Some authors will leave because of the extra workload to get paid, but some will stay, hopefully most. Hence the "SteemSTEM decanted"
Exactly! I think that author pool writing for the SteemSTEM needs a serious filtering, because going for quantity over quality is one of the biggest problems here.
It's simple - do authors earn rewards for they posts? They do! So writing for SteemSTEM is something like a part-time job, because we earn money, right? This means that all of us are OBLIGATED to follow the rules (you need to listen to your boss at work, don't you?).
Nothing is wrong with setting up the rules and stick to them, otherwise - no curation and flags for inappropriate complains.
I agree to what you say, partly.
I had ( and have) the opportunity to work in a boss-less company. We are friends above everything else, we are all aviation geeks and work for the passion of it although only one of us owns it and it's not me :) . So, while I know that having a hierarchical way of conducting business has worked in the past, I am afraid that the future needs something else, and it is not even impossible. We have to try it for a little while. We will have rules, our brains are not intelligent enough as a group for that kind of Utopian Universe where everyone can have whatever he needs. But I wouldn't try to run SteemSTEM with an iron fist.
But sure, I am in your team and I will stand by any decision while testing each approach. Just saying we are ready for the next level.