I've had a couple of posts 'curied' and I've had a couple of posts "OCDed'. I've also watched the smaller trail hit twice (via GINAbot). I'm sorry to hear that things have been scaling back just to keep up with authors and their content. Good that there's more good content to cover, bad that there hasn't been enough to cover it and that curator payout is considerably lower than when you started.
re: social aspects vs. curie payout
I wouldn't just stay here for the social aspects (I'm not that social, but as you say, there's plenty of other social media to do it on). However, I wouldn't just stay for the opportunity of a curie or OCD vote, either.
So, somewhere in between I've been finding my way, while gathering enough of a following who regularly upvote to push things forward until I manage to come up with the next post that will get 'curied' or increase the upvote. It sounds to me like you all have enough going on without trying to do more. It's better to do one thing really well than divide already stretched time over two different tasks.
I appreciate all that you and the Curie folks do. I appreciate the OCD folks and any others who have started to build some curation trails. I think as long as there is a human curator involved and standards to work with, it is far superior to bidbots.
So, I guess those who would say they're not getting enough from Curie need to figure out if there's more they can do for Curie. Delegate, upvote posts, pass up the bidbots, etc. It's tough when you're in the lower SP and just trying to function, but giving up on the manual curation process is the last thing that needs to happen on this platform.
Amen! Very well said brother. And I do not mean to imply by any means that there is no value in the communities here - this was more meant to address the common complaint that because Curie does not provide a community, it has no value. That, I beg to differ with. I think there are many awesome communities here. It is the unfortunate reality that there are not enough large stakeholders taking the long term vision and rewarding deserving posters.
No worries on my account. In reality, Curie helps across a lot of the communities here and doesn't need to create 'one of its own.' At least not beyond the community or bond I'm sure all of you who are somehow associated with Curie already feel or share. :)