" Authors who wish to share more of their rewards to encourage curators and followers would be better able to complete with the popular top authors routinely in trending by sharing more of their own rewards."
I am not so sure about this. If top authors also have the option to give 100% curation rewards to curators, they will only gain more advantage. Even if those top authors are kind hearted and want to "give back to their followers", they will unknowingly gain more advantage over smaller authors. Unless after a certain amount of SP authors dont have to option to choose the curation/author rewards.
However as @fitzgibbon says, this adds more to the complexity.
"This would also go a long way in giving authors options for dealing with auto-voting readers and lack of engagement."
I don't see why the engagement would go up as curation rewards go up for auto voters, wouldn't it mean that they are gonna follow you more just to auto vote?
"I am not so sure about this. If top authors also have the option to give 100% curation rewards to curators, they will only gain more advantage."
If the top authors give up more of their rewards, it will mean they make less overall while other users are making more. If they want to turn their blogs into charity, I guess most people benefit from that. I'm not sure this is too likely, or will even be a problem.
"I don't see why the engagement would go up as curation rewards go up for auto voters, wouldn't it mean that they are gonna follow you more just to auto vote"
Well, you might have Jerry Banfield set on autovote because you know who he is. So you don't even need to read the post. However, you will have to search for smaller users with 50% or whatever curation split, if you want to try to get higher rewards.
For example, my posts would make you more curation then Jerry's if I set it to 50%. That would apply to a smaller author than I if they set theirs higher than 50%.
It gives a new vector to compete on, it doesn't guarantee an advantage for either side.
Thanks for checking in.
I see this could be a tool for smaller authors to attract more people, but it could also be a point of complain for minnows to whales, for setting their author curation too high.
For example, if people see a whale like Sweetsssj making hundres on a post, and they would see that she sets her author rewards to 75%, then people would complain about it. And to keep her rep up she would need to automatically lower her author rewards.
I think this effect would apply to most whales, which leads te beginning authors to have to set low author rewards. I beginning author already doesn't have much incentive to write, other than that he or she would receive considerable rewards for it. The starting author would need to sacrafice early rewards to gain more for later.
I think this takes the whole monetary incentive away for new users.
"I think this takes the whole monetary incentive away for new users."
Why? It's just competition. They can keep it at 75% and toil away for 50 cents a post, just like I did.