It would definitely be nice to see curation and quality content be assigned more value in the community @kevinwong. Whatever a person's approach to Steemit may be (content creation, developing apps, maximizing profit), I think we have to consider that the Steemit social site is somewhat like the Steem tokens "Store Front Window" to the world. And if we're presenting the world with CRAP, that hurts everyone's investment, in the long run.

I agree with most of your points, simply from the perspective that we need to "build a better carrot" (incentives) rather than penalize anyone.

However, there's a big BUT here...

The content discovery process — itself — is a stumbling block when it comes to curation on Steemit. We're two years in and that's great, but how to find good content that also interests us remains a bit of a mess. At the very least some kind of "category tree" needs to be implemented...

Just like someone doesn't go on eBay simply to "look at auctions" the incentive to actively curate on Steemit is low because... well, let's say I'm interested in "psychology." If I could be directed to the posts that are ACCURATELY under that heading, I would actively curate. But that's very difficult. People mis-tag, and tags are not even static; I sometimes wonder how many "orphan" posts we have because of typos.

My point here being that some organizational tools — at the code level — would also help curation/content discovery on Steemit, and at least make it more enjoyable (an "incentive") than it is now. I know, "communities" have been promised... but they still seem like so much mist in the air. What will they do? When will they be implemented? Will they serve the right purpose? Will they actually organize the site? Or will they just be a vehicle for Ned and STINC to promote their beloves SMTs without having a material impact on functionality?

I realize that I have taken a bit of a sidetrack from your original post, but I think a consideration of the content discovery process belongs with a discussion of curation!

=^..^=