I agree completely. This has been brought up several times in the past, including by me. I don’t think anyone really bothers with graceful exit atm. It’s a slow process and the incentive just isn’t there to put in that effort.
In the past I’ve suggested simplifying the held amount to holding back up to 50% of payouts until the total held amount is equal to the last three months of node income. If income drops, you pay out any held amount over that amount. On my largest node, which makes about $60 a month, that would give me a held amount of $180. You better believe I will run graceful exit for that.
If you still want an incentive bonus for long term stable nodes, you can drop that held amount to last 2 months earnings instead of three after a year (or 15 months if there is a reason to stick to that kind of weird number).
@Toyoo: You could move this to suggestions to enable voting. Though I always wonder how many people would agree with us technically voting against our own interests. 