"Every" as in: Not all votes come by way of someone seeking to maximize their reward potential, but anyone who has seen a substantial reward has been struck by those who are seeking curation rewards. That's why views are far lower than votes, every time.
I'm another voter who votes for what they like. My incentive to build up my SP by producing content is so I can give more to the other authors out there. I don't mind at all when some seeking rewards give me a boost, because it all goes back to the community. I can then take my work and get views somewhere else for added exposure and feel comfortable knowing the work was not a waste of time.
Would I prefer to see my rewards for creating increase? Yes. Is the curation reward percentage too high? I'm not sure, so let's talk about something else.
Would more people come to my restaurant for coffee if I offered free refills? Yes. That's an incentive to go there for coffee. Would free refills increase the chances of a customer purchasing a bite to eat... yes. I'm making money, by giving customers a piece of the pie. Soon, more people hear about this free coffee and my restuarant is full. I leave a sign up by the door that says, "Free dessert with the purchase of any meal." Then I find myself making even more money by giving more away. To top that off, the service is getting tipped well because I've created a friendly, giving atmosphere(the comment section after party).
If I received 1000 votes for a dollar each, I'd be fine with taking home $750. I produced something and gave back all at the same time. It feels honest. Maybe the voter voted because they like my stuff. Do the math, they didn't get much if everyone got an equal cut, but it's still something, and it adds up.
I say, leave the curation rewards and remove the methods that cause the problems and kill the audience. My show runs all day, why are people being penalized for showing up early or coming late? There's no time to enjoy the show if you're already late for the next one down the street. Allow curators to relax and enjoy their stay. I'm sure there's a way.
Yes, I'm sorry about my irrational choices of where to respond :(
Simple solution: make the time limit 10 seconds. It should never take less than 10 seconds to look at a photo, especially one that we enjoy to look at, and if it does we only have to suffer mere seconds to put in our 100% vote.
What does this accomplish?
First of all, manual curators are now forced to at least BE where they are voting -- as in, actually looking at the content that they're voting on (no votes without views -- another problem many people have been mentioning). Can you "thumbs-up" a youtube video without opening its link? As far as I can tell, the answer is no, and I think Steemit would benefit by setting up a similar condition to voting for content.
Secondly, bots will be forced into more difficult prioritizing habits, assuming they can cheat the system into detecting an account as viewing a post (this might be a problem if the bot owner also wants to be viewing content on his/her own), they can't lead vote on a post simultaneously with lead voting another post as they can only be accumulating viewing time on one post at a time.
Good response. I do think the biggest problem at the moment is the algorithm. You know what would be really funny is if there was a captcha generated from content actually in the article and you had to answer the captcha to vote. :P
I know that wouldn't go over too well and would add a barrier that would discourage more people from voting, so let's NOT do that. Yet I do think it is amusing and it does show I was thinking a bit outside of the box.