logical step towards high-quality curation platform-wide and it starts to link back to previous suggestions about classified curators and better tag management.