I am a big proponent of flattening of author rewards by manual method. You know Taraz that I do that on a regular basis under a lot of criticism. It is to the point that I had to stop putting you, Galen and Ash out of my personal autovote. Because as a large stakeholder and a vocal activist for flattening of author rewards my personal curation must be impeccable with no margin of error. It is the same reason I can’t put boomy and Ian on auto. I can rarely vote them even if I love to read them.
Who and what is over rewarded is a difficult topic and have always been. Especially someone like you who is continuous writer.
So I had to put additional work and I have promised myself that I can only vote you manually when I actually read you and have time to write a comment. This often sucks because due to my schedule I can read rarely and comments even more rarely. But it is what it is.
I get not putting autovotes on, but it is also a double edged sword. I think it comes down to rewarding what we want to see more of in a concentration that matters, with people who care about the community. It is a cluster of "multipliers" that go into the reward mechanisms here, though it is hard to gauge what is best for the community.
What I think is not good though, is rewarding what we know we don't want more, especially when it is low-effort content, because that is easy to produce more of too. As said the other day and in this post, I am rewarded, but I don't see many people copying me. However, I do see people taking elements out of my path and improving their own approach. I think that is valuable and worth rewarding, but I am biased! :D
Obviously, I like getting voted too, but I value this more. The comments are valuable, the perspective is valuable, and it is all appreciated. I usually spend longer engaging than writing, and I spend a lot of time writing :)