Hi,
There are multiple reasons why the article rate was reduced however ultimately in the article is high quality, it could earn the same as before. The old method was flawed in terms of having set milestones to hit to get the full 150 FC payment. Views counts in a thread can be easily manipulated using a variety of methods. Replies can be manipulated by having "under the table" deals with other users to reply to each others articles and some users were paying users to reply so they could get the additional 100 FC payment. This can mean that good quality articles may only earn the 50 FC while not so good articles get 150FC. In order to make things fairer, a human review and judgement on articles allows us to ensure that the better articles still get the bonus while the lower quality articles only receive the initial amount. As there is no way to manipulate a human reviewer in the same way as the set view/reply milestones as before, this will mean users will be forced to write higher quality articles. This is better for us and therefore better for our users too.
Reducing the initial payment will again help improve quality as users will put more effort into writing to ensure they higher amount due to the different now between 25/150 rather than 50/150
We put alot of consideration into changes we make and we understand that some of these changes will not go down well with some users but when we make a change, it is for a good reason and made to make things fairer for users or to protect the site. We are not a site that changes rules, earnings, withdrawal requirements etc every other week because we don't make sudden changes without considering the consequences and without having a clear purpose for the change.