Interesting article, I brought the subject up back when the first pool switched from current power to the contributed method, but I don't think anyone responded.
Switching back to connected mode would completely solve this problem. I liked connected mode (and puddinpop's pool in general) better, anyway -- you get larger payments less often. Maybe once a contributed-mode pool has stalled, everyone will move to a connected-mode pool.
It is a neat psychology + game theory situation. People seem to prefer the contributed method to connected, but as soon as shares are owed (so instantly) the right move is it switch to a connected pool if it is available. But if the herd all prefers contributed then you will be on the connected server alone and now you don't have the benefit of reduced variance. As some 'serious' miners decide to accept the variance and move to the slightly higher EV pool others may follow and variance will drop at that pool and now there are only psychological reasons to stay at the contributed pool.
As we know from poker though people can persist in low value emotionally pleasing situations for a long long time.
Eh? What is the difference between the "contributed" and "connected" methods? I haven't read Ryo's paper, so maybe I'm missing context.