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A dear friend of mine, we were having telegram chat yesterday, she asked me why don't I take a look at my @tipu curation current standing. And to my surprise, I am on 2nd place. Am I happy with that achievement? Technically, I don't feel much about it. Some of you may be asking, why wouldn't I? I will answer about that later.

And then, another support group saying my current status gain some ground because @cardboard remove the top curators? Not that I know of, from what I see, the previous week top curator is still there at the top 10 nothing much has change. I did not respond, neither I defend. Say whatever they like to say, because it does not bother me at all.

Today, I got a very rare request from used to be not so close friend @khimgoh asking about seeing me on the top 2, and we had a very long chat and now I think I can call her a good friend, I don't know if she think I can be a good friend. But definitely, there's a lot about curation has been going on over the phone, and discussing how possible effective curation can bring more meaning to the #steemitmamas. If you're a mother of your kid(s), why not hit the tag and checkout their post?

![d4ag0t.png](https://img.esteem.app/d4ag0t.png)

So, I'm just going to breakdown my boring curation project, some rules I have in mind and I follow them. Some crap I don't do, and what I usually do.

1. Suspicious work, no work. No matter how promising the post look, as long it seems too good to be true, then trust your gut feeling. You can get it wrong and miss a vote, but you don't want to make a vote and that one got flagged by the cleaners and your curation score will just go down the drain.
2. Try not to find big payout post to curate. Some author does have big accounts backing them with auto votes. If you think you can beat anything below 4 minutes auto vote, be my guess. Because if you vote below 4 minutes, it's very hard to breakeven due to early bird penalty, don't even mention making profit for @tipu. There's some calculation and algorithm involved, but today I'm not teaching maths.
3. If you're trying to curate a well known author with high pay, it is my believe that you need to communicate with them before hand. Frankly, your tipu vote may just spoil whatever plan the author may have. If they want to help you, I sure they will give you a headsup, allow you to try and make that vote on time.
4. No curation for posts more than 1 hour. This only applicable to tipu curation. Most posts rewards are roughly fixed there after the first hour. You don't wanna end up send a curation and lose @tipu 1/2 the curation reward.
5. Stay out of the race. This is supposed to be a curation program. Why would anyone wanted so many chance to curate? Frankly, look at the current top guy, efficiency at 196.1% and only does 9 curations over the past 10 days. I don't understand why do we need that much of curation mana.

Ultimately, if you have the intention to use this curation vote for yourself, you better be sure your post is getting big votes from behind. But then again, if @tipu earn bigger curation reward, it does not came from your post, it has to be the whale that vote behind. So now you have a choice.

If you sent tipu curation earlier than the big votes, what will your whale supporter think? Love you unconditionally, even allowing tipu to eat into part of the whale curation reward? I know most of them don't mind, but if I am that whale, I will so change my strategy next time to vote before you send for tipu vote, or I stop voting this continuously getting tipu vote account to avoid further damage to my curation reward.

Or, you choose to self vote because you have no other whale supporter? Then congratulations, you'll be forever staying at the bottom. Basic vote for tipu curator is 3%, if you're consistently losing their money, you'll be downgraded to 2% vote once a day, and finally today I'm seeing 1% vote once a day.

My point is, this is supposed to be a fun project. I know for a fact that I've got 2 post I sent for curation hit a huge jackpot and therefore I'm here at 2nd place. Other time, my tipu curation vote diversity has been surrounding a few person that I choose to support on a daily basis. And after the 2 big payout post expire from the 10 days frame, I will probably come back down to level 3, like 2 curation a day at 10%. Because I know for a fact that, most of those I curate are not consistently getting big votes. And I sometimes do sent curation to post that may not seem to get big votes, but I thought they are indeed underpaid and I would like to use @tipu to reward them.

Sorry for the long winded statement. I am happy that you feel happy for my 2nd place curator role this week. Don't worry, one of the curated post with big payout is 9th days now, tomorrow it will fall out from the list and I will come back down, someone else will be on top again. Never been there before? Try to curate less, but do make sure when you hit the ``` curate ``` button, the post better be getting big payouts. Stop looking at the numbers, but focus on POTENTIAL post and the already votes accounts. If a post with potential of $10, and it was already voted $5, what will you do? Frankly, I won't curate. I myself not getting $5 a post everyday, if anyone think their post is underpaid, that will be me. So once again, try to avoid the rich get richer scenario, be true to ourself and enjoy curating.

p/s: One last thing, try to avoid vote buyers since #newsteem is really hating vote buyers. They don't care if they buy with loss or promotion purpose only, they all got flagged. If your curation post meet this situation, good chance is your 10 days curation score will be reset to the lowest possible.