I don't know the whole in's and out's of any of it really or attempt to really understand it. But when I first got wind of it was Splinterlands posts in which BDvoter would snipe it towards the end and get massive rewards for it. I think they still do it to this day but I could be wrong.
However, I also don't think they are wrong for doing so being that Hive coders build the rules and if someone finds a way to maximize the rewards with that rule set then really they are not in violation of anything and it's up to the hive core team to correct it if they deem it necessary. I mean that is legit their job and what they get paid legit thousands of bucks a day to do.
dunno man, I'd have a hard time justifying doing something like that to splinterlands with such a big account and on top of it knowing they are struggling while at the same time being an active member in their community?
that said they can easily fix this, no other curation project has these issues so dunno if you can blame the curation rules of the blockchain on this.