Thanks for the good article. I think it would be extremely bad for minnows if the system started to penalize bad curation, because what else would be bad curation than always upvoting stuff that isn't popular? Well, of course if you always up vote copypasted stuff and don't read the text. I think the problem is that judging what bad curation is, is very subjective in nature. I might be wrong, but that is how I see it. But I think the system could favor up voting good content that is by lower level contributors. It kind of does, if you are a whale and upvote a minnows post, the chances are that more people will notice it and you'll get a lot of curration points for it, but usually it doesn't go that way.
Personally I'm always looking for undervalued stuff, but it really doesn't do me much. I can't affect anything even if I vote on a perfect post, which no one else has up voted. Maybe there could be some better indications as to what level the up votes are. Well I'm just pouring my ideas here, again, doesn't really affect anything :)
Yeah so many flaws in the system.
It doesn't matter that quality is subjective, the collective should decide what's quality, not 1 person :)