Thanks for your posts @leksimus On the Curation side, I agree, it is become increasingly difficult to make a decent 'return on investment/time'. @wang has just turned his bot down to 5 minutes after posting. and there are so many users on his back, there are already 50-100 votes by 15 minutes.
This then makes it difficult for new quality users to be heard above the noise. It's not impossible, like you said, you need to fight for your place, by creating good content... I believe these problems will be addressed in time, it's in the founders interests to make this a fair environment...