Yes Utopian is working to setup a definitive place to study the proposal and read opinions about it. @reggaemuffin seems to be handling a testnet so it’s likely we can test these things.

First, I think passive investors should be paid a return to keep them from mucking with the content through either posting or voting. If the rewards must go through the system, then higher curation rewards certainly would be preferable to expecting people to post junk for reward votes. But it still perverts things somewhat. I'd support it if there's no realistic option to simply pay passive investors some return, but I'd much rather pay them to stay on the sidelines and not feel like they need to post or vote on junk.

The same problem is going to persist unfortunately, as we’re only effectively shrinking the rewards pool for the passive staking allocation, while the economic incentives for the rest of the users remain the same.

As for superlinear rewards, I just don't see it. I still think that would be a mistake because we've been there and seen that things work better with linear. Superlinear is a faster route to more concentration of wealth and power, which is the wrong direction. I think believing that superlinear would work also assumes that larger SP holders would vote for the best content, which is not necessarily the case, though I do appreciate that you are trying to find the right economic balance with curation rewards also. I'm probably one of the people who would benefit from superlinear, but I don't know that it's in the platform's best interest.

Previously we were at superlinear (n^2). Today we are at linear (n). The proposal suggests somewhere in between (n^1.3) which should be more balanced while making it less predictable for people to put a price on votes, providing variance/contrast, and abuses would only be possible by piling up votes for a more substantial payout so its more manageable for the community.

As for the downvotes, I think it could be abused unless the rep score accounts for voting behavior somehow. I'm not against your suggestion, but I'd have to think about it more, and I suspect it would need another component to be successful.

Cheaper downvotes is more for contingency as most wouldn’t practice it anyway. It just makes it easier to take down abuses or overvalued posts from any gaming. All said, there’s some social cost to cheaper downvotes, but I think the benefits outweigh the downsides of this proposal.