What an interesting and informative analysis series! I really liked the combined top paid authors tables and the network analysis. The messages of your analysis that jumped out for me are:
@surpassinggoogle is doing a great job of distributing upvotes across many authors. And the vast percentage of those authors are voted on only by @surpassinggoogle, meaning he is finding good content that would otherwise be missed by this group. He is adding unique value to the group effort.
In contrast, @linuslee0216 is providing almost no added value to the group effort. Only a small fraction of their upvotes are unique. They are simply duplicating the effort of other members of the group. @nicolemoker's fraction of unique votes is only slightly higher.
Each of the six members of this group are upvoting their own posts at levels that pay out much more that they are distributing to other individual authors -- with the exception of @sweetssj. There are two possible interpretations. One is that they think their posts really are that much better than any others they are finding to upvote. The other is that they consider their self-upvote payouts are a justifiable reward for their curation efforts -- above and beyond the standard curation rewards under the rules written into the Steemit code, that most everyone else curates under with their lower SP. Note that their high delegated SP already gives them higher curation rewards because folks with higher SP will get a higher fraction of the payout pool than others performing the same curation upvote with lower SP.
Two of the curators are providing payouts to a small group of authors at levels much larger than the rest of those that they upvote. @sweetssj provided outsized payouts to @twinkledrop and @honeybee, while @tumutanzi provides high payouts to @tumutu and @hannahwu. Again, one interpretation is that the curators think the posts by these authors are much more deserving of rewards than anyone else they upvote (except themselves in the case of @tumutanzi). The other interpretation is that there's been lazy curating, where it's just quicker or easier to upvote some folks with 100% power, to maximize total payouts each day.
Three of the curators are upvoting each other with payouts that are much larger than they give to most other authors (@htliao, @linuslee0216, and @nicolemoker). The interpretations are similar to options I've listed for #3 and #4, above.
As a tiny dolphin-sized "shareholder" of Steemit, here are my views:
A. While the group has commendably increased the overall payouts to many authors, they are also draining the payout pool with outsized payouts to themselves, a select group of friends, and/or to each other. Not everyone is doing every action, but each is doing at least one of these. Those outsized payouts reduce the influence of my limited SP, and the influence of everyone upvoting with less SP than these curators.
really to recognize more authors, their impact/cost ratio is a lot smaller than the other 4 curators.B. The outsized payouts by and to @nicolemoker and @linuslee0216 are especially troublesome, since such a small fraction of their upvotes go to unique authors. They upvote mostly the same authors as the other curators. If the goal of the delegated SP is
C. With regard to the self-upvotes and upvoting each other within the curation guild, I dislike seeing people get "bonus" rewards for curation alone, above the extra rewards that come from curating with large SP. Everyone else that's curating is doing the same thing, most without the large SP. It's been a recurring sore point for many folks over the past year.
Curation alone does not build community. Engagement, through comments, builds community and loyalty. @surpassinggoogle is great at it! In the interest of transparency and perceived fairness, rewards for the two kinds of activities should be kept separate.
I really appreciate all your effort to analyze what's going on in the Steemit blockchain! That was no small task, for sure!