This is the problem with a one-man curation guild (with whales and other vote trains following). There are no checking mechanisms. Let me copy and paste my reply for @abit's comment below when I explained about the way Curie works (and SG too I believe):-
It's not just up to the whims of one person to vote on anything anytime. For example, I have friends who joined Steemit but I'll personally avoid suggesting / voting on any of them.
Even if I were to help out by always suggesting their stuff, another one or two person still needs to vouch for it - I can't just submit a friend's crappy posts and get them voted on that easily. It's a way to reduce chances of insider help and avoid abusing voting power given by the whales.
Imagine whale-powered / trail-powered solo curators coming up with good looking sock-puppet accounts to vote on them easily. Without other parties to vouch for such posts / accounts, such an arrangement could very well be abused.
Even without sock-puppets, there's still potential for whale-powered / trail-powered solo curators to abuse their votes in many ways. Unless people are okay with it. I'm not saying that's what @ats-david is doing. But I hope we can agree that solo curation is basically for self-interest, as expressed by OP himself.
Edited: personally I'd say that OP himself is doing good curation, but the point is that it doesn't exempt the fact that such an arrangement (being followed by whale / trail votes) for solo curators could be abused. Backers would need to be diligent and check on each and every triggered votes themselves. Under a guild like Curie (and i think SG works that way too), we make it worry-free for our backers.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@kevinwong/the-truth-about-guilds-and-individuals-illustrated
I have never made any promises to my trail followers that I would never flag any posts or comments. Regardless, as I stated, I very rarely flag content anyway. I made an exception in his case, because as you can see, this user quickly becomes defensive, then aggressive, and begins to hurl insults. You can see his true nature below - in the comment that you actually upvoted.
I'm actually surprised to see that you endorsed that.
To talk about "honor" and the "disgusting behavior" of others while leaving commentary like that is the ultimate hypocrisy that he speaks of when attempting to condemn me (for "abuse" that isn't actually abuse). We can all see who is actually engaging in the disgusting behavior. And yes - I will flag that, trail or no trail.
Fair enough. Although I'm not one to throw insults etc, I'm also not one to punish anyone if I feel insulted / offended. But I'll remove my vote seeing that it seems that your disputes are running deeper than what I'm seeing on the surface.