I still think the best way to Fix the curation issue that everyone seems to be so concerned about is to simply write in code that completely randomly starts the curation payout timer. With that one simple action then curation becomes a reality because there is no way to game the start time of curation.
Right now almost everyone thinks the 12-17 minute time frame is the absolute best time to vote to maximize most curation rewards. Vote buyers and sellers and bots and vote trails all shoot for this time frame, vote trail votes are not curation, vote bots are not curation,vote buys are not curation.
Curation is people voting for content they like regardless of what time the post was posted. That is curation. Can you imagine what the trending page would look like if you completely ignored the number of votes a post received in the first hour? It would be a real trending page then.
I understand the random start time of curation reward payouts will never be a reality, at least not on steemit, after all look at your post a free downvote pool, yes by all means lets reward bad behavior, and there is a lot of bad behavior downvoting going on whether you or anyone else wants to see it or admit it.
People are punished forever for a error in judgement, look at mack.bot, it does not matter if the person changed their ways, they are punished for ever until they simply give up. A downvote needs to be for a cause, and downvoting a comment someone made simply because they made a comment is wrong, Down voting a post that does not violate any of the suggestions for a reason for downvoting simply because of a bad decision in the past is wrong.
I would like to think the downvote pool is not a done deal, but the writing is on the wall and it seems the decision has already been made.