yeah I remember of course :)
So does it means that your post wasn't upvoted by bots before the 30 min mark? if so why?
I really think they should solve the bot problem differently , because this is hurting real human curators. It's hurting everyone actually even bots. Curators should receive a fixed amount of the reward's payout.
Bots are only part of the picture. Anyone who votes with a lot of SP (whether it is a bot or human) is going to have a large influence on the curation rewards. For my post, most of the big SP votes came after the 30 minute mark.
I think most of the curators are OK with the 30 minute limit. There is a game to be played, and there are still lots of routes to go that can earn good curation rewards. Voting for the top posts where the author gets tons of upvotes right away though is not the best place to do it though.