[replying to your later reply]
I thought that all changed with the hardfork? I was here for about a week before then and I watched my SP go up from curation, and this was when I had much less of everything. Now it only moves when I make something from a post. Also I've seen Curator listed on people's descriptions so I thought there were people specific to the task. Thanks for explaining.
Nothing about curation changed from the hardfork. The overall rewards (both posting and curation) were cut a bit, but the mechanism is the same as before.
The main thing that changed is that you earn a lot less SP by doing nothing, but since much less STEEM/SP is being created the value should be expected to decline less and/or increase more. Overall it didn't change much related to the social site aspect at all; the changes were more of interest to investors and speculators.
If people put "Curator" on their profile, that is no different that putting "Professional Troll" on there. Anyone can put anything they want on their profile (again, decentralized p2p system; no one is in charge).
Yeah, I figured that last part out by what you said before. Though there is definitely a big difference, I have continued voting the same as before and really, there's nothing coming in from it.
I may as well ask one last thing-The following was a response to a post someone had awhile back, would you say it was a lie, a myth, or inaccurate?::
What you don't get is that the rewards pool is fixed. Non paying posts that have a bunch of votes aren't non paying because there aren't enough votes, theyre non paying because the huge amount of votes behind the top paying, whale supported posts devalue votes. And because the votes are calculated quadratically, the support they get devalues other votes disproportionately. Thats why your vote adds so much money to a top trending post, but almost nothing to a new post.
So someone like old timer, who has a vote worth 1 or 2 cents on a post like this, his vote is actually worth far more on a top paying post. If he went to trending and downvoted the top 10 trending posts, he would probably distribute 50 or 60 bucks to the rest of the posts in contention for the day.
Of course this is never going to happen, because overpaid authors here who get paid mainly for poor quality posts created a myth that there are rules about when you're allowed to downvote.... and they enforced that myth by threatening reprisals to anyone who voted in a way that they don't agree with.
TO put it another way, the money to give everyone 20 cents per post (or whatever) has to come from somewhere. Specifically, it has to come from other, higher paid posts' payouts.
Because of quadratic weighting, just voting for underpaid posts won't have a ton of effect. It would if you just did it for one, but it won't if you do it for all of them (because it will increase the total number of votes cast)
And this was someone else's response to this comment::
Damn, that brought some light to the situation. So basic income wouldnt even be possible, unless say, steemsports went away?
And if what you say is true, minnow votes would be better spent downvoting posts, which would increase value for others... that is extremely backward.
If this is accurate then it explains why people are up in arms. If it's not accurate but is somehow the general consensus of what's going on, well it has the same effect on the overall mindset but if you could set the record straight than it could stop the ongoing dispute.