.. and don't get me started on that stupid voting window
I think this should be done now.
As for the curve, I agree it has affected comments. I still vote mine at a "technical loss" because it is encouraging. I also use !ENGAGE 20 in order to get them a few more votes plus some tokens when they are relatively decent comments. The curve was originally brought in to combat spam and comment farming, which it did effectively, but I think that it might be better to have the spam and guide the culture to either ignore it or, use the blacklists to mute it.
I remember it well, and agreed it did the job.. but we also did not have free downvotes at the time. I think with the tools we have available (HIVE-SQL), comment farming abuse can be found and dealt with more easily.
It's the price we pay for having more comments and more interaction. You have to ask yourself, 'is this all working in it's current state'. We all know the answer to that one.
Yep, I think it was somewhat of a failsafe measure, as people also tend not to use or respond well to the downvotes. As for Spam, looking at YouTube and Instagram etc, they don't seem to mind it, which means that the users are used to ignoring it - kind of like banner ads on the sides of articles.
On the tokenized interfaces, dealing with it all is easier as they are centralized. The problem is in the decentralized greater environment, people don't like the idea of downvotes and blacklists.