The goal of curangel has always been a broader distribution of rewards on HIVE.
The main way we're achieving this is, of course, scouting the chain for undervoted content and giving it a small boost. This side of the venture has always been a great success. The reactions to our compilation posts show just how many people are happy about the small recognition we give them, and we're proud to be a strong force for motivation for newcomers, minnows, and all those that don't network with big stakeholders too well for whichever reasons.
The other side of the coin have been downvotes until now. To align those with the stated goal, there were guidelines when downvotes can be submitted. The guiding principle behind this has always been Occam's Razor.
What would happen if everybody...
...mainly self-voted?
...only voted their friends?
...created multiple accounts to churn out as many posts as possible?
...(auto)voted for always the same authors?
...sold votes?
...bought voting power?
I think you get the gist.
The dream when we started out was to change culture around downvotes. They shouldn't be seen as something negative or personal, but as natural as upvotes.
That obviously didn't work. People do get hurt by downvotes, and explaining that it's not necessarily their own fault doesn't change the emotions behind it. Also, keeping watch for abuse screws with the mind and one starts to judge things more harshly over time. This happened to me, other curangel curators, and I think I see it with Hivewatchers too.
Finally, after having many talks to many different people over the last days, I decided to shut down curangel downvotes for now. I want to have a positive influence here, not collect enemies and constantly discuss about how much of the pool someone deserves.
This will allow me to focus on creating useful tools and infrastructure again, which is way more fun for everybody!
Apologies to everyone who got hurt, let me reassure you again that it wasn't personal.
And a huge thank you to the curators who spent years doing the job nobody else wants to do without receiving any form of reimbursement.
Moving forward with positive vibes only,
@pharesim in the name of @curangel