I really hope this idea will find its way in front of the smart people here ! I've spent a few days with this flaw in mind thinking about a way to solve it and I'm happy with my solution !
When you allow people to win money by doing something, they will quickly figure out to the better way to do it. They optimise their time and effort. It's not a bad behaviour, it's humankind nature. Don't judge, you do the same !
The problem !
The current problem is that newbie may post very good content, they have very few chance to be noticed. On the other hand, anyone with 200 followers, including a couple of whales, will be voted systematically. Even if they post a short, useless, 10 minutes written blog, everybody will vote for them, only because we know they usually get fat rewards. I'm pretty sure a big percentage of people voting the well-rewarded bloggers don't actually read the blog, unless it's something that really interest them. I know, I've just voted a blog on "how to cook eggs" from a blogger that usually get good rewards.
The solution !!!
We just need to add one more algorithm to the beast !
The highest reward you can get right now is finding gems and vote them after 30 minutes of publication. That's very good because it incentivises steemers to actually read the "new publication" section and decide as human (no bots) which content is interesting or which one you want to be noticed. That's very good.
The problem is, it's time-consuming and there is a faster way to earn money. If you consistently vote the well-rewarded bloggers, your average return by vote is very decent. You don't have to spend much time and it's simple ( we love simple ). That's the current flaw of the system.
Based on the same time investment, that (machiavellian) voting behaviour shouldn't give higher returns than voting the hidden gems.
The other part of the problem is that we'll soon see the top bloggers posting like crazy, every king of low-quality content and get every time more rewards. In the current system, there is nothing to stop it. We may soon have 20 top bloggers systematically voted by everyone.
My solution is to add a rule in Steem.
This rule would tend to decrease gradually the potential reward on your blogs as your reputation increase.
Yes, that sounds completely illogical !
Well, it's not. Think about it, the more reputation you have, the more followers you have. The more followers, the more money you get on your blogs. The more money, reputation and followers, the more people start voting you without even reading your content.
What happens if you decrease the reward as reputation increase ? People will know they can earn something by voting systematically good bloggers, certainly a good average curation reward BUT not as much if they invest a few minutes reading the "new section" and find any newbie posting something better (This is actually what should happen).
The effect of this rule will make it easier for newbie bloggers with good content to start to cumulate reputation and some funds.
As they move up to the well-rewarded blogger's population, they will experiment more and more difficulties to increase their rewards because competition will harden ! When having a high reputation, they will have to produce better content than newbies if they want the votes of each of their followers. Now, their followers are reading their content to decide if they vote for them or if they try to find something better from a newbie ... problem solved !
It shouldn't be an asymptotic curve. If a blogger is really good, he should be able to continue to grow the average vote (or reward) on its blogs. But it certainly can't be every time easier as your reputation grow ! Maybe a logarithmic curve may work. I'm sure the big brains behind Steem would find a perfect mathematic function that deals with it, my mathematic studies are too far in my past !
I would do it with a gradual decrease of the maximum voting power users can allocate to a blog in function of the reputation.
As an example, until the reputation of the blogger is below 50, when you vote him, you do it with your full 5% (if you are at 100% voting power). When the blogger reputation increase, the maximum weight of voting power an user can use to vote him decrease.
Blogger reputation : 51 > vote max 4.9%
Blogger reputation : 52 > vote max 4.8%
Blogger reputation : 53 > vote max 4.7%
Blogger reputation : 54 > vote max 4.6%
(can't be linear)
...
This is the raw idea. Obviously, it needs to be discussed !