Overall the changes are a clear improvement in my view.
However I would prefer to see that first window increased - perhaps 3 days, 3 days, 1 day instead of 1 day, 2 days, 4 days.
The vast majority of votes are going to be made in that first voting window. For most (i.e. non-whale) voters the drop in curation rewards in the second window will be significant and the third very significant.
Which means a post's rewarding will largely be over after one day (aside from potentially a thin chance of a whale vote).
I think a long first window will increase the likelihood of manual curation. Because there's more time to do it.
But also it will increase the chances of posts going viral. A post can get an initial surge on the first day, reach trending, and then gather more momentum in the following days. Without a cost to the curators and with less reliance on whales.
Aside from that I think that automated voting will continue. People will have a set of quality authors that they want to support and will most likely continue to do so in an automated fashion.
However the timing is likely to change. The automated voting could be set towards the middle or end of the first window. This would allow the curator to read the post and manually vote at a different percentage based on quality, or not at all, if they have time. If they don't have time then the automated vote would kick in. This is all an improvement in my view.
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