Now that this 'whale-fasting-experiment' is going on, I don't think we need a seperate reward pool anymore. Earnings on comments are much higher since the whales stopped draining the reward pool.

Besides, Hardfork 17 brings a lot of changes, all at once. Some changes, like changing the reward pool, are really big. I think it would be better to make one change at a time. It would make it easier to reach consensus on a hardfork.