Benefits of Pure Linear Reward Distribution

I'm now all for pure linear reward distribution, both for content rewards and curation rewards.

1. Current Distribution Curve: Superlinear

• People hesitate voting for good content because it is "too late" to get cool rewards, due to early-voting bonus (aka late-voting penalty)

• People hesitate voting for good content because it is "too early" to get cool rewards, due to reverse auction mechanism

• Bots have huge advantages on voting on "right" contents at "right" time (maximize their returns by "robbing" from other voters)

• Complexity: hard to explain to casual users

• Authors got voted by piling whales earn much more than their percentage of votes (stake weighted) received

• Whales earn much more than their percentage of votes contributed

• Casual voters got the most penalty due to reverse auction and follow-voting

• Content value distribution is distorted.

2. Proposed Distribution Curve in 0.17

• Whales still have advantages, although less than before
• People still hesitate voting
• Bots still have big advantages
• Still hard to understand

3. Pure Linear Distribution

• Authors earn rewards correlative to votes they received (stake weighted, upvotes minus downvotes)

• Voters earn rewards correlative to votes they contributed (minus those be downvoted)

• No penalty nor bonus, no matter when you vote. Casual voters will feel good and enjoy voting.

• Easy to understand

• People don't need to predict how others will vote, so content value distribution will be organic

• Bots have less advantages, although they'll still vote on contents with best return, they won't be able to rob from other voters

//Edit:

4. Things that are non-issues

• Minnows earn zero curation reward: it's natural, because minnows contribute few influences by stake-weighted voting; but minnows can contribute more by posting / commenting.
• Nobody will downvote bad contents: there are already volunteers now, working with no return, or be compensated outside the system.
• Abusers will downvote good contents: with a linear algorithm, abusers can not do more harm than the stake they have.
• Small SP holders will vote for themselves, "mining dust": no matter how small stakes they hold, they're their stakes, they have a say. Worst case, they won't earn more than they deserve with a linear algorithm. Still, good people will downvote if they upvote bad contents.

//Edit 2:
[More things that are non-issues]

• People will pile on voting for already popular contents: this is why popular contents are popular. With a linear algorithm, there will be no extra benefit for both the voter and the author. When a popular content is overvalued it will be downvoted, so it's not guaranteed that the voters will earn more rewards by voting on it.
• No incentive for people who found popular contents early: people will feel good when being shown as the first N voter. We could also set funds off-chain to reward these people, or delegate more SP to them so they'll earn more curation rewards in the future.

//Edit 3:

5. Differences between Linear Reward Distribution and Pure Tipping

• People are forced to tip. So people will make judgement on targets, although perhaps it's random targeted, or voting for a list of authors/tags, or following others, or by content analyse, there are efforts involved. As long as they can never do more harm than their stake weight, IMHO it's natural and positive. In a pure tipping system, people can opt out by not tipping at all, which encourages false negative (good contents may be undervalued).
• Downvotes. Pure tipping system doesn't have downvotes, so it's more possible to do self-tipping, which encourages false positive (bad contents may be overvalued).
• Stake based and limited voting power. So one player's influence is limited, less possible to manipulate the trending page, so fairer IMHO.