In what has become a yearly tradition, this is the third part of my series. Well, fourth, given there was a spin-off "Minding my Votes". The Mind Your Votes series has been a guide to maximising your curation rewards. However, I'll do Part III a bit differently, in more of a rambly format. This post will address the changes incoming with Hardfork 20 tomorrow. Please don't read the older Mind Your Votes posts as they are now outdated and inaccurate given current blockchain protocols.
While each new Mind Your Votes post addresses the changes in blockchain protocol, and how that affects curation and curation rewards, the basics remain the same.
This has been true from the very beginning, but even more so now. You see, since Mind Your Votes! II, a persistent plague has infested the Steem waters. Never vote on these posts, you're a) wasting voting power whilst getting minimal rewards, and b) effectively downvoting everyone else. Does that make you feel guilty? It should. You allocate rewards, do so responsibly.
Steem allocates curation rewards by predicting how early you are to a successful post. By voting on Trending posts, you are late to the party, and instead end up giving up curation rewards to those that voted before you.
The system incentivizes you to find undiscovered content which is sitting at $0. Even if you're the only one, you'll earn more curation rewards than on Trending posts. However, if the post becomes popular, you really do stand to make good money.
The curation rewards curve is quadratic - so early voters are heavily incentivized and get a larger share of the curation rewards generated by a post.
Curation rewards are directly proportional to SP holdings. If you delegate SP away to someone else, those don't count towards your curation rewards. Similarly, you can increase your curation rewards by seeking SP delegations to your account.
Alright, so the basics of curation are simple, then. Find good, undiscovered content, don't vote on posts which already have a decent pending payout, and maximize your SP.
There's more to it, of course.
Voting power is gone, replaced by a Manabar. Yes, seriously, they are calling it Mana. Fortunately, it's much the same as voting power, with one change.
The easiest way to check your Vot...umm, Mana, is at https://steemd.com/@yourusername. As of now, it still shows a Voting Power bar, but I'm sure it'll be updated to Manabar after HF20.
The concept is the same - the more votes you make, the lower your Mana gets, and the less rewards you give out (and receive as curation rewards). Thus, managing Mana is an important part of curation. For HF20, many previous exploits have been patched over, so you are incentivized to keep your Mana as high as possible, without ever hitting 100%. Note that any time spent at 100% is pure waste.
Note: I'm assuming xxxx Mana is 100%. The nomenclature may differ, but it's the same thing.
Ah, so the change to Mana. In addition to your effective SP (i.e. your SP holding + delegations in - delegations out), Mana will also now deduct your weekly power down amount. So, if you're powering down at full rate, you stand to lose at least 1/13th of your influence. (Thanks 
I had debated about skipping this bit, but I realized there might be new users this information will be useful for. Once your account hits ~500 Steem Power, you'll be able to select the strength of your vote. This is the best way to manage your Mana. At a 100% vote, it'll cost you 2% Mana, and it scales down linearly. Mana regenerates at 0.83% every hour, or 100% in 5 days. So, you can give out ten 100% votes per day, at even intervals, at near-100% Mana. Of course, since you're not a bot, you'd want to keep it closer to 80%-90% Mana.
However, be careful not to vote too low %. With HF20, now each vote has 1.2 SP shifted out. So, if you have 500 SP in your account, and you make a 1% vote, your vote will only be worth 3.8 SP - not 5 SP as expected. Hence, you end up wasting 24% of your Mana. That is, at 100% Mana.
In a nutshell, voting has become a balance between keeping your voting strength % high, your Mana high, but at the same time giving out as many votes as possible.
Of course, if you have a high SP holding, this vote shift will not affect you.
For the first 15 minutes a post is up, your vote stands to surrender your curation rewards back to the general reward pool. If you vote at 0 seconds, you give up 100% of your rewards; 50% at 7.5 minutes; while retaining all of your curation rewards at 15 minutes.
So, you should just vote at 15 minutes, right? Not necessarily - remember, curation rewards is a predictive game. Someone might vote at 12 minutes instead, giving up 20% curation rewards. However, by being early, they may end up with twice as much rewards as at 15 minutes; so the 20% would be well worth the cost.
This is another reason to seek undiscovered content by unknown authors. There's less competition for votes, so you can comfortably vote at 14 minutes to 15 minutes.
Once you have voted, you need other people to vote after you to increase your curation rewards. Please don't spam anyone though...
Yeah, all of that is fine, but how do you find posts? Use SteemLookUp. Filter posts by the type you might like, so you don't have to crawl through a cesspit of shitposts.
Self-upvotes will get you the same curation rewards as any other upvote. If you vote in the first 15 minutes, you'll lose all of your curation rewards back to the reward pool. Unvoting will remove your curation rewards from the post. Downvoting comes with no curation rewards at all.
Starting at the 12 hours from post payout, payouts will decline linearly. One minute before the post pays out, your vote will be worth nothing. So, make sure you get your vote in within the first 6 days, 12 hours.
Die of boils.
The most altruistic thing a curator on Steem can do today is downvote all of those paid bot infested posts. You take rewards from them, and distribute it across the Steem reward pool It'll make you Steem's Robin Hood. It's not so altruistic, really, as it'll make Steem much better a social platform, and increase the value of your Stake long term.
To be fair, bots can be useful. One easy way, if you have a fast bot, is to get passive curation rewards is by following an account with a large trail, and getting in towards the front of it. Setting a bot to vote on popular authors isn't going to work though, as there'll be massive competition that'll be willing to give up more of the curation rewards well under the first 15 minutes the post is live.
Last time, I went on a rant about why curation is a skill. This time, all I'll tell you is that if everything seems overwhelming, it'll simply become second nature with some experience. You'll know instinctively what needs a vote, at what time, and at what voting strength.
Or just don't bother. Find a post you like, vote on it. Except anything Trending, don't vote those.
