> The majority of auto votes give a few cents, their vote is only there for curation rewards and nothing else. This is the bulk of the auto votes you see, these votes have zero concern about quality and effort and are purely for curation rewards. 

This is the problem, this is what needs to be addressed not so much changing once again the reward pool system. If auto vote trail following required a minimum value then this would solve the entire issue. Start with a minimum of $0.750 value per vote, if a minnow account an alt account or a low HP account wants to follow with a zero value vote to bad they should be voting manually.

This will be the first Hard Fork for Hive, I for one am glad it is not **Adjusting** the vote/reward pool. It will also be the first HF I have seen since 2017 that did not include changing the reward pool/vote system.

I don't know if code can be written to limit vote trails/auto voting, but if it can it should be looked into.

> I feel if we drastically reduce curation we are going to eliminate any incentive to power up. The majority of users already power down and sell as fast as they earn it. Very few will lock up any significant amount to just vote witnesses and proposals.

I don't think it eliminates any incentive to power up, although I agree it reduces it. It would probably make sense to reduce the powerdown time to 30 days at the same time as a counter-incentive. 

But what I don't agree with is that "disincentivizing staking" =  incentivizing selling. Staking just to create scarcity is just playing a game with people's heads, IMO.

>I disagree, I think shitty auto voting is bad.

I agree with that. I just haven't seen a solution that just eliminates bad auto-voting.

>The other problem is very few are downvoting to counter the shitty voting that goes on, which would be a balance to keep the auto voting in check.

I've also yet to see a decent proposal for how to make downvoting work well socially, unfortunately.

I just dropped you a 100% upvote because, 1) you deserve it, and 2) that is how I manage to distribute my daily 20% recharge. I don't have but a couple of hours a day to dedicate to HIVE, so I give 100% upvotes on posts, and 50% on comments (with exceptions, like yours). I think it's also more appreciated on the receiving end too.

But get this: half of my votes usually go to comments, none of which ever reach $5.00. That's a huge disincentive to upvote comments (which should be just the opposite since comments are the life blood of a community - as you said, the vast majority will never be successful content creators). As incredible as it may seem, the opposite happens with posts receiving more than $5.00 of upvotes: we get unwanted curation trails as everyone piles on (sometimes piling on to what very well may not be exactly what we would call quality content).

In short, I'm rewarding your comment as I think it deserves, following what comes naturally, like we do everywhere else, IN SPITE OF BEING PENALIZED FOR IT (both of us).

That is what I believe needs to be fixed, and, not so ironically, I think that, by and large, by doing that, the curation trail issue would also be fixed in the process.

!ENGAGE 50

Very limited is not the best words to use there. I know of at least two dozen, off of the top of my head, that refuse to post anything substantially qualified as 'quality' (which is also subjective to the eye of the beholder), simply because their posts consistently got overlooked and were never curated 'properly' as they should have been. It still happens. I used to write massive stories that took hours to compose between gathering proper graphics and making it 'pretty'. Sure a few reached 100+ dollars - but only because of bidbots. Not a single actual whale vote aside from grumpycat who thought I made too much on it. I recently wrote a story on my first fish, I thought it deserved at least 15$ but nope. Nothing. 6 minute read with over 1000 words.

Which, is a whole other ballgame there. There is a post right now on trending from @krnel that is twice as good *in my mind* (pun intended) as the one written by @acidyo about @ocd. Krnel's is worth half as much. The one from Krnel is also a shorter read than my fish story. What gets the most attention around here seems to mostly pertain to the blockchain and actual content creators, don't get near the credit they deserve. The 'whales' would rather just support the 'whales' so they can remain the 'whales'. Not all, but most. Voting habits and the blockchain doesn't lie. Some even sit at 100% VP/Mana for days until one of their 'whale' friends makes a post. And we won't even get into the biases from 'communities' and the separation *that* bred into the system.

Shitty auto-voting is bad, but I use it. Not necessarily for the curation, but to offer steady support because like you, I can't be here 12 hours a day. I am in agreement with you though (once again - kind of an odd thing, but hey, it's been happening more frequently the past few months), reducing the curation rewards is not the answer. The *actual* content creating community, all inclusive of Hive, was already pretty upset when it went to 50/50 and so many had to adapt. You take that away again and as you say, we will be hard pressed to attract any investors or even users, for that matter.

Honestly, auto voting is not too bad.  It gives the simplicity to users or stakeholder who does not have time to curate and that is why there is a downvote option use for, to downvote the bad content or post.

I agree with this; autovoting is not the problem, shit autovoting is bad.   While there is any incentive at all to autovote over manual vote people will do it.  The key here is to align interests.   TBH the 5 minute window has a lot to do with the way things are now.   If we removed that, and let downvotes do their thing then we are getting closer.  I would love to see the view of @theycallmedan on this.    Hive is new; lets not meddle with to many things at once while the market is still getting confidence with us.

YES, all of this ^

<center>  Thank you for your engagement on this post, you have recieved <code>ENGAGE</code> tokens.</center>

My earnings:
Hive    :  216,009 HP  - Last 30 Days: 2,049.20 HP / $352.27 
Steem:  172,800 SP   - Last 30 Days: 4,954.97 SP / $841.98

Anyone with brain will leave this blockchain after 75% cut on curation

actually "bad curation" isn't as bad as it would seem:

https://peakd.com/hive-167922/@tobetada/how-bad-is-bad-curation

>auto voting is bad.
>I disagree, I think shitty auto voting is bad

@themarkymark please don't take this as an attack on you (I almost wrote auto attack xD).. But, I believe that auto voting on 4th minute with a stake large like yours is a bit shitty auto voting. It doesn't give time for manual curators to even read a post and possibly engage with author. 

I am saying this because curation rewards are only incentive for manual curator, with other emotional advantages. So it would be good not to take that away from them (us).

I am saying this to you because I often see your votes when I am manually curating and I hope that you will give it a consideration to change it a bit. 

By saying this, I also appreciate you voting on some small authors that are creating good content. So once again, I am not attacking u nor saying you need to change your thing. 

I am just hoping you will consider what I said here. 

Thanks.