<strong>Behaviour</strong>
For the first point, fair enough.  I was reasonably burnt out when I read your post and that combined with other things contributed to me misunderstanding what you were saying there.  Voting behaviour is more likely to be honest when there aren't financial rewards at stake for how your vote.  

<strong>Quality</strong>
You did mention quality though.  You said ""It can only be stuff that are so super interesting and so valuable, so much that they'd even transcend the most nitpicky bastards on the Internet" - I'd imagine something that meets that description would be quality.  Maybe not the last bit as not liking certain things is more about interests and what someone as an individual truly likes than being nitpicky, but the other bit about interesting and valuable is related to quality.  Quality is partially subjective and partially objective as some aspects of things improve quality but different people will see something that is quality in one area but not in another etc differently due to the importance they put on those particular areas.   For example, the other person who responded to me mentioned grammar and spelling etc and that does improve quality but to them it almost seemed to be a defining factor, which is fair enough, however while having both would be great, I would personally care more about the content contained in the writing than the grammar and spelling unless it was at the point it was impossible to read.  This could mean a post I thought was quality as it inspired thought or was well writtten or humourous or smart, despite having some issues in regards to spelling, could be deemed as not quality by them due to the spelling.  Neither of us would be wrong there.

Some things are objectively not good quality though.  I've seen posts that are literally one sentence and not even a sentence that is thought provoking or funny or something.  I doubt many people would consider that to be quality.  

<strong>My opinions on SP and Steem and thanks to you for promoting cool yet unpopular stuff </strong>
That's great that you look for cool stuff to promote.  We need people to do that.  Thank you for doing that.  It's been hard for me to do much lately but stuff has changed in my life recently and although I don't really have much SP yet, I intend to spend some more time both creating and curating on all the platforms I use, including Steem.  I don't agree or disagree with the SP system in place personally.  It's a decent system that comes with its own pros and cons and its far from the worst I've seen.  I'll still admit and discuss its pros and cons and how to best work with these, just like I do with YouTube's decisions (some people do not - a lot of people seem to respond with either "I hate YouTube /rant" or "YouTube is great.  I think the sun shines out their arse and they can do what they want because it's their business" which are both very pointless approaches to take and don't achieve anything in working out how to deal with changes either).  

Steem I think does have some issues and I don't know whether the most recent changes will in the long term be a good thing or a bad thing, but it is still one of the better systems I've seen and is definitely better than YouTube is (including for smaller creators).  It's just scary to see a trend towards making it harder for small creators on any platform.  

<strong>Inequality and the Curve</strong>
I don't know if there is a better way than having the inequality on the lower end.  I just hope there is because, whether its a platform like this or the real world and its structures, welfare (having been in this situation in that past and at other times worked helping people in this situation, I feel confident to say that most people aren't there by choice and don't want to be on welfare) or whatever it is - it is always the people struggling, the small creators, the "little guy" - who is the one that cops it, or if the lower end does have help, normally it's still not enough and the people who are doing just well enough not to get help still aren't doing well and should be eligible for help still but they're not and they still fall into the "little guy" category but just not little enough to get help.  

It's more just that Steem was so so much better to small creators than YouTube which was my main comparison at the time I started on Steem.   Since then Steem has had some issues but policy / programming changes that disadvantage the small creators in the process of fixing it, is kind of concerning as I don't want to see it copy the rest of the world.  I don't want the other extreme and have SP mean nothing and have people's votes all be worth the same either, but it's a concerning move in terms of what it does now, but also about whether it leads to more changes down the track.  It doesn't help that one of the worst platforms for going down a slippery slope of making changes that screw over creators is the one I have most experience with otherwise (but still have enough experience to know what they did is wrong and often a knee-jerk reaction because other platforms I've been on don't respond the way they have to things) but even with the annoying bid bots pushing things up to trending and the occasional upvoting circle-jerk, I like this place and I don't want to see a string of changes harm the little guys in order to stop the crappy content and bad behaviours.  

I would suspect there is a better way to go about having a functional platform without messing with the curve to make it worse for smaller creators than it was previously, but without a lot more information and time to problem solve it I don't know how, and it's also a possibility that there was a way of doing it that would create similar improvements while also not making it harder for smaller creators but it would take longer to implement, or it would create similar but not quite as large improvements but without the negatives etc and they prioritised all the conflicting aspects of it and decided this was the best.  

I don't disagree with everything they have done.  I just feel that if there is a similar and effective solution that doesn't harm small creators, the more moral and better business decision is not to harm small creators, even if there is a small trade off between overall improvement and not making the platform worse for small creators.  If it's a bigger trade off, that's a harder decision to make.  Sometimes it needs to happen.  YouTube is an example of this.  They didn't need to bend over backwards to advertisers and ruin their platform to the extent they have over time, but they did need to do something when they made those initial changes, not due to Pewdiepie's dumb jokes, but due to the fact that there were ads on terrorist videos.  They had to do something. 

Steem had to do something too.  I just don't know if the change of making it harder for smaller creators than it previously was was truly necessary or if it was the best decision they could have made.  

<strong>The Main Question</strong>
I suppose the main question is, for all the benefits you see, was the change in the curve functionally essential in order to make these benefits occur?  Or was there another way?  Even with the way it was done, how much of the improvements are directly connected to the change that leads to creators making less than 20 steem making even less than they would previously?  

I don't know, and I haven't read enough or seen a breakdown of the changes that directly connected them and showed <i>"this change (which is good) is directly reliant on this change (which is a necessary evil to do the previously mentioned change)" </i> etc to know for certain how important each part was to every other part, and I'll keep using the platform regardless, but I don't like that particular aspect of the hardforks and while I hope it was necessary since they did it, regardless of if it was necessary, it still had a negative impact on smaller creators, so that sucks for them.  Hopefully small creators taking one for the platform will be worth it and Steem will improve (and hopefully we don't lose small creators in the process).    I guess we will see what happens as time goes on.  I just hope this change doesn't lead to other similar changes that also affect the smaller creators negatively.  I need to give the people behind Steem more credit than to assume they would make a slippery slope of dumb decisions like YouTube has, but I have seen the slippery slope happen before and its something to be aware of at least and changes affecting small creators negatively does set off alarm bells.  

I really hope this works out well. You seem like a good member of the community and I appreciate that you curate cool unpopular stuff and I genuinely like Steem (otherwise I wouldn't care about the changes as I'd just move on and stop using it).  It's just sad to see changes that affect one end of the curve negatively really and it also just feels sadder because my main draw to Steem in the first place was directly connected to how it treats all creators, including the small creators, and while it still probably shits all over YouTube for treating small creators well, the change is still a step in the opposite direction away from one of the main things I liked about the platform.