Thanks for taking the time to respond.
I was not aware that the curation snipers could impact rewards that much, but I've been asking for a long time, just not the right people, apparently.

If we could get some light shed on these various curves it would alleviate some of the speculations occurring.
This is the only comprehensive post on curation I am aware of, and, as you can see, it is woefully outdated.
I do have this one however, and it shows the impact of large votes on the rest of us.

There has been an ongoing reluctance by the folks in the know to spread the math out so that all can grok it.
If you know somebody that can do that, or just supply me with numbers to my questions and I can do it, that would be a big help to alot of people that have been run off by bumping into the same walls I have.

I was here when you said that you would do maximizing, too, because allowing only 'them' to do it would be worse, that has been a burr in my saddle blanket this whole time.
I hope I'm reading the winds right when I say that that time has passed.
The one who's name we don't speak has abandoned ship, to whatever degree he is actually gone.
Now can we have rational, adult conversations about how to manage this less than 10k people we have here?

if you've checked some front-runners and maximizers, you'll notice that most will vote with very tiny percentages on popular posts they know will get past the threshold

How is that stopped dead in it's tracks?
(Mark me as strongly opposed to any maximizers getting any rewards, that leave the system.)

but then you have the bigger accounts who'll try to vote first on posts with very low rewards if they themselves (or with the accounts in their possession) can get the post to just pas the threshold

So, shouldn't they be voting mostly comments?

, I'll know that if I cast it a say 100 hive ~31hbd vote, most of that 84 hive ~26hbd will not be giving me great returns than say if I had cast 5x 20 hive ~6.25hbd votes instead.

Did I do that math right?

Am I the only one that sees the glaringness of what is being complained of here?

This, above all else, imo, is what is holding Hive back.
Instead of valuing authors with your curation, you, and many others apparently, only care about yourself.
If that isn't recognized as an issue, we need to shed some light on it, iyam.

Maybe if you fellas, and gals, concentrated on rewarding commenters you could mitigate some of what you take from our whole, while stiffing the other maximizers.
Am I the only one seeing this?

Is it not true that the value being scraped from our less than 31hbd votes, and <6hbd posts, goes mostly to the folks with 31 hbd votes, and the people they vote on?
Oh, and the scavengers that front run them?
Is this math still correct?

Where are @abit and @smooth and their experiment, when we need it?
Oh,yeah, we decided to reward the top instead of go viral, that's right.

It should be clear at this point that maximum millionaires are not interested, perhaps we should try to be more attractive to the people that actually do give us a try?