Saying downvotes weren't personal never stopped them from feeling personal. It's the wrong answer to the autovoting problem. Downvotes should be reserved for people who plagiarize, spam, use bid bots, and otherwise attempt to manipulate the reward pool for themselves. Content creators who never asked for autovotes should never be treated as collateral damage. It's the downvoting pattern of Curangel that led me to stop delegating my HP. It'll take some time before I feel confident enough in this change of policy to reconsider supporting it again.
I do agree from the emotional standpoint.
Not reacting to whale voting patterns can, and in reality does, lead to them dominating and deciding over what goes on trending, and makes people post in communities which aren't topical and thus pretty much useless for everyone. Which is a big problem, reported by several people I tried to onboard.
But it has to be the wish of the community of course to stop certain behaviours. We have been fighting windmills since quite a while, and didn't really change anything.
I would like to see curation projects and guilds pooling voting trails or delegated whales doing more to support specific communities, new users, etc.
I still support Curie a bit, more to Leo and Stickup Curator, and a lot behind DIYhub and Ecency. If there were a project aimed toward curating good comments, I'd definitely like to support that. We need more quality engagement and less empty filler amsquerading as such.
People can use downvotes however they want due to the freedom of Hive. There are some bullies around, but most people never downvote. I'm not sure they are as big of an issue as some make out, but those affected will feel hard done by.
I don't delegate to big curation projects for various reasons. I think they wield too much power, but when it comes to downvotes then they may be a better source to reduce reprisals against individuals.
I got DVed by them for none of the reasons they listed above. I am kinda tired of big projects going on a DV tirade and then play victim when called out...
I do remember that, it was a small downvote on one post of yours that received a small reward only. I talked to the curator who issued that downvote right away, and fully agree with it being out of scope.
There were a handful other cases like that since curangel's inception nearly 5 years ago. Everyone involved is human, and mistakes happen. Nobody's playing a victim here, victim of what anyways?
Apologies for the statement about playing a victim. I guess I just have a sour taste in my mouth as it took some people offering to step in for that to be resolved eventually. I also can't get over the feeling that many who didn't have similar people just had to live with those downvotes and maybe even left since downvoting from cureangel, OCD, Curie, and some other entities just puts a stigma on users.
Either way, I am just going to end the comment by emphasising my apology for the victim-playing comment.