Linear Rewards - I am a huge Fan!
I have been looking forward to this a lot!
Ever since I started using steemit (initially as a lurker) I always had the impression that post rewards were unfairly weighed to the benefits of whales and their incubators. Rewards often seemed to be more of a social achievement than an appreciation for good content.
I was convinced that with linear rewards and the increased voting impact of the smaller fish, this would also benefit the ratio of content-quality to reward shares.
But I might be wrong about that!
Enter the Stage: Faster Voting Power Draining
I knew this was coming, but I did not consider the impact this might have.
We used to have roughly 40 full power votes per day without draining our voting power too much. This number is down to 10!
While everybody went nuts with their votes yesterday you could literally watch how the generated rewards declined as voting power was drained.
I think this is having a negative effect after all. People will become more strategic with voting and that might again make it less of an expression for content appreciation and more of a profit-motive driven tool used under social and economic aspects.
I know it suddenly made me stingy with voting! And I don't like that!
I want to upvote so many things I find here. I want to upvote those who engage in a discussion with me. I don't want to think twice and constantly keep checking how far I've drained my power already!
Content Should Be King
Steemit will only reach it's full potential through good original content!
And good content needs to become visible! Minnows and red-fish need to vote freely and without worrying about their voting power declining so quickly.
If you have more than ~500SP, you do get access to a slider-bar that allows you to vote at less than full power. By simply adjusting that to 25% you'd be back to your initial 40 votes a day. Adjust it further down and you can keep those votes flowing like it's nothing.

Why is this not available for smaller fish? This would at least give us some flexibility in the new restricted confines!
Of course this also decreases the rewards generated by those votes, but you can still vote full power if you really want to show special appreciation and it lets you vote freely otherwise.
I think the barrier for this feature needs to be lowered significantly for the benefit of content quality around here.
A Pull Request To The Rescue!
Luckily @timcliff has already made an improvement available on GitHub!
Check out his post about it (and go give that an upvote to make it more visible), maybe we can hope this get's accepted and rolled out soon!
I personally would like to see the vote-power-slider feature unlocked at even less than 125SP... but that's certainly already a lot better than 500!
#MinnowsUnite
What Do You Think?
What impact does the faster decrease of voting power have on your habits?
Do you think the changed voting power draining rate has positive effects?
Wouldn't you like a slider, too?
Is there any good reason for why small fish shouldn't get that slider?
I'd love to hear your thoughts!
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